FlashForward…The Midseason Opinion

This is going to be exciting. This is the first time I’m going to a show that there’s already been an article on. So here I am, with the previous article on FlashForward copied and pasted below this one in Word as I write. I re-read what I wrote about it three episodes in, and now we’re ten episodes in and we’ve reached the mid-season finale until we get new episodes in March. The question is now…has it lived up to what was said before:

Hopefully it knows what it’s doing. Hopefully I’m wrong and that the scope of the series means that everything is more laid out like setting up plot points in a novel. But a good prologue leading to some dragging opening chapters do not give a good impression.

So Flashforward can be recommended – but mainly due to faith that it’ll grow into the series worthy of the hype.

Has it? Well…no. SPOILERS FOR EPISODE TEN INCLUDED.

Miles from This Life as Steve from Coupling

Would it be fair to say that FlashForward is a lesson in how to make a patchy and rushed drama where it seems the creative team don’t know how to handle the complex story it has? Well you could claim that it’s still only ten episodes in, but 10 episodes out of 24 is around 42% of the season already and there should be some cohesive narrative to build upon. At the moment there’s been a whole mesh of different ideas that would work – but just are not executed in a way that’s either engaging, surprising or at the right time.

Case in point: there seems to be a very lopsided view in things that take priority. With the Olivia storyline overshadowing Lloyd’s involvement with Simon, a huge interesting point is pushed to the side, and we get an episode of dialogue-hell with Dominic Mogahananananananan and Steve from Coupling having a poker game with some of the most contrived drivel of pyschobabble ever written. It then leads to a huge moment in episode ten where Lloyd announces that he and his ‘team’ were responsible for the blackout! Wait, what? Did I just flashforward to ten episodes ahead? If this is stirring the melting pot, then there is a definite problem here as the melting point’s ingredients aren’t exactly right to be mixing up.

Harold Lee as a Jack Bauer Wannabe.

In fact episode ten just threw more and more things into hell. The Dimitri/Mark storyline about his death takes an interesting turn (and I must admit the reveal that it’s Dimitri’s funeral was well done). It may also explain why none of the FBI characters were actually PRESENT AT HIS FUNERAL. The revelation loses a bit of its zing because a few episodes later someone decided to prove that you change the future by committing suicide out of the blue. So instead of “oh swear-word” you have; “oh…but it won’t be.” Not to mention the reveals of ‘D. Gibbons’ as a villain when we also have other villains we don’t know anything about yet. It’s all too confusing and just completely incomprehensible.

The Attempt at Getting the Male teen Demographic as Someone Not Relevant

At least Lost managed to keep things low-key whilst remaining cryptic, focusing on building up it’s characters and making us care about them. Here we have a huge amount of characters that we expect to follow with a pace that’s all over the place; and anything that’s good just seems to be botched senseless. The majority of the acting seems lazy, especially with the Joseph Fiennes lookalike they’re trying to market as the real Joseph Fiennes – the guy suffers from the same syndrome that Ewan McGregor has: Crap American Accent syndrome. You get the sense there’s a definite miscasting error somewhere.

I will admit to thinking that the main love story between Bryce and the Japanese woman is actually involving (don’t tell anyone, I’m actually a sucker for a good love story) but again this ends up having a huge contrivance in the middle of it as Bryce actually finds the woman’s house but Evil Controlling Mother Cliché kicks in and I’ve lost all drive to finish this sentence. Let’s also mention the shear and pivotal character that is Peyton List’s Nicole who stands around dreaming of drowning. It’s great they can place my visualisations of the character into show – absolutely useless. At least with Aaron, the AA sponsor – his daughter’s situation is a definite thing that will crossover with the main plot. But still that’s nothing that has any links so far…which is a bad move.

Too many characters, too many stories that seem unnecessary. Too much mess.

I’d like to stick with the show until the date the Flashforwards occurred – just to see if the pay-off is any good. But at the current moment…no. Nope. The show is just a mess. A mess. My opinion; mess.

Did I say mess?