Review – FlashForward

FlashForward – ABC – 8:00/7:00pm Thursday – USA / Channel 7 – 8:30pm Monday – AUS

Ever since Lost exploded onto the scene back in 2004 every network and his dog has been trying to replicate ABC’s success. Everybody wanted their very own ensemble mystery with a sci-fi bent. 2005 brought the world many pretenders to the thrown including the less than intriguing alien invasion series Invasion. 2006 brought about a show many assumed would take the crown and wear it forever until its producers were forced to create a second series with Heroes. Even Jericho tried it’s damndest but eventually disappeared thanks to low ratings.

It’s now 2009 and with Lost soon to enter its sixth season ABC has thrown as much money as they can into another ensemble mystery with a sci-fi bent. The show is called FlashForward and while Heroes gave us super powers, Invasion had its aliens, and Lost had a tropical island, FlashForward has … visions of the future. Okay, so it’s not sexy but it will have to do.

FlashForward opens with Shakespeare In Love himself Joseph Fiennes waking up in a car crash and climbing out to find the world has been thrown into chaos; there’s even a man on fire for crying out loud! The title is then flashed at us followed by the words ‘Four hours earlier.’ Again we meet Shakespeare as he gets up in the morning. We learn that he’s an FBI agent; that he has a wife, a daughter, he goes to AA and this day is just like any other… only that it’s not! Dun dun dunn!

As this “normal day” plays out we get to meet our cast of cops, doctors and babysitters. John Cho from Harold & Kumar appears as Shakespeare’s partner and comic relief while Zachary Knighton pops up as a suicidal doctor. Zachary Knighton was in the underrated and little seen Life On A Stick which makes his extra solemn performance here more than a touch funny for any Stick fan out there… of which I seriously think there are only three of us.

The day wears on as per usual and John Cho and Shakespeare find themselves in a car chase that ends in them blacking out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. Only it wasn’t just them. It was everybody in L.A… but as a black man watching the news quickly tells us “It’s more than just L.A., man!” And as somebody else intones “My god! It’s the whole world!” In case you haven’t yet figured it out FlashForward is more than a little bit silly. Not that there’s anything wrong with that but the cast tend to walk around having conversations like they’re in something deeper than just a bad Roland Emmerich movie.

When the whole world blacks out chaos reigns as we hear reports that Air Force 2 went down and “the veep was on board.” Apparently somebody forgot to put the auto-pilot on. All around the globe a worldwide blackout has resulted in spot fires. Even Big Ben has caught alight; I’m guessing a man carrying a big barrel of flames up to the clock tower must have blacked out and knocked it over otherwise I’m not really sure how Big Ben can catch fire.

While the world was unconscious everybody experienced a… wait for it… flash forward. Of course our cast seem to come a little too quickly to the conclusion that everybody’s consciousness jumped forward (or “flashed” “forward”) six months into the future. While normal people would probably keep calling these visions ‘visions’ the entire population of planet Earth apparently got the memo they were in a television series called FlashForward as they continually call them ‘flash forwards’ without feeling like too much of a douche.

FlashForward is a very silly show that isn’t helped by how serious everybody acts in it. Yeah, there’s one character whose flash forward just finds him reading the paper on the toilet but everybody else spends the entire pilot standing around in darkened rooms being moody. We’re also treated to a clichéd little blonde girl who wanders ghost like into rooms while saying things like “I dreamt there are no more good days.”

The expression ‘suspension of disbelief’ was invented for a show like this. Part of you will want to laugh FlashForward out the door, but there’s a tiny little part of you that’s going to be intrigued by this daffy premise. Just like in Heroes before it the best moment of the episode comes in the very last scene. The pilot ends with the sort of cliff hanger that makes you say “just one more episode” and you kind of have to give FlashForward the benefit of the doubt at this point and see how the show plays out over a couple episodes before making a final judgement.

Don’t get me wrong, FlashForward has many flaws but it also has a capable cast and high production values. Of course no matter how capable your cast, and how high your production values are, ridiculous writing is also going to spell the downfall for a show, just ask Heroes season two.

I’ve yet to black out and have my own flash forward but hopefully if I do I’ll see that six months from now that FlashForward has turned into a Lost-killer, but then again I have this feeling that I’m just going to flash forward only to find that FlashForward has been cancelled.

Good, Alright, Bad Or Ugly?
Alright