Not yet. That was originally set to be the season finale, with the knowledge that there would be more FFs coming in later seasons.
Damn them. This was a great show, a much better version than FOX’s with the guy from Office Space (which I can’t remember the name of, but quickly got cancelled).
I got like that too.
When I was a teenager I used to watch whatever SF was on terrestrial TV religiously, priding myself on not missing a B5 episode until 3 or 4 seasons in.
Now, after a break from cable TV, I’ve found it impossible to get back into much at all. Burn Notice and House grab my attention, but not in a “sit down and watch/tape the whole damned season” way.
FlashForward is the first TV show I have EVER watched each single episode as it was broadcast, and also the first sci-fi show I have ever watched since the Outer Limits series (the new one) from several years back.
I have to say I was pretty impressed with the first few episodes, but it has quickly become a huge let-down, as the characters and the sub-plots have become laughable and totally unbelievable (although the sci-fi plot itself is fine; I was more than willing to go along with the basic premise of parallel universes, time travel, worldwide chaos etc. because after all it was a science fiction show).
Since I am this far in, I will of course watch the remaining couple of episodes (though I think I am actually still watching just because at this point I might as well see it through, to be able to say I once watched an entire TV series from pilot to final episode) but this is something that could have been a really great moment of television, but instead was just another so-so show…
Too bad really, as it has basically killed any desire I have to try a sci-fi show again.
It did seem like a premise that perfectly fit an 8 or 12 episode miniseries. The plot seems incompatable with a long drawn out show.
I really wish we were more willing to do quality miniseries, anywhere from 8-20 episodes and be done with it. So many stories could be told in an interesting way without being drawn out ridiculously to make 5+ seasons.
But no, everything has to be milked to death so you end up with LOST or shows just being dropped mid-plot.
I’m trying to come up with any way this is possible. Perhaps after the season ends you could tell us exactly what the writer said that would make you think this was. (Assuming you’re not pulling the old, I, I mean my friend… joke on us. 
)
They took what was a promising premise and ruined it almost instantly. The characters were both uninteresting and unlikeable, a fatal combination. The pacing was abominable. The story lines were moronic. The police work was laughable even by television standards. They’ve had to shift plot lines at several points not because the public is stupid but because the show was mishandled on every level.
Then it got worse.
Of all the things that went wrong, the one that could not be overcome was the revelation that the future wasn’t fixed.
This changes everything.
It’s not just that it gives the writers the option of having futures come true or not, meaning they get to have it both ways completely arbitrarily. This never works. Never. It’s always a disappointment.
But knowing that the visions won’t necessarily come true changes the world. From that point on (and you can’t keep it a secret that only the FBI knows) every person in the world goes from thinking the future will happen to either devoting every waking minute to ensuring that it will happen or that it won’t happen. The psychology behind every action of every human changes irrevocably. And the anger behind that change is ten times greater than anything before. You can’t dangle a miracle in front of people and then prove it was - or could someday be - a lie without havoc.
What can writers do when the premise of the show becomes “we’re just going to screw with you and your investment of emotions?” Or better, what can’t they do? Remember, they can now pull anything out of their asses they want, no matter how idiotic or illogical or showoffy, and justify it. How can that satisfy anybody? What could that writer have conceivably said that would overcome this?
Yes, this late decision makes a series ending show impossible. ABC handled the situation badly. But they made the right call because any future the show had would have been a duplicate of Heroes. After the first season everything became arbitrary. People hated that. And that was a show that was beloved in the first season. Flashforward is a show that people bail from.
I’ve posted before that my First* Law of Writing is: if you have a story in which anything can happen, what does happen had better be pretty damn special. If you could tell us what could be special enough to justify the way they’ve handled the show so far I would be extremely impressed.
*First only chronologically. I coined it about the sf work of Arthur Byron Cover in the 70s. Some of which was indeed special.
Damn! I should pitch my idea to ABC!
this poses an interesting dilema…
Due to scheduling with work and other shows, i am about 4 or 5 episodes backed up on FF on my HULU queue…
Should I watch those, or just dump it now?
I’m glad I decided to bail after the first episode.
Standoff. I watched several episodes of that show. Mostly for Rosemary DeWitt and Raquel Alessi.
Sadly, this show’s cancellation will be no great loss. This could have been a great series, had the producers chosen not to focus so much on inane, inchoate bullshit involving insipid women, men who need to be bitch-slapped, and totally contrived (and totally useless) relationship drama. And it would be nice, really nice, if a science fiction show could pay some attention to the science.
Sloppy - but nowhere near as bad as V.
Well to truly persuade you, I’d have to know in detail why your instincts tell you that the opposite must be true. But I’ll make a few preliminary statements:
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While I do like FF quite a lot, there are a few things about it I don’t like. I didn’t like the silly cigar smoking cliche villain guy. I don’t like the way the adultery story line is being handled. I don’t like that Celia was again hit by a car. In general, I liked the first half or so of the shows before the break, but had some issues with a few of the episodes right before the break.
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Primarily what I mean by having confidence in the writers has to do with planning and awareness when it comes to a mystery show. They clearly have laments about Lost in mind as a cautionary tale. They planned out all the stuff on the FBI board such that something from Mark’s flashforward reveals itself in pretty much every episode. I also know that they had various contingency plans for the show lasting any particular number of seasons. Also, various things that seemed like they might be plotholes (why didn’t the hobbit get in trouble for the dead body in Canada) they said they were very aware of, and had a long list of, as being things that needed to be addressed. And indeed, as we saw with the hobbit example, we saw the lesbian agent confront him about it in a later episode.
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We might be automatically at odds with regards to some of the story telling. For example, I loved the episode where Bryce searched for Keiko, and I also loved the episode where the black guy commits suicide to save Celia. Many fans hated these episodes, especially the former, as it supposedly ‘derailed’ the primary mystery. But I loved that it took the show outside of the frantic race to save the day to tell a touching love story and have some character moments. If every episode was just Mark vs the conspiracy it would get boring and somewhat shallow.
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The previous showrunner who was changed over the break was in contention with most of the writing staff with regards to mysteries - he wanted to make the mysteries introduced to mysteries solved ratio much higher. You’ll notice that as soon as he left, we found out the identity of Suspect Zero, something he wanted to wait longer to reveal.
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Some of the problems with Mark, the writers admit, are that Joseph Fiennes has had some trouble getting accustomed to an American accent. Although they also admit that some of the problems were their own fault for making a lot of his dialogue somewhat grim in the pilot. They have tried to address the dialogue issue somewhat (although they have to walk a fine line or else risk making the alcoholism storyline not seem realistic). They considered making John Cho take the lead, because he was testing well with US audiences. But Fiennes tests very well internationally. And they say he totally kicks ass in the finale. I guess we’ll see about that.
Maybe you could give more specific examples of these things?
I don’t know. That was one of my favorite episodes. If anything, I was annoyed that this issue wasn’t addressed earlier. Surely, someone with a bad flashforward would have committed suicide fairly early, (or someone could have gotten a tattoo where they didn’t have one) thereby proving the FFs could be changed. I didn’t like the slight retcon of ‘course correction’, but otherwise I had no problem with this.
It’s better than the alternatives: 1) the future must come true, sucks for you 2) the future must come true but you were mistaken in your interpretation
What’s wrong with that? That’s a dynamic that was in play even before the suicide. The tension between people with bad FFs trying to escape them and good FFs trying to create them was an essential dynamic from the premiere. The only difference is that they know things can be changed. OTOH, the forces in play will still make the FFs the most likely scenario anyway, and in addition to that, there are people who have better knowledge of future scenarios due to more FFs manipulating things.
I don’t see how. They can only justify idiotic things if they can write them well. Same as any other show. What on Earth are you talking about?
How is this even remotely a show in which anything can happen? Other than the sci-fi physics of the premise itself, and perhaps some liberties with police procedure common to any tv show, it seems mostly based in realism. No one is going to suddenly have superpowers, and aliens aren’t going to show up. I really don’t understand what you are trying to say with regards to that.
I would not call myself a fan of the show but this is exactly the kind of stuff I hated about it: pointless love stories and irrelevant characterization (using that word rather loosely), probably included to appease a crowd who otherwise wouldn’t watch this show, but certainly designed to waste time and drag the show on for several extra episodes.
If every episode was Mark against the conspiracy then FF would be far, far more interesting. Adding cheap and poorly written segments has never improved any show. Could **anyone **take Mark and his wife’s childish and petulant relationship woes and subsequent adultery seriously? This material is simply embarrassing.
jackdavinci, I don’t have to rehash all the problems with the show. We did a weekly thread that covered them in great detail. That weekly tread disappeared because people tuned out.
What made the show potentially interesting was the dual premise. The investigation of what caused the flashforward and would there be another and the human stories of reactions to literally the biggest event in human history.
They blew both. This was encapsulated in the scene when the mole asked the hero what her flashforward was and he didn’t know. He never asked. That destroys them both as police investigators and as human beings. All for a throwaway line from a minor character we didn’t care about. And this sort of thing happened about 20 times an episode.
When you set up a premise like this you have to know one thing above all. Will the future come true or not? Every action has to be geared to answering that question. And the answer cannot be that the future will come true for all the important characters but the red shirts will be killed and the good guys saved. Red Shirt shows are now laughingstocks. That can’t be taken back. Popular culture has absorbed that wisdom.
Some shows are cartoons. Chuck doesn’t have to be even slightly realistic. Glee reels back and forth between being a farce and an afterschool special, but the musical aspects are carrying it for the present, even though you can read the unhappiness in all the Glee threads. (I also have a theory that if you refer to a show’s character by the name of a former role, that character is a failure.)
Flashforward tells you that every detail may be crucial and you have to pay close attention and simultaneously says that the details aren’t important, only the Big Picture is.
That’s having it both ways. And it isn’t working.
Despite its flaws, I was really enjoying FF and I’m sad to see it go. I think I said this in another thread but my biggest disappointment in this series has been how they handled the single/double/triple agent. Throughout the series, we kinda have hints that there’s a mole in the FBI. Indeed, we’d be fools to not suspect it because that’s just how these shows work. There’s always a mole.
But it’s not until Episode 15 that this really becomes anything more than a passing issue. It’s been basically ignored all season and at the end of that we learn that Janis is a Double Agent (DUN DUN DUUUUUUN!!!)
Episode 16 & 17 ignores this revelation completely.
Episode 18 finally revisits the issue and, before we’re even completely convinced that she’s a double agent it turns out that, no…wait for it…she’s a triple agent!
Simon kills his “friend” because he’s tired of dealing with low level lackies and wants to meet the boss. When Janis comes to him at the end of the episode, we’re led to believe that SHE is the boss, but it’s pretty much revealed right after that that, no, she’s just another low level lackey and so why should we bother with her?
But the whole point is that we, the audience, never really believed she had turned before they reveal that she actually hadn’t. It’s like a guy too insecure in trying to pull off a practical joke that he nervously yells out “just kidding!” before even doing anything substantial towards that joke.
It was really a wasted opportunity in developing her character, and it’s compounded by the fact that the FBI now knows she truly is a double agent…she’s a CIA spy, spying on the FBI! Why in the world would anyone trust her anymore?
Something that had a lot more to do with “24”'s success than most of the network robots seem to have realized.
And “Day Break” was better than both. Too bad it didn’t make it. I still think it’s because it had a black protagonist.
-Joe
And as poorly as this plotline was handled, it seems like the work of Le Carre compared to some of the other ludicrous and totally laughable story elements that the writers of FastForward have tried to sell as remotely believable…
A good initial premise, absolutely destroyed by shitty writing.
Well… ok. I don’t remember the specific things that were said by you in other old threads with regards to thinking the show’s writers were poor planners.
I don’t really consider the suicide agent to be a red shirt. He was a fairly major character for the first part of the series, and his death was large both because of his status as a main character and also in was his death meant with regards to being able to change the future. And while it may have meant that it was now possible to save ‘doomed’ characters, this was metered by the fact that now those who had flash forwards were not invincible.
Like any puzzle, both the details and the big picture are important. Clues are always in service to solving the mystery. I’m not really getting what you’re referring to.
I’m really not seeing any contradiction here.
nevermind… wrong thread.
If anything, I was wondering why on earth everyone in the show always seemed to think the future was fixed…
Everyone in the world had a flashforward, and everyone knew when it was coming, and half of them weren’t at a “Flashforward party” in their flashforward?
(I’m willing to buy that a certain amount of trends could be leading to particular outcomes or events, or that there might be an element of self-fulfilling prophecy… But that Wedeck knows when the flashforward is coming, yet doesn’t expect that he’s going to be able to hold off on taking a dump for another 2 minutes when it gets to d-day?)
Edit: Sorry to hear the show’s being cancelled though, I have been enjoying it enough to keep following. Hopefully they can wrap it up enough for it to be satisfying.
I just realized that I was talking about FlashPOINT, not Flash Forward. I had enough sense to do a wait-and-see on Flash Forward before I got myself involved. Now I’ll just pretend this show never existed.