Flash Forward Episode Four: Black Swan

Fourteen days ago: Bjork’s “It’s So Quiet”, which is a song I freaking despise, plays during an idyllic fall day in Los Angeles. The blackouts strike: A city bus plunges into the pond at Echo Park and sinks, drowning everyone on board except for a strangely calm young man and a woman who speaks in a foreign language. The man blissfully kicks out a window and swims with her to safety.

Present day: The young man, whose name is Edward Ned -- Ned Ned, in other words -- is in the hospital, still blissed out, relating the story of the rescue to Olivia and Bryce. He’s getting treated for some pain he’s been having since the crash. Bryce asks what he saw in his flash forward. Ned saw himself wearing leather pants, rocking out at a club, happy and confident. Ned, who is white, also claims he was black.

Zoe tries to discuss the upcoming wedding with Demetri, but he’s zoning out on her. She asks about rumors that the FBI has been “Gitmo-ing” the blonde woman who was with the suspected terrorists, whom he suspects of having something to do with the blackouts.

Mark entertains Charlie by pretending to be a talking egg. Olivia refers to him as “the Shakespeare of cheesy dad humor.” Heh. Okay. Between that and John Cho’s “I know what a bong is” line from last episode, they’re hitting the meta humor pretty hard, and it’s sort of lame, but I can’t say I disapprove.

Charlie’s babysitter Nicole, who we haven’t seen since the pilot, talks with Aaron, whose dead daughter Tracy was Nicole’s own babysitter. Aaron asks why Nicole disappeared after the blackouts, but she doesn’t answer. You know how last episode I mentioned that the actor who plays Aaron does a convincing American accent? I was wrong.

Mark, accompanied by the FBI agent played by the cute kid who plays Cyborg on Smallville (Lee Thompson Young. IMDB says his character name here is “Al Gough”, which is the name of one of the Smallville co-creators, so that’s… weird), asks Stan for permission to investigate the crow deaths in Somalia, but Stan frets that this might create a conflict with the CIA. Mark secretly asks Al whether a hacker friend of his could hack into the CIA mainframe. Yikes. That’s going to go over well.

Demetri interrogates the blonde woman, Alda Herzog, who claims to be an honest businesswoman. She speaks without an accent, but she’s got passports from multiple countries. She gives him a lead as to who she’s working with: Customer Choice Restaurant Group in Indio, California. When Demetri threatens her, she spooks him by telling him he’s running out of time. Demetri and Mark squabble over their next move: Demetri wants to investigate the restaurant company, Mark wants to go to Somalia. Stan opts for Indio.

In the hospital cafeteria, Lloyd tries to discuss his son Dylan’s condition with Olivia, but she once again brushes him off. She asks Bryce to transfer Dylan to Physical Therapy, so she can get some distance from Lloyd. Er... one hopes it's also because it's the best thing for this sick and injured child.

Mark and Demetri visit a restaurant in Indio owned by Customer Choice Restaurant Group. When one of the cooks hears that they’re FBI, he makes a break for it, leading them on a merry chase through a trailer park. You know what was really cool? That parkour chase scene in the opening sequence of the Casino Royale remake. I wish I could do parkour. Anyway, this wasn’t really much like that scene at all, although they scale some walls and get whacked by trailer doors and fall in kiddie pools before apprehending their suspect. Demetri, who did not bring his A-game this episode, thinks the guy has been smuggling yellowcake uranium in his backpack, but it turns out to be a bunch of weed. It’s a natural mistake.

Mark and Demetri get into a huge fight, which culminates with Demetri punching Mark in the face and telling him about the anonymous call about his upcoming murder. Mark tells him to get past the fear, using the way he’s dealing with his own flash forward as an example. Mark, not to downplay your scary future, because being chased by a bunch of gunmen is certainly stressful, but Demetri is actually, like, dead in his flash forward. That sort of trumps yours. Mark promises to solve (and ideally prevent) Demetri’s murder before it happens.

Lloyd returns Bryce’s sketch pad, which he left in Dylan’s room. He remarks on a drawing Bryce made of a beautiful woman, whom Bryce claims he hasn’t met yet. Lloyd talks about his own flash forward: He was in a strange house, and he got an urgent call from someone he didn’t know. He heard a woman’s voice -- Olivia’s -- but the flash forward ended before he saw her face.

Olivia tells Ned he has a haematoma, which requires immediate surgery. Ned’s not worried. Since the bus crash, he no longer feels nervous or afraid of anything. He’s been inspired by his vision of the future, in which he’s a confident black man (“Like Shaft, or Bryant Gumbel!”).

Nicole visits an eccentric young priest, who keeps crickets in a shoebox and calls her by her sister’s name, and offers to do volunteer work with the church. She asks him a question: “How do I atone for something I haven’t done yet?” In her flash forward, she saw herself being punished for something. When she wonders if God made this happen, the priest hastily gives her the name and phone number of the church’s volunteer coordinator and bustles her out of his office.

Bryce researches causes of pigment change. Something occurs to him, so he rushes to Ned’s room, only to find he’s already been taken into surgery. He orders a nurse to call the operating room to stop the procedure: “We’re about to kill our patient!” He believes Ned has Addison’s disease, in which the body doesn’t produce adrenaline, thus explaining his calm in the face of disaster. Addison’s disease also produces excess melanin, which explains why Ned’s skin will be darker in six months. Bryce tries to stop Olivia from operating, arguing that the surgery will kill Ned unless he receives an injection of hydrocortisone. Olivia overrules him and kicks him out of the operating room. Sure enough, Ned flatlines on the table, but stabilizes when Olivia follows Bryce’s advice and gives him the hydrocortisone.

Lloyd moves into his dead ex-wife’s apartment.

Mark interrogates Alda, who claims to know nothing about Demetri’s murder: she knew he didn’t have a flash forward because of his Mosaic posting and used that information to spook him. He asks her if she knows what caused the blackout, but she claims he’s ignoring the big question: Why were they caused? She refers to the blackouts as a “black swan” -- a metaphor for a high-impact event. She speaks in Farsi, then tells Mark a Sufi proverb: A man and a boy are in a room lit by a small candle. The man asks the boy where the light comes from. The boy blows it out and replies, “If you tell me where it went, I’ll tell you where it came from.” Alda compares Mark to a boy in the dark.

Al searches for the name “Celia” on Mosaic and looks overwhelmed by all the results. Mark asks him to contact his hacker friend, known as Mr. Cheeto Dust.

Olivia and Bryce apologize to each other for squabbling in the operating room: Olivia was reluctant to accept the diagnosis of Addison’s disease because she doesn’t want to believe in the futures shown in the flash forwards. She asks if he wants to talk about the suicide attempt, but he claims to be totally okay now: his glimpse of the future saved him. A nurse informs Olivia that young Dylan has been transferred back from physical therapy. Olivia seems a little wigged out by the news.

Mark comes home and talks to Nicole, who apologizes for disappearing after the blackouts. She tells him all about her flash forward: Someone was drowning her, and she felt as though she deserved it. Mark reassures her she’s going to be safe.

In the hospital, Lloyd entertains Dylan with magic tricks. His cell phone rings: It’s someone named Simon, who is played by a hobbit. One of the good hobbits, though. Not Sean Astin. (I’m going to get flack for that remark. Look, I love Sam Gamgee as much as anyone, but have you read Astin’s book?) Simon tells Lloyd they need to talk. Lloyd tries to blow him off, but Simon insists he can make time to listen to him, “..now that we’re responsible for the single greatest disaster in human history.”