FlashForward Episode Eight: Playing Cards With Coyote

It’s been two months since the blackouts. There’s a news broadcast about Al’s suicide and the possibilities it suggests about how the events seen in the flash forwards can be changed.

Lloyd sends an email to several parties, titled “We have to take responsibility.”

Janis returns to work and gets hugged by Stan, who is especially paternal in this episode. Lots of comforting shoulder pats. When Janis tries to resign, Stan won’t let her, claiming he needs her in the office. She confesses that, in the wake of Al’s death, she’s confused about her own future.

Simon shows up at the hospital while Lloyd is doing card tricks for Dylan. Simon refers to Lloyd as a Nobel finalist, which is a little confusing. Nobel finalists aren’t publicly announced, are they? I just a spent a few minutes hunting for a conclusive answer at the official Nobel Prize site, and I can’t say for certain, but no, it doesn’t seem like Lloyd would know he was a finalist. Anyway, Simon is Not Amused about Lloyd’s email (they make repeated references to a “Myhill”, who is either another recipient of the email or the name of a company). Lloyd wants to go public with the information that they were responsible for the blackouts. Simon is rather vehemently opposed to this idea. He suggests he and Lloyd settle their dispute in a civilized way, i.e. with a high-stakes hand of Texas Hold ‘Em. If Lloyd wins, he and Simon will reveal their role in the blackouts to the public. If Simon wins, they’ll keep their mouths shut.

Mark and Olivia roll around in bed together, celebrating the notion that their future can be changed. Poor cute Al -- his death is cause for a lot of rejoicing this episode. Mark gives Olivia a gift, which she doesn’t open. Demetri calls and interrupts their nuzzling and cuddling: The police department in Barstow sent the FBI video footage of the murder of a man named Parovsky, committed by a man with three stars tattooed on his arm, just like the tattoo on the man trying to kill Mark in his flash forward. The video was shot by a woman named Ingrid Alvarez on her camera phone. Janis produces enhanced photos of the footage -- one of the photos, a close-up of the star tattoo, was on Mark’s evidence wall in his flash forward.

At the hospital, Olivia opens her gift from Mark: a sexy black bra and matching underpants, which is what she wore to greet Lloyd in her flash forward.

Aaron’s house: Tracy, sleeping on the couch, wakes up crying and screaming. Aaron rushes to comfort her. She struggles with crutches, and we see she has a prosthetic leg. She won’t let Aaron tell anyone, her mother included, that she’s still alive. More, she refuses to talk about what happened. Aaron lays some guilt on her, mentioning that he’s been through hell thinking she’s been dead for two years. I’m firmly on Team Aaron here. Oh, and Tracy? Call your mom.

Janis, Mark and Demetri go to Barstow to interview Ingrid Alvarez, whose roommate has just been murdered in what was most likely an attempt by Parovsky’s killers to silence Ingrid. She tells them about Parovsky’s murder: She was walking to her car after work and spotted three men fighting in the alley. She hid and called 911, then filmed the assault with her phone while she was on hold. She saw the victim give the men a case before the two other men killed him. One of the assailants was gray-haired; the other was a muscular blond. She heard them mention something about “QED.”

Simon and Lloyd play cards in a casino. I’m actually less than fascinated by watching people playing cards, but Simon’s running patter is pretty entertaining. When he snarks to Lloyd about how Lloyd’s prize for winning would be confessing to mass murder, he casually explains to the aghast other players that “confessing to mass murder” is just a Manchester figure of speech. Dominic Monaghan is a fine, fine addition to this cast. Another player mentions something about an Inevitability Index: People are trying to calculate the odds of the events seen in the flash forwards actually happening. Simon claims it’s a scam, because the future has already happened. (Not that either of the assailants in Ingrid’s footage resembled Simon, but it’s probably worth mentioning that Simon punctuates his remarks on the subject with “QED.”)

At the hospital, Nicole talks to Olivia about how she’s feeling optimistic now that she knows the flash forwards might not come true. Olivia is feeling upbeat as well, as are Mark and Demetri. And won’t they all feel silly when Zombie Al pops up to show the future can’t be changed? (I feel certain that Zombie Al is within the realm of possibility. It was implied last episode that Al was Creole, what with his dirty rice and all. I could totally handle a good voodoo plotline, if it means bringing Al back.)

Tracy finally confides in her father: Two years ago, while working long-range reconnaissance on an village in Afghanistan, she’d witnessed military contractors working for a private firm called Jericho (aha -- not Jericho missiles. That makes much more sense) massacring everyone in the village. She reported this to her superior officer, and a week later her Humvee was ambushed. She’s been in hiding ever since.

Against Tracy’s wishes, Aaron secretly tells Mark that she’s still alive. Since other soldiers in the Humvee were blown to bits, Aaron theorizes that they buried Tracy’s leg with parts from other soldiers. Hence the DNA match during the exhumation.

Mark and Stan become increasingly convinced there’s a mole in the FBI reporting their movements to someone. Mark believes that’s how men with assault rifles will gain access to the Federal building during the events in his flash forward. Yeah, the mole is Agent Vreede, who was in the building during Mark’s flash forward and who saw himself going out the emergency exit for unknown reasons. Of course it’s Vreede. Unless that’s too obvious, and it turns out to be… dunno. Janis, maybe. Still, I’m betting it’s Vreede.

When Aaron confesses to Tracy that he filled Mark in on her situation, she panics. Aaron tries to reassure her by telling her about his flash forward, which proves she’s alive in the future: They’re in Afghanistan, in a bunker or a cave with graffiti on the walls. Aaron went outside the bunker and talked to a tall, dark man with a scar, who told him, “The account has been verified,” and Aaron gave him an envelope. Tracy identifies the man as Khamir, a field medic who nursed her to health. She doesn’t mention what she saw in her own flash forward.

While Mark and Demetri stake out the exterior of Ingrid’s place, Ingrid shows Janis her exotic pet birds. Ingrid says in her flash forward, she saw herself working at the Bronx Zoo. When the lights suddenly go out, Janis protects Ingrid while Mark and Demetri enter the building. Mark shoots and kills a gray-haired man with the three stars tattooed on his arms. Because the other murderer is still at large, Janis tells Ingrid they’ll need to place her in the Witness Protection Program, which meshes with her flash forward of living in New York.

Poker game: Simon is winning by a significant margin. He (foolishly) declares they’ll play one final hand, winner take all. Oh, Simon, what are we going to do with you? Simon has four of a kind… but Lloyd trumps him with a straight flush. He tells Simon the game was too important to leave to chance, so he cheated by doing magic tricks with the cards. You know, Lloyd, maybe you shouldn’t have mentioned that.

In the office at night, Janis visits websites on sperm donation. She shows Stan a slightly less blurry photo of Suspect Zero at the stadium in Detroit during the blackouts. Janis and Stan can barely make out a ring on the man’s finger.

Mark comes home. He tells Olivia he killed the man who was going to come after him, in order to change his future. Olivia hugs him tightly, though she looks kind of freaked out by Mark’s actions.

In an unidentified location, a man with a shaved head and three stars tattooed on his arm removes a suitcase from an armored car in the rain. Another man brings the case to a middle-aged man, who is seated at a table inside a warehouse. The middle-aged man examines the contents of the case: a series of rings with thick bands and large center stones, like class rings. “There were supposed to be seven,” he observes, before quoting a little Oppenheimer and shooting the man who brought him the case.

Well. That was enigmatic.