Flash Forward Episode Five: Gimme Some Truth

It’s 1:30 AM in Washington, DC. Mark and Stan walk through a parking lot. Stan counsels Mark to keep his mouth shut about something. Mark calls someone and says he has good news. They’re joined by Agent Vreede and Demetri. They all pile into a car… which is promptly rammed by a speeding SUV. The SUV is crammed full of tough-looking Asian men, who start shooting at the Feds. Someone even fires a rocket launcher, and the car explodes. Ooooh, we’re deviating from standard FlashForward operating procedure and starting with a cliffhanger! Excellent.

Thirty-nine hours earlier: Stan, Mark, Vreede and Demetri loiter in the hallway of some government building in DC, waiting for their turn to undergo a lie detector test. Mark anxiously fingers a sobriety chip. There’s a montage of everyone relating their accounts of what happened during their flash forwards: Vreede says he was in the office along with Mark at the time, though he saw himself going out the security exit for unknown reasons. I think we’re supposed to conclude there’s something a little shifty about Vreede’s story. Mark tells the interrogators about the men with masks bursting into his office. He mentions that they were carrying AK-47 rifles, though since Mark is hep with all the cool FBI lingo, he refers to them as “Kalishnikovs.”

Post-interrogation, Mark calls Aaron, who is at the Benford house working on fixing their alarm system. Aaron asks if Mark has made it to any AA meetings recently. Olivia, venturing out of the home to get the paper, overhears this and seems concerned.

Stan plays basketball with some dude named Dave, who is played by Peter Coyote. The Senate is having hearings to redistribute emergency post-blackout funding, and Stan is fretting that the Mosaic funding will be taken away. There are references to Stan’s troubled past in DC, and his enmity with someone named Clemente, who will be chairing the hearing. Dave offers some not terribly convincing reassurances that everything will work out okay.

Back in L.A., Janis kicks the crap out of some guy in her martial arts class. I have no idea where she is, because it looks like they’re in some totally awesome temple, whereas every single martial arts dojo in Los Angeles is housed in a drab strip mall. I think it’s a city ordinance. The guy she just beat up asks if she wants to go to a showing of Enter the Dragon at the Nuart. Hey, I used to work concessions at the Nuart, for a very long summer! Yoko Ono came in once. So did Michael Stipe. And Helen Slater. Anyway, Janis does not want to go see a movie with him. Janis wants to flirt with another classmate, Maya.

At the office, Al gives Janis the CIA surveillance footage of Somalia obtained from the hacker known as Mr. Cheeto Dust.

Presidential press conference: President Segovia comes out, and it’s Stan’s buddy Dave! He fields questions about the Federal response to the blackouts. He mentions something about dropping unproductive investigations, and Stan starts to look pained. A reporter asks why President Dave hasn’t revealed the nature of what he saw in his own flash forward; the President assures him that all world leaders have opted to keep theirs secret. He flashes on his own flash forward: A man hurries into his bedroom, where he’s sleeping next to the (presumed) First Lady, and tells him that something is happening.

Aaron finishes fixing Olivia’s alarm system. Olivia quizzes him about the AA meetings, and they discuss Mark’s alcoholism for a long, long time. This is another deviation from the established FlashForward formula: Usually they save the slow-moving talky scenes for the last quarter of the episode.

In the Oval Office, President Segovia offers to make Stan the new Director of Homeland Security. Stan says his nemesis Clemente will try to block the appointment; Dave asks him to consider it..

Janis goes out to dinner with Maya, who turns out to be a chef. Janis confirms to her that, due to the conservative nature of the FBI, she is not out of the closet at work. Maya reveals that she saw herself with a wedding ring in her flash forward, which she finds confusing. Janis tells preposterous lies about her own flash forward (she was on the International Space Station having a three-way with Sarah Palin and Hilary Clinton). They flirt outrageously and kiss.

The Senate Intelligence Commission holds a closed hearing on the blackouts. It’s chaired by Stan’s nemesis, Senator Joyce Clemente. She confronts Mark during a break in the hearings and asks him how he sleeps at night, knowing what he did to “that woman” six years ago. They quote Sun Tzu at each other, then Clemente mocks the Mosaic project. She doesn’t believe the flash forwards can be trusted: In her own vision, she saw herself as President.

Stan gives his testimony, where he emphasizes the importance of not pulling funding from Mosaic. What am I missing? It’s a website. A really big website, granted, but is maintaining it really putting that much of a dent in the federal budget, and if so, can’t they just follow Wikipedia’s example and hold an occasional funds drive?

Maya fixes Janis a post-coital breakfast, then they make out some more. Janis is off to work, but Maya invites her to a gallery event that evening.

At the hearings, Mark testifies about the dead crows and the two men who were awake during the blackouts. Clemente is snide and condescending to Mark. She grills him on why his flash forward recollections are “impressionistic flashes of reality,” whereas everyone else had clear visions. Mark starts to get mouthy with her. Clemente dismisses Mark’s detective work based upon his fragmented vision as being akin to voodoo or fraud. Stan storms out of the hearing.

FBI office: Janis, Al and some pixielike FBI agent we haven’t met before go through the CIA footage of the Ganwar region. They spot unidentifiable tower-like structures.

Mark tries to call Stan, but he’s not answering his phone. Janis calls and shows Mark, Demetri and Vreede a series of satellite photos from 1990 in Somalia, five months before the crows died. They can see the various stages of the towers being built.

Stan calls Janis and tells her he needs her to do something right away.

Janis meets Maya at the gallery. Maya gives her a whimsical talking alarm clock. Maya says she looked up Janis on Mosaic and found out about Janis’s mysterious future pregnancy. Janis gets flustered and leaves abruptly.

Stan shows up at the house of Renee, an attractive young woman with a young son. Later, Stan meets with President Segovia. Six years ago, Stan paid Renee a quarter of a million dollars to disappear with her son -- who might be Segovia’s kid -- to protect Segovia from scandal. Stan tracked her down on the Mosaic site: In her flash forward, she saw herself living in Puerto Rico, though she’s currently staying in Georgetown. Stan threatens the President with photographic evidence of Renee and orders him to prevent Clemente from cutting off Mosaic. After Stan leaves, President Segovia makes an ominous phone call to someone.

Vreede and Demetri drunkenly sing “Sister Christian” in a karaoke bar while Mark mopes by himself. Stan joins Mark. They snarl at each other about the disastrous hearings, then storm out as Demetri and Vreede switch to “Like a Rolling Stone.”

Mark confesses to Stan that his flash forward is a little fragmented because he was plastered. Stan is appalled he put his career on the line for Mark’s drunken hallucinations. When Demetri and Vreede come out to check on them, Stan tells them they’re celebrating: He secured their funding.

Olivia sets the new burglar alarm, but it doesn’t work. When she goes to call Aaron, she sees that someone has sent her an anonymous text message: “Mark was drinking in his flash forward.”

And now we’re at the beginning of the events of the opening sequence. Mark, Demetri, Stan and Vreede walk to their car. They hear that Segovia has appointed Senator Clemente as the new Vice Presidential nominee, following the death of the VP in the blackouts.

Janis carries a bag of groceries and walks down a dark street. She passes a woman pushing a stroller with a crying baby, and it doesn’t really seem like any maternal instincts have been sparked in her yet. Mark calls her, and we can see he was talking to Janis in the opening scene. Their phone call is interrupted by the SUV crash and the attack by the ludicrously well-armed Asian gang. Once again, their car goes up in a ball of fire.

Back in Los Angeles, someone comes up behind Janis and attacks her. She beats him up, but a second attacker shoots her in the stomach.

Mark, Demetri, Vreede and Stan all make it out their exploding fireball of a car just fine and have themselves a dandy shootout. Their attackers get back in the SUV and clear out of there.

Janis lies bleeding on the sidewalk while the talking clock Maya gave her babbles next to her. She has a vision of her flash forward: She’s lying on the obstetrician’s table and getting an ultrasound.