What I’m Watching: Flash Forward

Flash Forward: Season 1, Episode 14 “Better Angels” (C+)

While I know that Simon did say that going into Somalia without a gun was crazy, doesn’t it seem a bit suspicious and unlikely that the team literally came across an executioner without mere minutes of landing in Somalia? Couldn’t they have picked a less volatile place to land? Why so much of the screen time in the episode is spent in Somalia is also a mystery, almost as big as the reason for the flash-forwards (alright, not quite as big). But all of the focus on Somalia makes everything else seem much less important, even the major revelation that Vogel was reporting that Mark had been killed in the future. There’s not even one mention of Aaron and his whole plotline, further fueling this show’s mimicry of “Lost” in its complete avoidance of a major arc or two in each episode, returning to each only every couple of episodes. Demetri’s joke of “I will make you gayer” and his entire discussion with Janis about her baby references a number of dormant plot points, and even though that scene cut pretty quick at the end, it’s possible that there was some impregnating going on there, which would be interesting. Demetri does have much more pressing things to worry about, however, namely D Gibbons talking to him from a message recorded in 1991. The big shocker is a cool twist but I doubt they can back it up with any kind of logic. It would appear that D Gibbons can see the entire future or something to that effect, since his ability to start a conversation via pre-recorded footage would depend on him knowing what Demetri’s response would be. We’ll have to wait until next week to find out, although something tells me that, the way things are going, we may have to wait two weeks if next week takes place fully out of Somalia.