FlashForward: Queen Sacrifice

Well, ugh. This makes three Flash Forward episodes in a row I’ve sort of hated. My inclination is to take a three-strikes-it’s-out approach -- I don’t like squandering my time on TV shows that are tedious to watch and aren’t likely to improve. But we’re getting close to the end of the season -- which, barring a miracle, will also be the end of the series -- and I’ve invested enough energy that I’d prefer to see it through to the end.

I’ll start with the plotline I liked the most, which, oddly, was Keiko and Bryce. It still seems like an unnecessary diversion from the main plot, seeing as it has nothing at all to do with the causes of the blackouts or with any of the other FBI-related intrigue going on, but it worked this week, sort of, mainly because Yuko Takeuchi, who plays Keiko, is lovely and charming and fun to watch.

Keiko is still in Los Angeles. She spends her days (and nights) hanging out in the sushi restaurant she saw in her flash forward, hoping to meet Bryce. While out wandering around the city, she encounters a man named Emil. With her crackerjack mechanical skills (it’s been months and months since we last saw Keiko, but remember how she was a mechanical engineer in Tokyo?), she effortlessly helps him fix his car.

Emil, by the way, made a fleeting appearance waaaay back in Episode Six (he was a passenger on the bus when Dylan escaped from the hospital on Halloween). Why do I remember this? Because the actor who plays Emil, Vinicius Machado, is… well, he’s certainly not Orlando Bloom’s doppelganger, but he’s got a distinctly Bloomesque quality to him -- so much so that, since his first appearance on the show, I’ve had literally hundreds and possibly thousands of visitors who’ve found this site after Googling the specific phrase “Orlando Bloom Flash Forward.” I suspect the tremendous response to his brief appearance got back to ABC as well, which probably explains his return in this episode. Well, good. He and Keiko are cute and fun together, and did I mention he sort of looks like Orlando Bloom?

Anyway, Emil gives Keiko an off-the-books job working in his repair shop. They also start hanging out at the sushi restaurant, drinking vast amounts of sake and flirting and being adorable together. Bryce and Nicole, having a night on the town in between Bryce’s chemotherapy sessions, show up at the restaurant while Emil and Keiko are inside, but Bryce impulsively kisses Nicole outside the door, which derails their evening plans. Thus, Bryce and Keiko never see each other.

And then Immigration agents raid Emil’s garage and haul Emil and Keiko off in chains. Which is sort of a sucky end to this cute, cheerful plotline.

In the dumb main plot: Wanting to protect Olivia and Charlie from possible harm, Mark moves out of his home. Olivia and Charlie get tailed by a man who may or may not have been sent by Mark to protect them, and Lloyd and Olivia talk about the formula written on the bedroom mirror in lipstick in their flash forwards. Lloyd realizes it’s a formula for neutralizing the effects of the blackouts.

Demetri watches the VHS tape D. Gibbons/Dyson Frost (Michael Massee) left for him back in 1991. Frost tells him he’s had hundreds of flash forwards: In all of them, he sees himself die on March 15th, just like Demetri. Well, if it’s good enough for Julius Caesar…

Remembering that Dyson Frost was a Grandmaster, Mark looks through his chess club records. He discovers Dyson played several matches against a man in San Francisco named Ian McKinnon. By examining their games, Mark discovers Dyson sent out messages in Morse code based upon how many seconds he took to make each chess move. The code for each game spells out a phone number for a pre-paid cell phone. Mark calls the number and leaves a message for Dyson, explaining that he wants to meet with him.

Yes. You’re right. This Morse code/chess move business is far-fetched and silly.

Mark and Demetri go to San Francisco to talk to McKinnon and find he’s been murdered. They figure this was the work of the still-unidentified mole in their department. So the rest of the episode concerns Mark and Vogel conducting an intensive search for the mole. All the agents get corralled into a conference room, Vogel sings “Sunshine of My Life,” and they find a bug in Mark’s office.

Suspicion falls on some totally random agent named Marcie. Janis has been secretly keeping tabs on Marcie, who has received large anonymous sums of money deposited into her bank account. Vogel and Mark examine surveillance footage of Marcie and discover she’s been sending messages to an unnamed contact by, um, putting sugar in her coffee during her coffee break. Which is lamer: Morse code through chess moves or secret messages through sugar packets? Discuss.

Realizing she’s been found out, Marcie opens fire in the conference room and shoots about eight agents, including Special Agent Seth MacFarlane, a new transfer from the FBI’s Comic Relief division.

Marcie scampers out of the building and hops on the back of a passing speeding motorcycle, which has been luckily waiting outside for just such an eventuality. Janis shoots the hell out of the motorcyclist, then beats up Marcie. Marcie is hauled into custody, Stan makes some tortured metaphor about chess, everyone’s happy they caught the mole, and nobody seems at all concerned about the eight or so federal agents lying dead in the conference room.

Dyson Frost calls Mark and tells him he’s looking forward to meeting him.

And here’s the kicker: After work, Simon tries to schmooze with Janis, who informs him that she knows he deliberately killed his Uncle Teddy under the guise of delivering CPR. She figures he did it to send a message to Teddy’s handlers. Message received, she tells him.

So Janis is the real mole. Interesting. On the surface, it’s not a bad plot twist. It’s certainly more effective to have the mole turn out to be a character we’ve followed from the start than some random person like Marcie, so why not Janis?

Problem is, it doesn’t work from a story perspective. From the pilot, Janis’s attempts to get pregnant have been the primary focus of her character. I haven’t been thrilled with that, but that’s what we were given. Now that we know Janis is a villain, personally responsible for numerous deaths -- millions of deaths, in fact, if it turns out she was involved in this scheme prior to the blackouts -- how interested are viewers going to be in her attempts to get pregnant? So we’ve spent the entire season invested in a plotline which will now have zero payoff. It’s sloppy.

Here’s my guess: I don’t think Janis was intended to be the mole from the start. (It’s curious that this episode barely touches at all on Agent Vreede, who drew the most suspicion early on and then kind of dropped out of the picture -- it still seems bizarre that he claims to have seen himself in the FBI building during his flash forward, yet was unaware of Mark getting attacked by armed gunmen.) I think this was a late development, probably decided upon during the extended break for retooling. Like an increasing number of plot developments, it seems… kind of dumb, and a little nonsensical.

It’s a shame. This started out as a pretty good show, but it’s gone off the rails.