Flash Forward: "No More Good Days" 9/24 - Grading & Discussion

[SG-17]

Every camera was working during the blackout (they showed security footage from several different places, not just the stadium), so the one Observer would have been enough to prevent the observer effect.

 

[acs12798]

Every camera was working during the blackout (they showed security footage from several different places, not just the stadium), so the one Observer would have been enough to prevent the observer effect.

Yea I knew that. I was commenting on the post I quoted where archangel was wishing they had done the camera blackout. I was just saying had they wanted to bring that over they could have tried to use that justification while still finding the guy in the stadium.

 

[Trent Roman]

Agreed. It was ONE sentence.

The ironist in me appreciates this. Repeated references to a single sentence as not being worth comment in a discussion spawned from a single sentence in my review.

Seriously, some of these guys who get all worked up about ONE sentence where the word "God" is uttered really need to relax. Because the fact is that in a global crisis such as that, there WOULD be people falling down to pray. Like it or not, that is what would happen.

This keeps coming up, and it's entirely besides the point. Of course there would be religious nutters. There's also going to be those who believe it was all a big conspiracy by evil world-controlling Jews, or that it was the work of pan-dimensional bloodsucking reptilians. Where are they? And more to the point, why give a damn? Just because the usual fuckwits can be expected to have their predictably inane reactions to unknown events doesn't mean they should be accorded any extended attention, merit or legitimacy. Put a news story about the rise in fanaticism on a TV in the background and have it over with.

And it is not one sentence, as people are keen to say: it's two characters who have been thusly defined, and experience with such people is sufficient to know that they aren't going to shut up about this (as, indeed, the lengthy preview indicates that they won't).

If at least it was a critical view. I gladly watched Eli Stone for the duration of the series, because it treated the subject matter inquinsitively. I'd prefer it have no religion foregrounded in the first place, but I less mind the subject when it is deployed in a challenging fashion. But the use of religion in this pilot was bland and inane, mindlessly accepting. Salvation-boy starts jabbering on about a divine cause, and nobody even bothers to challenge him? How about millions of dead people and theodicy? What does the lack of vision that the soon-to-be-deceased suggest about those who cling to the notion of an afterlife? But, nothing like that; just blank, conventional agreement.

I think it's a good show so far, don't get me wrong. There's a lot happening here and I'm confident that this won't take up more than a few minutes of an episode. But the godbabble simply does not belong. It's irrelevant, untrue to the source material, and most of all boring as all fuck. "How do I seek forgivenes for a sin that I haven't commited yet?" Please. There are more pleasant ways to kill braincells.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Archangel]

And particularly after The Great Battlestar Cop-Out (tm), I want less mysticism and more science in my science fiction.

BSG was as much social commentary as science fiction. And while the ending was spiritual, how else woud you have ended it without discarding major plot lines?

Oops, somehow you managed to quote the wrong person but I'll answer the question anyway.

To have rescued BSG would require revisions to the premise. Trying to salvage it in the fourth season would have been an exercise in futility. Where it all went wrong was when RDM & the gang decided to tout the "brilliant" Cylon plan every week like it was going to be the most amazing thing ever when it was finally revealed. And then it was...amazingly lame.

Kinda hard to recover from a botched premise. All the blather about religion, fate, the cosmos and angels was just hand-waving to cover for the fact that the show was built on a foundation about as strong as cotton candy.

I would have ditched the tawdry idea of touting an amazing plan each week to try to bamboozle the audience into watching, if I had no follow-through, and just depicted the Cylons as murderous because they wanted to boot the humans out of their nice planets. What's wrong with that as a motive? Plenty of wars are simple fights over desirable territory. It's better than a motive that makes the Cylons look like idiots.

I also would have put more effort into depicting the Cylons as definitely non-human alien intelligences rather than making them so human that it was hard to envision them as "robotic" in any meaningful way. They could have just as easily been a pack of angry Taurons who whomped the other colonies because they were sick of being treated like dirt. The whole robot angle - the most interesting part of the story! - was lost. Maybe Caprica can pick up the slack, assuming it doesn't get cancelled when viewers get bored of no kewl space battles.

But anyway, back to Flash Forward...

Cho's charactor, don't have names down, why couldn't he just have been asleep?

He could verify things pretty quickly by getting info from the side of the globe where people would have been asleep at the time (even in the future - most people are going to be the same place in six months where they are now) and comparing it to the experiences of the terminally ill who can expect to be dead in six months. Since it's unlikely that Demetri Noh (that's his name - sounds like a Bond villain, maybe his parents were fans?) is going to be let off the hook, I'm sure we'll find out that the sleepers did remember their dreams.

"And they have a plan" was a last minute add to the opening text because "it sounded cool" I read that somewhere in an interview.


Anyway, based on the book FF, people who were asleep in the future saw "psychedelic dreamscapes", no vision meant dead.

 

[Archangel]

And just to prove it, Penny and Charlie (arguably the two LOST characters with which he had the most meaningful personal interaction) are now in an alternative universe!!!!!

Thank you! I knew I had seen the female doctor somewhere before, but I couldn't place her!


And as for the God reference . . . I'm a hardcore atheist, too, but the show was just being realistic. A major unexplained phenomena has just rocked the world to its foundations; OF COURSE some people are going to look to religion for answers. It would be unbelievableif they didn't. And that hardly consitutes an endorsement of religion. It's just a realistic depiction of human nature. (Are science fiction writers supposed to pretend that religion doesn't exist?)

Plus, I didn't hear anyone state definitely that God was responsible, just lots of nervous speculation.

"Did God do it?"

Sounds like something a typical person would say.

"god did it"

Sounds like something RDM would say

 

[Archangel]

Agreed. It was ONE sentence.

The ironist in me appreciates this. Repeated references to a single sentence as not being worth comment in a discussion spawned from a single sentence in my review.

Seriously, some of these guys who get all worked up about ONE sentence where the word "God" is uttered really need to relax. Because the fact is that in a global crisis such as that, there WOULD be people falling down to pray. Like it or not, that is what would happen.

This keeps coming up, and it's entirely besides the point. Of course there would be religious nutters. There's also going to be those who believe it was all a big conspiracy by evil world-controlling Jews, or that it was the work of pan-dimensional bloodsucking reptilians. Where are they? And more to the point, why give a damn? Just because the usual fuckwits can be expected to have their predictably inane reactions to unknown events doesn't mean they should be accorded any extended attention, merit or legitimacy. Put a news story about the rise in fanaticism on a TV in the background and have it over with.

And it is not one sentence, as people are keen to say: it's two characters who have been thusly defined, and experience with such people is sufficient to know that they aren't going to shut up about this (as, indeed, the lengthy preview indicates that they won't).

If at least it was a critical view. I gladly watched Eli Stone for the duration of the series, because it treated the subject matter inquinsitively. I'd prefer it have no religion foregrounded in the first place, but I less mind the subject when it is deployed in a challenging fashion. But the use of religion in this pilot was bland and inane, mindlessly accepting. Salvation-boy starts jabbering on about a divine cause, and nobody even bothers to challenge him? How about millions of dead people and theodicy? What does the lack of vision that the soon-to-be-deceased suggest about those who cling to the notion of an afterlife? But, nothing like that; just blank, conventional agreement.

I think it's a good show so far, don't get me wrong. There's a lot happening here and I'm confident that this won't take up more than a few minutes of an episode. But the godbabble simply does not belong. It's irrelevant, untrue to the source material, and most of all boring as all fuck. "How do I seek forgivenes for a sin that I haven't commited yet?" Please. There are more pleasant ways to kill braincells.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

You truly are a fine example of the internet atheists of which I speak.

 

[gblews]

The pilot did hold my interest so I'll be around for a while. But it seems to me this series has the potential to go the route Lost took by giving us a bunch of random, boring flashbacks, or too much involvement with the characters' lives. I'de much prefer most of the stories be about what caused the blackout.

BTW, that reference to Kobe Bryant fed right into my paranoia about things that might derail the Lakers' repeat championship this coming NBA season, so thanks a lot Brannon.

 

[T'Girl]

When Mark Benford was reconstructing the "wall of clues" in the office with his partners help, the one name they put on the wall was D. Gibson, I think Benford said Debbie Gibson. I wonder if the 1980's bubble-gum rock singer is somehow in the middle of the whole mystery?

 

[Trent Roman]

But it seems to me this series has the potential to go the route Lost took by giving us a bunch of random, boring flashbacks, or too much involvement with the characters' lives.

I was actually surprised that we saw so many of the flashforward visions; several main and secondary characters. Going into the show, with the predominance of the 'what did you see' question, I'd hypothesized that they would only show us one of the flashes per episode, in a gradual reveal leading up the convergeance of present and future.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Greg Cox]

This keeps coming up, and it's entirely besides the point. Of course there would be religious nutters. There's also going to be those who believe it was all a big conspiracy by evil world-controlling Jews, or that it was the work of pan-dimensional bloodsucking reptilians. Where are they? And more to the point, why give a damn? Just because the usual fuckwits can be expected to have their predictably inane reactions to unknown events doesn't mean they should be accorded any extended attention, merit or legitimacy. Put a news story about the rise in fanaticism on a TV in the background and have it over with.

So any character who expresses a religious sentiment is a "fuckwit" who is the intellectual equivalent of a paranoid schizophrenic? And the mere existence of any such character somehow constitutes religious propaganda? Again, I didn't see any crazy religious fanatics in the pilot. Just a couple of ordinary people acting like ordinary people, trying to figure out what it all meant.

Or would you have prefered the babysitter character to turn to her boyfriend and go: "Omigod, we just experienced a bizarre disturbance in the time/space continuum! What entirely rational and scientific explanation could there be?"

That's not how most characters would react.

And, again, the show wasn't legitimising anything. It was just depicting ordinary people reacting normally. If you want a tv series, set in 21st Century America, in which nobody ever entertains a religious notion, then you want some bizarre alternate universe which bears no relationship to the world we live in.

It would be one thing if the show was overtly endorsing or promoting some sort of religious agenda, but that's not what I saw. I just saw honest writing. Not TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL preachiness.

It's not about religion. It's about psychology and how humans react under stress.

I don't believe in God either. But I know that believable characters do.

 

[Trent Roman]

So any character who expresses a religious sentiment is a "fuckwit" who is the intellectual equivalent of a paranoid schizophrenic?

"A celestial father-figure is watching and judging my every action at all times, including being able to read my thoughts." That's paranoia.

"I'm good friends--and have the occasional chat--with the ghost of a millenia-dead Palestinian carpenter." That's schizophrenia.

There's no empirical difference in the things I have listed; all have an equal lack of evidence animating them (heck, at least reptiles actually exist). The only difference is that one of these delusions is so widespread as to have become a functional norm.

Again, I didn't see any crazy religious fanatics in the pilot.

Uh, did you miss salvation-boy? Millions dying so that you can feel better about yourself is pretty messed up to me. To an extent, though, more overt fanaticism would have been less objectionable, because it wouldn't have been legitimizing.

Or would you have prefered the babysitter character to turn to her boyfriend and go: "Omigod, we just experienced a bizarre disturbance in the time/space continuum! What entirely rational and scientific explanation could there be?" That's not how most characters would react.

I prefer characters I can respect--and that means not running off half-cocked chasing fairy tales when something untowards happens. There were no scientists in the pilot (which I still think is a shame); nobody reacted as you described. That didn't prevent most of the characters from trying to figure out what actually happened and how to deal with it in a logical fashion.

And, again, the show wasn't legitimising anything. (...) It would be one thing if the show was overtly endorsing or promoting some sort of religious agenda, but that's not what I saw. I just saw honest writing. Not TOUCHED BY AN ANGEL preachiness.

What, if any, agenda the show might have can't be judged from a pilot; but it presented religion in an assumptive, unquestioning fashion, which is legitimizing. It's also pretty uncreative.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[T'Girl]

"I'm good friends--and have the occasional chat--with the ghost of a millenia-dead Palestinian carpenter." That's schizophrenia.

Jesus was raised in a Jewish community actual.

Uh, did you miss salvation-boy?

By my count there were five religious referances, one of which was a dismissive comment about the Pope.

There were no scientists in the pilot (which I still think is a shame)

There was a scientist on the interview show discussing the brain scans of medical patients, showing that they were "awake".

What, if any, agenda the show might have can't be judged from a pilot; but it presented religion in an assumptive, unquestioning fashion, which is legitimizing. It's also pretty uncreative.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

The world presented in the show was 'real world'. Depicting some kind of agnostic alternate reality would of been picked up by the viewers fairly quickly. We live in a world populated with religion, spirituality and people who possess neither.

 

[Aragorn]

If only Supernatural had been retooled to take Trent Roman into account -- the four horsemen of Churchill Downs Racetrack, Castiel the Los Angeles Angel of Anaheim, Dean escaping the depths of Hell's Kitchen, etc.

 

[Trent Roman]

"I'm good friends--and have the occasional chat--with the ghost of a millenia-dead Palestinian carpenter." That's schizophrenia.

Jesus was raised in a Jewish community actual.

I was, of course, referring to Palestine in the historical sense, of which Judea was initially a subdivision of and eventually expanded to become coterminous with.

There was a scientist on the interview show discussing the brain scans of medical patients, showing that they were "awake".

I meant in terms of main cast (although Stanford guy may yet prove me wrong, depending what his area is). It's a pretty sad comment that a sci-fi series based on a Sawyer novel has two religionists but no scientists amongst its main characters.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Archangel]

I just wonder what psychologists would say about people who have such a burning hatred of religion that that the slightest mention of it sends them a rage...

 

[Neroon]

This is beginning to get dangerously away from the actual topic of the thread - this show called "Flash Forward". Granted, it has evoked some intriguing discussion, but at several times that discussion has veered off-course into debating the legitimacy of religion or insulting those who believe one way or the other about religion. That does strike me as having much to do with the show itself. If you want to pursue that valid topic, TNZ is the more appropriate locale. Otherwise, keep the discussion more on "Flash Forward" and its portrayal of the subjects, if you please.

Archangel, in the mean time you need to remember that posting multiple times in a row like that is frowned upon. Make use of the Edit or Multi-quote features instead.

 

[Pingfah]

What, if any, agenda the show might have can't be judged from a pilot; but it presented religion in an assumptive, unquestioning fashion, which is legitimizing. It's also pretty uncreative.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

I kinda thought we were supposed to think the doctor who ended up not killing himself was rather deluded in believing it to be a miracle, as it is patently absurd. If anything I thought they were faintly mocking him.

Braga is a pretty well known atheist and co-wrote the episode, so it seems rather unlikely he was presenting religion in the manner you suggest.

 

[PlainSimpleJoel]

Pretty good stuff. Kinder a little annoyed at the network here that screens it. Had to wait for the preview. Will watch it next week.

 

[Greylock Crescent]

I found the entire episode to be mostly underwhelming. The production values were exquisite. But the characters seemed hopelessly thin and terrible lacking in any manner of charisma. There's plenty of potential, at least as far as the mystery of the plot is concerned. And the conflict between choice and fate is always decent fodder. But without characters that actually seem real (or, at least entertaining to watch -- see: Bishop, Walter from Fringe), the series is going to be the most pedestrian "hit" of the season.

 

[Temis the Vorta]

And it is not one sentence, as people are keen to say:

One sentence in one show. I laboriously typed out that laundry list of shows I watch (you're welcome ) and analyzed their religious content, which overall is negative to the extent it even exists.

So ONE frakkin' show out of a dozen has a moderately positive depiction of religion. Big deal. If it upsets you so much, don't watch the show. Does someone have a gun to your head?

Braga is a pretty well known atheist and co-wrote the episode, so it seems rather unlikely he was presenting religion in the manner you suggest.

Atheists who are capable of depicting religion convincingly are better writers than atheists who are not. Are writers supposed to limit themselves to only their own narrow band of experience? Nobody's experience is broad enough to encompass the range of characters that we expect from a show of reasonably broad scope. Part of the writers' job is to have the imagination and understanding of human nature to step outside their own narrow little interests.

Now look what you did! I'm defending Braga's writing!!