Flash Forward ep5

[slowfox]

We get all political in this ep as the bulk of action ('cept for the girl-on-girl kissage action) decamps to Washington DC.

The FBI team, led by Stan, are trying to fight for continued funding for the Mosaic project, but are having to convince a highly sceptical senator who seems to have some personal history with Stan which isn't doing them any favours. Mark is called up to the witness stand as part of proceedings, and his inquisitors seem unimpressed with the vagueness of his recall of his Flash Forward.

When confronted by Stan later, Mark confesses that the lack of clarity is due to his being drunk at the time, which is unfortunate for Stan because he's put his entire career on the line on the basis of Mark's flash forward, and is now wondering whether he's been a bit premature in playing his ace against the President to call in a favour.

Y'see, Stan's got some dirt on the Pres, and turns down the opportunity to head up the Department of Homeland Security to pursue Mosaic... not at that time realising that he was basing his decision on a drunk man's 2'17" of staring at a noticeboard.

As part of the deal for continued funding of Mosaic, the President appoints the adversarial Senator as his Vice-President, which is slightly chilling, because in the Senator's flash forward, they see themselves as President. Yet we've also seen the President's flash, and surely he can't die and his successor be installed in the space of 137 seconds?

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, we learn that Janis is a lesbian, which would be fine if she didn't have to then chew through some of the most awful script with her date for the evening... that whole date/morning after set of scenes was toe curlingly bad for the complete implausibility of it all (c'mon, an FBI agent leaves her brand new date alone in her apartment the morning after their first night together, and practically begs her to go through all her stuff to check out her history in her absence?). OTOH, we do see that Janis can more than handle herself with demonstration of her martial arts proficiency,and she finds some incriminating looking towers in Somalia, scene of the earlier 'crow attrition' in '91.

I like Janis (not just because she's cute and geeky... honest) - I don't think her relationship with.. was it Maya? ... was portrayed at all convincingly, but she's still pretty cool and competent, so I hope that we get to learn more about her as the series continues. I also rather like Stan, with the pretty heavy insinuations in this episode that he's got more than a few skeletons in his closet, and Demetri's cool - except when singing karaoke.

Mentioning the karaoke, there's a firefight shortly afterwards where the soundtrack echoes the music from the bar, and that's kinda neat. One also wonders whether - Demetri aside - the others knowing that they're all alive 6 months from now means that they're prepared to take slightly more risks that would seem prudent in a gunfight. Just saying that if it'd been me inside a car that was attacked by RPG, I'm not sure I'd have made it out.

The ep ends with Janis in peril, and her girlfriend's present of a wheeled alarm clock drawing spirograph patterns on the tarmac with her blood.

This is still a looooong way from quality TV,but I'm also subscribed to, why, yes, another dog-walking podcast, FlashForcast.com, and listening to the people there analyse, hypothesise and criticise the show does get me a little more into proceedings.