Dominic (Simon) plays a creepy physicist. Glad the “bad” guys are turning out to be scientists, and the event was some sort of experiment gone awry.
Although, Simon’s explanation of Shrodinger’s Cat bugged the shit out of me. I realize he was trying to dumb it down for the chick (and by proxy the audience), but way to totally misinterpret the point of the thought experiment. Poisoned sardines are not quantum superstates. And it’s not the observer that decides or chooses the fate of the cat; the paradox is that obviously the cat can’t be both dead and alive at the same time. We just can’t know which one until we observe. Bah.
Anyway, perhaps that’s a clue as to where the writers are taking the idea of the flashforwards. It only becomes true if you want it to or not? I dunno…
I did enjoy the meeting of Agt. Shakespeare, Dr. Mom, and British Dad. (Sorry, can’t remember most of the names yet, except Dr. Mom… she’s Olivia.)
Yeah, the stuff on the train (Schroedinger’s Cat esp) bugged me, but that is one creepy dude all right. But the way Olivia and Benton are reacting to each other is pretty unbelievable. If you get mad and split with your spouse because they might betray you in six months… it’s just a self-fulfilling prophecy.
I was glad to learn why the boy knew the girl, and Olivia’s name and address.
So are we to assume that chick got her trachea crushed?
The meeting between Mark and Lloyd was a bit anticlimatic if you ask me. Also that was piss poor direction when autism boy and girl slaped fives like it was no big deal. Shouldn’t they have been at least a little taken a back when they saw each other? Like “Hey, you’re the one from my FF!”
Anyway, still like the show. This one was kind of “Meh” tho.
The dude who plays Agent Benford is British right? Does he have to do the low whisper/something stuck in his throat thing to have an American accent? It’s really annoying. Otherwise, I really enjoy this show.
As mentioned above, one thing we know for certain is that the writers of FlashForward have never been on the lounge car of an Amtrak train before…
Also, its a little hard to swallow that the FBI agents who just killed 2 would-be assasains in DC were obviously able to hop a plane home to LA within a couple of hours after the ambush and subsequent firefight. Seems like they would need to stick around DC for some questioning/debriefing by local authorities.
I hope Joss is getting royalties on all the blue hands references out there now…
Two things –
What exactly did Benford’s “We’re even now” and his boss’s apparent agreement to that mean? (Benford said that just after he gave his boss a dollar’s worth of quarters to buy coffee.)
Any bets that whatever “experiment” Dylan’s dad and Dominic Monaghan did is not actually what caused the blackout?
I agree with pretty much everything Shakes said, especially WRT the kids. I don’t buy that they’re just instant friends somehow, and that still doesn’t explain how Charlie knew that “D. Gibbons is a very bad man.”
And add me to the list of, “No quantum physics genius is going to botch an explanation of Schrodinger’s Cat like that” folks. Though, to be fair, the writing has been so sloppy that I don’t know whether he botched the line as a pick-up scam, or if he really IS supposed to be a quantum physics genius.
Still worth watching, but I really hope the departure of that “showrunner” leads to better writing and/or dialog and/or plotting.
Well, not to mention that the surgeon who ends up working on Lesbian FBI Agent’s bullet wounds just happens to be Agent Shakespeare’s wife…
…but after last week, I’ve surrendered. In this show we’re in a magic world where everyone in LA knows everyone else, all the Americans are actually British, and the lighting is rather more dramatic than what I’m used to at my home and office, and that’s just the way it is.
Man, I entirely missed that creepy guy on the train was talking about Schrodinger’s Cat. It was raining so hard outside at the time I couldn’t turn the sound up loud enough to hear.
So, presumably the blue hands people are some faction other than British Dad and creepy train guy? No idea what their objective is, though.
Yes! I wondered the same thing too! Either the FBI Director gave him some change for a vending machine in an earlier episode, or it was a deeper meaning that totally went over my head. His words were obviously a play on his actions of giving him some change. Anyone catch it?
I dunno. I’m not picking up any weird twists. I think they’re mostly responsible for the event, whether they knew what the consequences would be or not. I’m just curious, what they were trying to do, because, ostensibly, it doesn’t look like it was the intended result (considering, they each had their own flash forwards). Since that’s the case, who was the guy walking around at Comerica Park?
It is my hope the writing tightens up too. I’m in it until the bitter end, because I’m a sucker for these kinds of shows, but so far, I give it a B-, yet I feel it could be an A if they could reign in the writing. I hope to be pleasantly surprised by future episodes and reveals. It’s all still a little too early to tell if some of our concerns aren’t going to be addressed after all.
I’m also confused what the “we’re even now” exchange referred to.
I’m surprised nobody pointed out that they finally addressed a major point of interest (complaint?) we’ve had in these threads, about how nobody had a vision that had been affected by the visions other than Joseph Fiennes. In this episode we learn from random chick that a half million people saw a “flashforward party” in their flashforwards, which was described as a makeshift New Year’s Eve party in Times Square, complete with ball drop and everything.
This means that everyone’s flashforwards were to a future where they were aware of the flashforwards. Which means the chief guy knew the flashforward was coming and opted to take a shit in his. (Literally.) Seems kinda weak, IMO.
What’s this about a new showrunner? Maybe this new development is a change in direction, so we have to ignore things like somebody taking a shit instead of reading lottery numbers during the historic flashforward that he was aware of for six months prior.
I thought the ‘we’re even now’-bit just referred to the boss guy’s previous apology – like saying, it’s no big deal, underlined by helping him out with some change.
I thought this was a stronger episode, almost feels like things are going somewhere finally. I was immensely annoyed by last week’s red tape, I mean, you’ve got a show with a premise that challenges everything people commonly think about destiny, free will, etc., and you opt for showing some bureaucratic complications?
Agreed that it was a much stronger episode. For the first few episodes, we learned something new about the investigation every episode, but there have been a couple of episodes, last week’s red tape being the prime but not the only example, where we didn’t. Don’t they get that the only reason we’re watching is for that explanation? (grin)
WRT the apology and the change – that’s very possible, of course, but it “felt” to me like there was something else underlying it. I could be wrong (and probably am).
I didn’t catch that dialog, but even so we don’t know how drunk she was or whether she was just in a party/good time mood. We didn’t see her flashforward as confirmation, after all, though we did see Dominic Monaghan’s.
Which gives me further reason to doubt the random chick’s version of (future) events. Then again, if we assume that the writers really thought that Monaghan’s explanation of Schrodinger’s Cat was true, they truly could be that screwed up WRT visions of the future.
This was mentioned in the thread about last week’s episode. One of the executive producers (I think) was canned because someone wasn’t happy with how the show has gone since the pilot.
I can’t help but note that this week’s episode was markedly better than the last couple, and that the guy was canned in between… Coincidence? You be the judge.
I’m confused. Are you saying that someone was fired between filming this week’s episode and the one prior? (How far in advance do they film an episode? A month? More? Less?)
Regardless, they could only have made that decision prior to these episodes airing. The story could still could be true of course, but it wouldn’t be a consequence of audience reaction. Had to be during the editing process.
“Well, we’ve gone three blocks.”
I mean, come on, they get that guess dead on ? I don’t think so.
I just like how the apparent love triangle to be happened. Dylan and his entire “To our Friends” worked perfectly though.
Just like how the entire thing fell out completely because of the FBI boss at the hearing learning about the Main’s drinking. [I tried to explain most of the plot to my mom, and the entire, interweave of the plot is amazing.]
I think I’m firmly firmly in to watching all episodes now. I was pretty well sold from the premise before the pilot, but I just want to know how great, or how bad this ends up now.
On Schrodinger : I imediately was like “Thats not the premise… but I guess it still works” … I’m still not 100% clear on how Schrodinger works. – From the “real” premise, or from the one presented.
– Is it essentially that the cat is both simultaneously, until the observer finds it?
Yes. The wavefunction of the emitter of radiation is in a superposition of emitted and not emitted. This superposed WF then forms a further superposition with the cat’s. So what causes the WF to collapse to one state or the other?
According to the Copenhagen interpretation it must be something that doesn’t consist of quanta, or superpositions will just continue to form. So the the something that causes the collapse can only be an observation by a conscious mind.
Schrodinger meant the tale to show the silliness of this interpretation.
I also thought that the “we’re even now” related to the boss’s apology. What I didn’t get was why the boss apologized and his subordinate - who is the one totally at fault - didn’t have to. Oh, right. He’s the “star.”
The Amtrak reference is probably real. The Coast Starlight.
Isn’t it way past time that somebody talks to Charlie about her flashforward?
The shows are taped months ahead of time. There is no possible way that the new showrunner controlled this one. Let’s hope not, because the writing was worse than the usual low standards.
The Times Square bit baffled me. It’s in direct contradiction to everything we’ve been told about flashforwards so far.
I have been on the Coast Starlight----The lounge car was NOTHING like the one on FlashForward.
Of course this was over 10 years ago, so I realise that things certainly may have changed…
And while I think that there are many, many small details the writers are way off on, I still like this show quite a bit; it is the first SciFi/Law Enforcement show I have ever watched from the start of the series (I dont watch too much TV in general, and when I do it’s usually a sit-com) and it is interesting to try and guess what twists and turns the mystery will take.