Time for a very quick look back to tonight’s episode of FlashForward on five.
Demetri, Janis, Simon and Vogel (the CIA guy) go into Somalia with Red Panda and are immediately under fire. The gunman, Abdi, who kills their translator and pilot, turns out to be the boy who witnessed the original blackout in 1992. He tells the story of what happened back then, when the five towers were built around the village under the guise of being an electricity supply. Everyone was unconscious, and as he returned to the village, he saw a black camel, a bad omen, and ran away. When he returned, everyone was gone, so he believed that they had all fled the village. The reason Abdi surrounded himself with weapons and henchmen is that in his flash he saw that he was delivering a speech in front of thousands of people, and believed that he becomes leader of Somalia by force. In his vision he was wearing his mother’s necklace, which he found unusual because he hadn’t seen her in 18 years. Janis uses the Mosaic website to show him other peoples posts about the speech, proving that he actually acts as a force for peace and doesn’t need the weapons.
They go to the one tower that’s still standing, and inside find a VHS tape of interviews with village residents, including Abdi’s mother, who speak of the visions they had which came true two weeks later. On screen comes D Gibbons, speaking about them being “Test Group B”, before the video degrades into white noise. As they explore the tower further, they discover a room full of skeletons. One of them is wearing Abdi’s mother’s necklace. Just when it seems that this is making Abdi’s vision come together, he threatens to shoot Simon, angry and upset about what happened, blaming the man who designed the towers. Vogel shoots Abdi, killing him.
That night, Demetri finds Janis talk about the fact that this weekend is when she is due to conceive if the pregnancy she saw in her vision is to come true. She starts to mourn for the baby, which she has already named Willa, which it seems will now never exist. Demetri gives a nudge and a wink and suggests he helps out. How very, umm, charitable.
Back in Los Angeles, Olivia suggests to Mark that they move to Denver, to make sure that what they see in their flashes doesn’t happen. He still needs to find out why little Charlie said “D Gibbons is a bad man”, so she asks her. She says it’s because of what she heard Lloyd say in the phone call. But what has always troubled her about her vision is that when she went to the back door of her house, she heard two men talking outside, saying that “Mark Benford is dead.”
The only other thing that happened in the episode was Bryce finding out that Nicole (the babysitter) is studying pre-med, and he helped her out with a few books and things. They worked out that it’d take 12 years until she’s a doctor, she said she looks forward to them working together, he replied that he probably won’t live that long.
At the end of the episode, there are two big revelations. First of all, we discover that one of the men standing outside in Charlie’s vision was CIA agent Vogel. Secondly, Demetri rewatches D Gibbon’s tape when Simon comes in the room. As they talk, the tape plays on in the background further than they’d left it before, and suddenly D Gibbons reappears on screen, addressing Demetri directly from 1991, asking if he’s got his attention.
It was a pretty good episode, but there was a bit of padding, particularly with the Bryce and Nicole stuff which is presumably supposed to show them getting closer, but ended up just slowing down an otherwise fairly fast-paced episode. Still, it did the typical FlashForward trick of ending on a very good shock ending, meaning I’ve been lured back for more next week.
Transmission 