What I’m Watching: Flash Forward

Flash Forward: Season 1, Episode 5 “Give Me Some Truth” (C)

It’s not just the characters’ lives that are being molded and ruled by the flash forwards, it’s also the show itself. Characters are headed in these foreshadowed directions because that’s where they think they have to end up. The obsession with the FBI investigation into the flash forwards is really starting to get in the way of any sort of progress. It’s like in horror movies when some seemingly more knowledgeable authority figure tells the protagonist that there’s nothing to be worried about, and what that means is that they’ll be the first to die, at the moment that they realize their mistake far too late. It’s a waste of such great talent for Glynn Turman (“In Treatment”) to be given a mundane role as a prosecutor without any sort of edge or compelling dialogue. The fact that the prosecutors categorize Mark’s recollection of his flash forward as hazy is wrong since he remembers so much vivid detail of what he saw, and it’s merely a cheap way of prompting Mark to reveal the fact that he was drinking in the future. Stan has just become a far more intriguing character, and the fact that he tried to blackmail the President of the United States, his close friend played by the superb Peter Coyote (“The Inside”), is almost as crazy as the fact that POTUS seems like the one who ordered the whole team to be taken out! The fact that Janis is a lesbian and that Navi Rawat is really creepy is hardly interesting or relevant, and it’s especially clear with her that knowing the future isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. There can never be any surprises, and even though Janis took a bullet, it’s clear that she’s not dead because she just can’t be.