FlashForward Episode Six: Scary Monsters and Super Creeps

In a surprisingly posh train car bound for Los Angeles, Simon drinks and tells a hot blonde woman that he knows the cause of the flash forwards. When she doubts him, he advises her to use her phone to Google “quantum physicist genius.” She does, and the first search result leads her to Simon’s photo: he’s naked, with lab goggles covering his genitals. He goes on about quantum superpositions and Schrodinger’s cat for a while, which is intercut with scenes of Janis getting rushed into surgery. Olivia stitches Janis up, and it looks like she’s going to be fine.

Lloyd does card tricks for Dylan in his hospital room. When Lloyd tells Dylan he’s going to take him back to Palo Alto with him as soon as he’s out of the hospital, Dylan seems vexed. Bryce pops his head in to mention that it’s Halloween, and all the kids are going trick-or-treating around the hospital. Lloyd scurries off to find Dylan a costume. Somehow, the poor kid ends up dressed as Flavor Flav. Unfortunate.

Stan, Mark, Demetri and cute Al visit Janis in the hospital. Stan apologizes to Mark for being kind of dickish after the Senate hearings. Mark reunites with Olivia, who tenderly bandages up the wounds he sustained during the shootout. Which was in Washington, DC, 2700 miles away from Los Angles. You’d think he could’ve sponged off the blood in the airplane lavatory. It’s a six-hour flight.

Demetri wants to stay with Janis, but Stan orders him to go home. Instead, Demetri and Al start their own investigation of the attack on her. They go to the morgue to look at the attacker Janis killed, whom the coroner has been unable to identify. The guy is Asian, like the attackers in DC, and has cornea scarring from Lasik surgery. He also has a blue stamp of a hand on the back of his hand. Demetri remembers the phrase “blue hand” written on Mark’s board, linked to the word “Baltimore.” He thinks it might mean Baltimore Street in Silver Lake. Al argues that it’s just as likely to be Baltimore, Maryland, but he accompanies Demetri to Silver Lake anyway.

Halloween night: Nicole hands out candy in the Benford home while Aaron and Mark take Charlie trick-or-treating. A kangaroo hops down the sidewalk, just like the one hopping through downtown immediately after the blackouts.

Stan stays with Janis, who is now awake and responsive. He tells her about the time his wife gave birth, which makes her think of her flash forward. Her monitor starts to beep ominously, and she’s rushed back into the operating room.

Back on the train, Simon boinks the hot blonde woman. She tells him about her flash forward, which she says was a big gathering, like New Year’s Eve, with everyone waiting for the moment seen in their flash forwards to arrive. This is kind of interesting, but if that’s the case, why is this the first we’ve heard of people being aware of their flash forwards within their flash forwards? Confusing. Simon tells her what he saw: He was strangling a man to death.

Dylan leaves the hospital on his own and boards a bus, which, like the bus that plunged into the lake in Echo Park during Ned’s blackout, is from the totally made-up “UTA” transit system. There are about seven different public transit systems in Los Angeles, but no UTA. I don’t know why this irks me, but it does. Granted, we saw indications last week with “President Segovia” that the FlashForward universe is slightly different from our own, but there’s a very real snobbery in Los Angeles against public transportation, and it seems like the writers figure it’s a detail that doesn’t matter, that no one will know or care they’re just making crap up. On behalf of all the public transportation-reliant citizens of Los Angeles, I register my objection. If Speed could use a real transit agency, so can you.

Anyway, Dylan asks to be taken to 25696 Sawyer Court, which happens to be the Benford address. When he arrives at the Benford home, he brushes past Nicole and walks into the house, heading straight for the cookie jar. When Nicole tries to stop him, he says, “It’s my house, too.”

Olivia performs emergency surgery on Janis. Over the recommendations of her colleagues, she opts to perform a less invasive procedure. It’s riskier, but stands a better chance of saving Janis’s uterus. Doctors, please note: If you’re ever performing emergency surgery on me, please use the surgical technique more likely to save my life and don’t fret so much about my uterus. Thank you.

Demetri and Al drive through Silver Lake. At Baltimore Street, they see a blue hand on a stop sign. They head in the direction the hand is pointing, then continue to follow a trail of blue hands.

While taking Charlie trick-or-treating, Mark sees a bunch of men in black wearing scary masks, like the men who burst into his office in his flash forward. When he confronts them, they scatter. Mark chases one through a cemetery. He tackles him and rips off his mask, but discovers it’s just some teenager who’s been egging houses. Nicole calls to tell him she doesn’t know what to do about Dylan, who won’t leave the house.

Mark returns home. Dylan keeps insisting, “This is my house, too.” We see Dylan’s flash forward for the first time, in which he’s in the Benford living room, with young Charlie encouraging him to help himself to cookies: “Go ahead -- this is your house, too.” In the present, Charlie and Dylan greet each other like old friends, which confuses Mark to no end.

Lloyd arrives, having been contacted by Nicole via the information on Dylan’s hospital bracelet. He realizes he’s in the house seen in his flash forward, and also realizes that Mark is Olivia’s husband. At the same time, Mark realizes Lloyd is the man in Olivia’s flash forward. Olivia walks in the door and is shocked to see Lloyd sitting in her living room. Lloyd says, “You’re her!” and Mark snarls, “Not yet,” all of which is modestly intriguing in a melodramatic soap-opera-with a-sci-fi-twist sort of way, but which doesn’t hold a candle to the dead crows in Somalia, so do you think we can go back to that plotline any episode soon, please? Also, if Charlie’s flash forward -- which, remember, involved “D. Gibbons” being a “bad man” -- is so traumatic that she still hasn’t been able to discuss it with her parents, why is she so blithe and happy about seeing Dylan, whom she only knows from her flash forward? I’m feeling a little cranky, but this Mark-Olivia-Lloyd triangle is the least interesting plotline on the show, and it seems like some intriguing stuff, like Charlie’s trauma, has been shunted to the sidelines to make more room for some domestic squabbling.

Mark gets bitchy and orders Lloyd to leave and never come back. Lloyd and Dylan leave. Well. That was awkward, in more ways than one.

The hands lead Al and Demetri to a big, deserted house. They enter and find remnants of a wild party, plus smeared blood. There’s also a row of sheet-covered corpses. The blue-painted hand of one of the corpses peeks out from beneath the sheet.

Stan brings Janis flowers from Maya. Janis sobs and tells Stan that, despite Olivia’s attempts to save her uterus, there might be too much scarring for her to become pregnant.

Mark and Olivia squabble. Mark is passive aggressive and dickish and annoying, and I have to say, I don’t really like either of these two anymore. Olivia asks Mark if he’s hiding anything from her. He finally confesses that he was drinking in his flash forward, and she gets upset about how they don’t trust each other. It’s a long scene, and it’s difficult to get too invested in it.

FBI agents descend on the crime scene in Silver Lake, which is now known as the Rutherford case. Al mentions that he had been discussing the Rutherford case in his flash forward, which he apparently mentioned in an earlier episode. They show a flashback to this, and I’m mighty glad they did, because I have no memory of that scene ever happening. I have no doubt it did, just that I didn’t take particular note of it.

Dylan, back at the hospital, thanks Lloyd for coming to get him. Back at the Benford home, Mark and Olivia sulk, separately. At the office, Demetri looks at photos of blue hands, and Al looks at photos of a man on a website. He seems highly disturbed. There are hidden layers to cute Al. Stan remains by Janis’s bedside, Charlie sleeps, Dylan sleeps.

Lloyd gets in his car and finds Simon, wearing a Frankenstein mask, hiding in his back seat. Simon says he’s worried about Lloyd, adding, “We all are.” Lloyd doesn’t want to talk to him: “Our experiment killed twenty million people. What more is there to say?”