(Either my brain is fried and I can't think of any good puns, or there just aren't any good ones to be punned.)Finally, mercifully, Flashforward has finished, never to return.
ABC opting not to renew the show for a second season didn't stop the producers from using the final episode not to answer lingering questions but rather to...set up a second season. Which sort of exemplifies everything that was wrong with this show.
The premise was great--everyone on Earth gets a glimpse of their future and tries to either make it happen or avoid it, while the FBI lead characters also try to figure out what caused the glimpses to happen in the first place. The changes made from the book (which I've finally read) were necessary in most cases--a group of scientists aren't going to be as popular a cast as a group of FBI agents.
But the show suffered from any number of problems, not the least of which were unrealistic, cliché-ridden dialogue, side plots that seemed to serve no purpose whatsoever (Aaron's trip to Afghanistan and the entire thing with Bryce and Keiko and Charlie's babysitter), a whole bunch of questions that it seems as though the show had no intention of ever answering, and the eventual realization that the only way to pad their material out for a full season was to throw the audience red herring after red herring.
Yes, Lost did the same thing--and the comparison was inevitable given that its series finale aired only a few days before Flashforward's--but there have been numerous attempts to recreate the magic of Lost, none of which have had even a tiny bit of success.
Another point while I'm at it--the explanation for Lost's inconsistencies turned out to be "they were all dead the whole time!". Leaving aside the unsatisfactory sense of resolution that gives us, it is a perfectly valid excuse for all the plot holes. Wherever they were, whatever afterlife or plane of existence they were on, it stands to reason that Earthly rules of science and logic might not apply. Flashforward can't use the same cop-out, and as such, everything needs a reason behind it.
I'll assume, rather charitably I think, that everything from maybe the third episode until the winter break served to beat into us the knowledge that the flash-forwards couldn't be changed. (Which brings into question why the *next* few episodes existed solely to give us the opposite impression.) Otherwise, any number of plot diversions--the German prisoner, the new-age religion, the Blue Hand Club--were literally nothing other than filler.
And of course, the unanswered questions. What was the connection of the lady Mark and Demitri were chasing before the blackout to the blackout? Who was really behind everything? What did Zoe do in Hawaii? (This is ignoring all the science-y questions about the slight differences between the flashforwards and what actually happened, how the autistic hipster-looking guy was used by Frost/Gibbons to help push events towards a certain future, what exactly Frost's motivation was, all stuff I think can be safely guessed at.)
My own theory is that Jericho is somehow ultimately behind the blackouts, perhaps they bankrolled Frost to do his work in Somalia and the mental hospital, and then when he turned on them, they got Simon to do the same work. Not that it matters now.
Overall, I think FlashForward would have been better served as a movie--everybody has their visions, FBI hunts down those responsible, finds them just before they pull off a second blackout. Easily manageable in two hours, without the clues, relationship drama, and side plots that the TV show was stuck with.
Really, I think the Hominids trilogy might have been a better choice if somebody was determined to get a Robert J. Sawyer novel on television. A bit more appeal to a mass audience, a bit more sci-fi but done in a way that it would really seem like any other drama on TV, only with a Neanderthal from a parallel world. It wouldn't be the best show ever, but it would be a heck of a lot better than this was.
--Ryan
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