Clearly they’ve figured out they can give us an over-the-top action scene in the first episode and then string us along for another six seasons on love triangles.
Slow motion running scenes - awesome.
Watched almost all of this - did a little bit of fast forwarding.
Interesting premise. I’m tempted to stay with it for a few episodes. But Heroes and Lost both left a bad taste in my mouth for high-concept sci-fi (ish) stuff on TV. Things start fast and interesting, then meander.
Anyways, as to the premise itself.
It’s not clear at this point if, in the show, they’re actually going to have all the characters live out their visions at the target point in time a bit over 6 months out (i.e. fate/destiny), or if that’s merely some rough, alterable guideline.
“In the real world” (yeah, yeah, I know that’s an odd standard to apply to something like this), if the vast majority of humans had the flash forward, then that would almost certainly alter the future in ways that would make the flash forward not come true. i.e. If something like this happened, the foreseen moment would be so big and so widely anticipated that it would be most unlikely that folks mostly would be doing relatively hum-drum daily activities at that future point in time (i.e. getting an ultra-sound). They would be planning for it, and those with negative future outcomes would be strenuously trying to avoid them.
If I stick with the show, it’ll be interesting to see how, in their fictional world, the flash forward affects society. “In the real world” (again) this would be a hugely significant event, with vast effects rippling through many many areas of society. The pilot suggests that a handful of agents (FBI? I can’t remember) become major players in investigating this, but you’d see tremendous resources marshaled from many, many elements of governments, scientific agencies, etc going at this thing full bore.
I suppose the show might be better if you don’t think too hard about this kind of stuff.
Man, you only have to think a bit medium to get to the obvious problem, though.
Yeah, it’s pretty silly that everything would be looped through the single same bureau that had started out trailing the apparent connection. Particularly while the rest of the world mostly appears to go back to business as usual.
If they do address the effects of such a significant event (beyond every building above twenty stories starting to billow smoke for some reason) then that would be worthwhile - but according to Main Guy McFBIAgent’s vision it’s going to devolve to the same old ‘uncover the conspiracy!’ procedural.
Also, ‘you’re not asking the most important question - WHY!!!’ is pretty uninspiring. I can’t sit through another series full of conspiratorial, pitched-eyebrow chain-yanking.
Anyways, yeah … Lost is definitely souring me for this sort of drama. If you blow your load in the first act, then you have nowhere else to go but down …
With further regard to the thinking-too-hard stuff - I’m willing to let stuff go for an otherwise creative work, but this sure don’t look like it.
Also, by any chance did you get the suspicion that Harold/Sulu is in on the deal and bullshitting about his blank?
Well, I watched it out of order. I started watching at about the halfway point, then, when done, went to a different TV and Tivo that had recorded it and watched the beginning. So I think I caught the Asian-American agent saying he didn’t remember anything, then a bit later fretting about that, but having not seen the opening bits at that point, I wasn’t jumping to too many conclusions.
Hard to say where they’ll go with it. I assume that there will be investigations at a higher level than these local agents, but to humanize the story, they’ll mainly focus on this group and have them make many/most of the key breakthroughs.
Agreed about the buildings on fire. Some of the smoke may have been from ground level, but there seemed to be a lot of buildings burning at higher levels. How many helicopters and such were over LA at the time that managed to crash into tall buildings?
If they show more stuff blowing up and planes crashing etc. I’m there.
As far as the random fires, what if you were cooking or smoking a cigarette= alot of fires.
True, drewl, and it’s actually a minor point - but I still don’t see that many people in high rises cooking or smoking to the point that it starts to look like there was an aerial assault.
Fire systems would still work.
I just think they exaggerated for effect without giving much thought.
It’s got Brannon Braga behind it, and he did work on the 4400 which was a similar “mystery incident” premise, and I liked that show, so I’ll stick with this.
Edit: from what I remember the last time I flew out of LAX on a commuter flight, there were a lot of little dinky commuter flights and whatnot flying out of there, plus there’s like eleventy billion TV, and radio station helicopters, so I don’t think the buildings thing was much of an exaggeration.
Edit edit: I’m wrong, Brannon Braga didn’t work on the 4400, but he did work on uh … Threshold? :P (and a lot of Star Trek.)
Cooking? Not too likely, IMO. I doubt many people cook in such a fashion that leaving things unattended for a bit over 2 minutes would cause an uncontrollable fire.
Smoking? Maybe - I’m not a smoker - I don’t know how easily a dropped, lit, cigarette (or other smoked thing) would cause a fire. My guess is that it wouldn’t be that likely to happen. Plus, don’t most high rises have sprinkler systems?
Good points. Maybe it was close to the truth. It just came across as dramatic to me.
I take it everyone is accepting that most passenger aircraft not in landing or takeoff would be on autopilot. Light airs would probably well avoid downtown areas, though …
It’s kind of funny that we’re discussing this point more than the rest of the show …
In light of what’s on the line, the promise in advance of an infidelity storyline finds me wincing.
Easily liked it enough to keep watching. I did not think this, the first, set-up episode was as good as other series premieres in this sci-fi/drama genre. The “discovery” at then end set the hook firmly in my mouth, though.
I do not see much point in beginning the disection and unearthing of problems this early, but I realize that is what is done here. This may be another one of those that I enjoy until I start reading this thread and then am told it sucks.
On a side note: Stop lumping Heroes and Lost together. ;)
Speaking of Lost, a friend of mine spotted a billboard for “Oceanic Airlines” during the show.
Edit: since he also has a pilot’s license, we talked about some of the airplane stuff. He said the number of plane crashes mentioned (817) was definitely a plausible number, if those were takeoff/landings. He said that anyone in flight would likely have been staying at a level altitude, depending on the model of airplane and whether the person had their shoulder harness on. Helicopters would do what happened in the show though for sure.
I agree, especially in the case of Lost (almost there! better have your payoff/answers ready or there will be riots). Flash Forward does feel like it was made by the Heroes people given a ton of money to make their own Lost.
I thought that all of the acting on the show was terrible. Everyone was way too dialed down except the baby sitter and Sulu, who both overacted poorly. When Agent Fiennes started unburdening himself at the meeting about what “really happened”, everyone in my house actually passed out at once! Only that was due to laughing and eye-rolling at the horrible horrible scene unfolding. I was expecting it to turn into a “Whitest Kids You Know” skit. The show looked nice but other than a few shots was terribly directed as well, I thought.
The premise is fantastic. Where this show goes, I don’t know but I don’t foresee many people watching it in six months (which would be 8 hours ahead in London!). Lost has bread crumbed serial mysteries out of me for a while. Maybe halfway through, they can start flashing back. In which case they will see millions of people tuning out after the premiere.
I quite enjoyed it! You haters are a bunch of jaded burnt-out husks. I’m a sucker for disaster movies, FBI procedurals, and time travel stories, and this is a bit of all of them. I just hope it meets a better end than Journeyman.
Agreed.
Like rhinohelix said, though, I do not think the cast quite has their shit together yet. I was not buying some of the scenes. For all the reasons you mention, I am going to let the cast gel and “find their voices” within the show.
I liked it. I’m willing to overlook some implausable things for the sake of the story. Things like why would the LA office of the FBI be put in charge of investigating this when it would be an oh-so-obvious national security deal handled by DHS or even a special task force of multiple agencies put together at the highest levels? Maybe they’ll explain that away in a later episode.
Also, everyone supposedly saw the exact same moments in time 6 months from the event. The one agent claimed he was in London at 6:00am in his vision. That would have made it 1:00am on the East Coast, and 10:00pm (of the previous day) on the West Coast (where the show is set). With that in mind, seems like a large portion of the population would have had a “vision” of themselves sleeping. On the West Coast, it was clear that the lead agent was in the office at night studying the board, and his wife was at home at night getting it on with the boy’s dad, but FBI Supervisor guy was in the toilet at the office? At 10:00pm? Plus he claimed to be reading a paper dated the same date as everyone else saw in their visions. Impossible, as that paper would have been from the day BEFORE, since it was only 10:00pm in LA at the time shown in the visions.
Sloppy writing aside, I’ll continue to watch and see what develops. It’s not like Survivor is better TV or anything.
I’m with you – Pilot episodes on any series have shaky moments, particularly with how the actors relate to the characters that they’re playing. I’m certain it’ll clear up after some production.
I was thinking about the boy’s dad’s boy - he knew the doctor’s name, presumably(?) to show that he had met her in his vision while they were all shacked up together.
But she didn’t meet him?
There’s some suggestion that the children featured in the episode know more about what happened.
Perhaps there is more to the boy and his dad then we know. Hell, for all we know the dad could be the guy in the stadium on the camera footage, he did say he’d just arrived back in town when he came to the hospital to see his son.