FlashForward Premiere - My Thoughts
Sep. 14th, 2009 10:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eleanorjaneThanks to a headsup from helens78 I discovered that the premiere of FlashForward would be available today on ABC Insider, the ABC network's special fanclub dealio. Turns out their location checking is a little below-par, and it was accessible to us furriners - so, as I was interested in Flashforward anyway, based on the premise and the cast, I thought I'd check it out.
The premise: at the same moment, everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. During this period, everyone experiences visions of the future - exactly the same point in the future, April 29th 2010 (well, in the LA time zone; it's appropriately timed in other timezones). These visions corroborate - if Person A has a vision involving Person B, Person B will have seen the same vision, just from their PoV.
The show focuses on Mark Benford, an FBI agent in LA, whose vision showed him conducting an investigation into the cause of the phenomenon (completely with appropriately conspiracy-theory-esque opposition and threats to his life), so at the behest of his superior he promptly launches the investigation, trying to remember as many of the leads from his vision as possible.
The cast looks interesting: Joseph Fiennes plays Benford; John Cho plays his partner Demetri. Jack Davenport is also in it, which was what first got me interested. :)
And now the spoilery bits: a quick recap of the premiere, and my thoughts:
The pre-credits leadin shows us a bunch of disoriented, confused people staggering around with a bunch of vehicles smashed in the background; everyone's coming to and trying to make sense of what happened. A tanker explodes; people are generally battered and confused, and it's all incredibly reminiscent of the opening of Lost.
The show proper opens with Mark Benford (who was one of the disoriented confused people in the lead-in) kissing his wife Olivia (a surgeon) and daughter Charlie goodbye as he leaves for work in the morning. As he leaves, Olivia calls her colleague Bryce and leaves a message on his voicemail reaming him out for not coming to work the previous day. It's pretty clear that all the stuff in the lead-in hasn't happened... yet.
We cut to Bryce, who's on the shorefront; he's pulled out a gun and is about to do away with himself. Cut back to Benford, who's at an AA meeting listening to a speech given by his sponsor Aaron Stark about how the death of Stark's daughter in Iraq caused him to start drinking. Clearly these are all characters with issues.
Then a brief cut back to the Benford family home where Charlie's babysitter is having sex with her boyfriend, and then to Benford who's on stakeout with his partner Demetri Noh, who is talking about his upcoming marriage to Zoey. The stakeout targets start moving, and Benford, Noh and their backup team follow the bad guys in a high speed chase, conferring with office-based agent Janis Hawk.
We cut between all the characters who've been introduced so far, and then everything goes weird as we see Benford's vision - conspiracy board (complete with red string and thumbtacks connecting things), lots of shots of post-it notes with cryptic clues on them, then the masked death squad with assault rifles turns up. Then he wakes up in his overturned car.
Everyone else starts waking up too, except the ones who died in crashes and on the operating table and by drowning, et cetera. Barely-controlled chaos ensues, as civilians fairly reasonably start assuming it's the Rapture or Armageddon. Benford and Noh stop to arrest the remaining inhabitant of the SUV they were chasing (an Angry Blonde Lady), and then head to find their loved ones.
Bizarrely, Benford sees a small kangaroo or wallaby on a street. No, I don't know why either. (Perhaps it's this show's equivalent of the Lost polar bears.) The characters regroup and make contact with appropriate people, and it becomes clear that this was a global phenomenon. Olivia and her colleague Bryce save a pre-teen boy's life on the operating table.
The FBI agents start conferring about the possible causes of the phenomenon, and in a meeting they realise that a) they were having visions of the future, b) the visions were all on the same moment six months in the future, and c) that people who had a vision of each other shared the same vision. Noh claims he didn't have a vision, but seems kind of shifty about it.
Noh asks if their person of interest (Angry Blonde Lady) had something to do with it; Senior FBI Guy says he thinks it's a dead end. Noh looks upset or angry; the impression I got was that either he's really invested in seeing this chick go down for something major, or she was involved in his vision somehow.
Benford remembers that the investigation in his vision was called Mosaic, so that's what they call it; they decide to set up a website for people to post about their visions and cross-reference, so that they can piggyback off it and search all the visions for clues. The Senior FBI Guy assigns Benford, Noh and Hawk to run the investigation on the phenomenon, which Noh's not happy about.
Cut to Benford's office where they're setting up a pinboard with notes on the clues Benford remembers; in a nice touch, Demetri's handwritten notes are still visible in the six-months-later visions of the pinboard. It becomes clear that Benford remembers drinking from a hip flask in his vision, but he's not telling anyone about it. Noh says he's worried that he didn't see anything in a vision because he'd be dead in six months. He looks fairly convincingly upset.
Olivia and Bryce are talking about not being able to find the father of the boy they saved in the operation. Bryce admits that he was suicidal that morning, but knowing he'd be alive in six months turned his perspective around. He thinks the visions were a gift; Olivia disagrees, because hers showed her the end of her marriage.
Cut to Mark, who's admitting to his sponsor Stark that his vision showed him fully-fledged drinking again, and that Olivia would leave him if he did that. Stark on the other hand wants his vision to come true; his vision showed him his daughter Tracy alive and well again, and he's angry about feeling hopeful. Cut to Mark and Olivia in bed; he tells her about his vision (but leaves out the drinking). She doesn't want to talk about hers; he pushes her until she admits that her vision showed her with another man, and she's very upset because she'd never cheat on Mark. Mark tries to comfort her (and still doesn't mention the drinking).
Cut to the hospital, where we see the arriving father of the boy Olivia operated on. Bryce talks to him, and we see the father, Lloyd Simcoe (played by Jack Davenport yay!) is the same man from Olivia's vision. And then cut to Benford, who's comforting his daughter about the visions, and she gives him a friendship bracelet she made for him - the same one he noted in his vision. Cue him looking all pensive and upset (as if that's the thing that makes him start drinking...)
And cut back to the FBI office; Noh's talking to his fiancé, but evades the issue of "the future". Then Hawk calls him over and shows him surveillance footage from all over the world showing people dropping like flies at the same moment... until they find footage from a stadium in Detroit and a lone indistinguishable figure is awake and walking stealthily through the crowd. GOOSEBUMPS.
***
So! That was the recap. Now, my thoughts.
I'm not actually that interested in the main characters, and I think that's mostly in self defense. I'll explain:
I have always hated the device in books where the author says "if only Bob had known he was about to make the worst mistake of his life"; it completely ruins the tension of the next part of the action for me, because now I know something bad is going to happen and I spend the whole time mentally yelling NO NO GOD DON'T DO THAT IT WON'T END WELL and being frustrated when the character does it anyway.
It's even worse when the _character_ knows it too because he has effectively heard the author saying "...Mark was about to make the worst mistake of his life, costing him his marriage and sanity and hard-won sobriety" and HE'S GOING TO START DRINKING ANYWAY. It leaches the actual events of their dramatic tension, and turns it into a frustrating exercise of thinking the character should know better. That kind of audience reaction might be avoidable with really clever writing, but I'm not taking anything on faith at this point.
So rather than get invested in Mark Benford, I've _already_ got this semi-hostile reaction to him, all "dude, you are going to do some really dumb shit that you already know you really don't want to do, and I am going to be pissed off about watching it and thinking you walked right into that".
But other than that, the show is interesting and thought-provoking, and here's some of my thoughts:
* The limitation of the flash forwards being six months in the future means this feels like a one-season deal, which reduces one's desire to get invested. I'm sure they can set stuff after the April 29th deadline, but that seems like the big plotline payoff, y'know?
* The cast looks really good, and I would frankly watch paint dry if Jack Davenport was involved, so that's a huge point in its favour.
* Mark Benford seems to have more than his fair share of Srs Manpain.
* It's very reminiscent of Lost, in terms of the general 'modern possibly-quasi-supernatural mystery' and ... I don't know, it's 11am and I've been up since yesterday, so insightful critical analysis is probably off the agenda at this point. Let's just say that it reminded me strongly of lost.
* I admit it: I'm hooked on the mystery, and I want to know what the hell is going on.
* It's kind of hard to tell how big the ensemble cast is. IMDB doesn't list everybody, but based on who got attention during the pilot, I think we can assume: Mark and Olivia Benford, Noh, his fiancee Zoey (who we haven't seen yet), Lloyd Simcoe, possibly the kids (ie Charlie Benford and Jr. Simcoe), Janis Hawk, Senior FBI Guy, Olivia's colleague Bryce, Mark's sponsor Aaron (and possibly his daughter Tracy), the babysitter Nicole, and apparently Dominic Monaghan is also a regular cast member whose character we've not yet met. That is a HUGE cast, guys. Please please let them avoid Heroes Syndrome!
I really, really want to like this show. I have some reservations (see above), but I'm kind of hooked on the plot, and I want more Jack Davenport on my TV.
helens78 I discovered that the premiere of FlashForward would be available today on ABC Insider, the ABC network's special fanclub dealio. Turns out their location checking is a little below-par, and it was accessible to us furriners - so, as I was interested in Flashforward anyway, based on the premise and the cast, I thought I'd check it out.The premise: at the same moment, everyone on the planet blacks out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. During this period, everyone experiences visions of the future - exactly the same point in the future, April 29th 2010 (well, in the LA time zone; it's appropriately timed in other timezones). These visions corroborate - if Person A has a vision involving Person B, Person B will have seen the same vision, just from their PoV.
The show focuses on Mark Benford, an FBI agent in LA, whose vision showed him conducting an investigation into the cause of the phenomenon (completely with appropriately conspiracy-theory-esque opposition and threats to his life), so at the behest of his superior he promptly launches the investigation, trying to remember as many of the leads from his vision as possible.
The cast looks interesting: Joseph Fiennes plays Benford; John Cho plays his partner Demetri. Jack Davenport is also in it, which was what first got me interested. :)
And now the spoilery bits: a quick recap of the premiere, and my thoughts:
The pre-credits leadin shows us a bunch of disoriented, confused people staggering around with a bunch of vehicles smashed in the background; everyone's coming to and trying to make sense of what happened. A tanker explodes; people are generally battered and confused, and it's all incredibly reminiscent of the opening of Lost.
The show proper opens with Mark Benford (who was one of the disoriented confused people in the lead-in) kissing his wife Olivia (a surgeon) and daughter Charlie goodbye as he leaves for work in the morning. As he leaves, Olivia calls her colleague Bryce and leaves a message on his voicemail reaming him out for not coming to work the previous day. It's pretty clear that all the stuff in the lead-in hasn't happened... yet.
We cut to Bryce, who's on the shorefront; he's pulled out a gun and is about to do away with himself. Cut back to Benford, who's at an AA meeting listening to a speech given by his sponsor Aaron Stark about how the death of Stark's daughter in Iraq caused him to start drinking. Clearly these are all characters with issues.
Then a brief cut back to the Benford family home where Charlie's babysitter is having sex with her boyfriend, and then to Benford who's on stakeout with his partner Demetri Noh, who is talking about his upcoming marriage to Zoey. The stakeout targets start moving, and Benford, Noh and their backup team follow the bad guys in a high speed chase, conferring with office-based agent Janis Hawk.
We cut between all the characters who've been introduced so far, and then everything goes weird as we see Benford's vision - conspiracy board (complete with red string and thumbtacks connecting things), lots of shots of post-it notes with cryptic clues on them, then the masked death squad with assault rifles turns up. Then he wakes up in his overturned car.
Everyone else starts waking up too, except the ones who died in crashes and on the operating table and by drowning, et cetera. Barely-controlled chaos ensues, as civilians fairly reasonably start assuming it's the Rapture or Armageddon. Benford and Noh stop to arrest the remaining inhabitant of the SUV they were chasing (an Angry Blonde Lady), and then head to find their loved ones.
Bizarrely, Benford sees a small kangaroo or wallaby on a street. No, I don't know why either. (Perhaps it's this show's equivalent of the Lost polar bears.) The characters regroup and make contact with appropriate people, and it becomes clear that this was a global phenomenon. Olivia and her colleague Bryce save a pre-teen boy's life on the operating table.
The FBI agents start conferring about the possible causes of the phenomenon, and in a meeting they realise that a) they were having visions of the future, b) the visions were all on the same moment six months in the future, and c) that people who had a vision of each other shared the same vision. Noh claims he didn't have a vision, but seems kind of shifty about it.
Noh asks if their person of interest (Angry Blonde Lady) had something to do with it; Senior FBI Guy says he thinks it's a dead end. Noh looks upset or angry; the impression I got was that either he's really invested in seeing this chick go down for something major, or she was involved in his vision somehow.
Benford remembers that the investigation in his vision was called Mosaic, so that's what they call it; they decide to set up a website for people to post about their visions and cross-reference, so that they can piggyback off it and search all the visions for clues. The Senior FBI Guy assigns Benford, Noh and Hawk to run the investigation on the phenomenon, which Noh's not happy about.
Cut to Benford's office where they're setting up a pinboard with notes on the clues Benford remembers; in a nice touch, Demetri's handwritten notes are still visible in the six-months-later visions of the pinboard. It becomes clear that Benford remembers drinking from a hip flask in his vision, but he's not telling anyone about it. Noh says he's worried that he didn't see anything in a vision because he'd be dead in six months. He looks fairly convincingly upset.
Olivia and Bryce are talking about not being able to find the father of the boy they saved in the operation. Bryce admits that he was suicidal that morning, but knowing he'd be alive in six months turned his perspective around. He thinks the visions were a gift; Olivia disagrees, because hers showed her the end of her marriage.
Cut to Mark, who's admitting to his sponsor Stark that his vision showed him fully-fledged drinking again, and that Olivia would leave him if he did that. Stark on the other hand wants his vision to come true; his vision showed him his daughter Tracy alive and well again, and he's angry about feeling hopeful. Cut to Mark and Olivia in bed; he tells her about his vision (but leaves out the drinking). She doesn't want to talk about hers; he pushes her until she admits that her vision showed her with another man, and she's very upset because she'd never cheat on Mark. Mark tries to comfort her (and still doesn't mention the drinking).
Cut to the hospital, where we see the arriving father of the boy Olivia operated on. Bryce talks to him, and we see the father, Lloyd Simcoe (played by Jack Davenport yay!) is the same man from Olivia's vision. And then cut to Benford, who's comforting his daughter about the visions, and she gives him a friendship bracelet she made for him - the same one he noted in his vision. Cue him looking all pensive and upset (as if that's the thing that makes him start drinking...)
And cut back to the FBI office; Noh's talking to his fiancé, but evades the issue of "the future". Then Hawk calls him over and shows him surveillance footage from all over the world showing people dropping like flies at the same moment... until they find footage from a stadium in Detroit and a lone indistinguishable figure is awake and walking stealthily through the crowd. GOOSEBUMPS.
***
So! That was the recap. Now, my thoughts.
I'm not actually that interested in the main characters, and I think that's mostly in self defense. I'll explain:
I have always hated the device in books where the author says "if only Bob had known he was about to make the worst mistake of his life"; it completely ruins the tension of the next part of the action for me, because now I know something bad is going to happen and I spend the whole time mentally yelling NO NO GOD DON'T DO THAT IT WON'T END WELL and being frustrated when the character does it anyway.
It's even worse when the _character_ knows it too because he has effectively heard the author saying "...Mark was about to make the worst mistake of his life, costing him his marriage and sanity and hard-won sobriety" and HE'S GOING TO START DRINKING ANYWAY. It leaches the actual events of their dramatic tension, and turns it into a frustrating exercise of thinking the character should know better. That kind of audience reaction might be avoidable with really clever writing, but I'm not taking anything on faith at this point.
So rather than get invested in Mark Benford, I've _already_ got this semi-hostile reaction to him, all "dude, you are going to do some really dumb shit that you already know you really don't want to do, and I am going to be pissed off about watching it and thinking you walked right into that".
But other than that, the show is interesting and thought-provoking, and here's some of my thoughts:
* The limitation of the flash forwards being six months in the future means this feels like a one-season deal, which reduces one's desire to get invested. I'm sure they can set stuff after the April 29th deadline, but that seems like the big plotline payoff, y'know?
* The cast looks really good, and I would frankly watch paint dry if Jack Davenport was involved, so that's a huge point in its favour.
* Mark Benford seems to have more than his fair share of Srs Manpain.
* It's very reminiscent of Lost, in terms of the general 'modern possibly-quasi-supernatural mystery' and ... I don't know, it's 11am and I've been up since yesterday, so insightful critical analysis is probably off the agenda at this point. Let's just say that it reminded me strongly of lost.
* I admit it: I'm hooked on the mystery, and I want to know what the hell is going on.
* It's kind of hard to tell how big the ensemble cast is. IMDB doesn't list everybody, but based on who got attention during the pilot, I think we can assume: Mark and Olivia Benford, Noh, his fiancee Zoey (who we haven't seen yet), Lloyd Simcoe, possibly the kids (ie Charlie Benford and Jr. Simcoe), Janis Hawk, Senior FBI Guy, Olivia's colleague Bryce, Mark's sponsor Aaron (and possibly his daughter Tracy), the babysitter Nicole, and apparently Dominic Monaghan is also a regular cast member whose character we've not yet met. That is a HUGE cast, guys. Please please let them avoid Heroes Syndrome!
I really, really want to like this show. I have some reservations (see above), but I'm kind of hooked on the plot, and I want more Jack Davenport on my TV.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-14 02:34 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2009-09-15 08:27 pm (UTC)Also, John Cho eeeeeeeeeeee eeeeeeeeeeeee!