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FlashForward: "Believe" 11/19/09 - Grading & Discussion

Grading

  • Excellent

    Votes: 1 4.5%
  • Above average

    Votes: 10 45.5%
  • Average

    Votes: 5 22.7%
  • Below average

    Votes: 4 18.2%
  • Poor

    Votes: 2 9.1%

  • Total voters
    22
He didn't call her an alcoholic until he mentioned to Mark she had been drinking herself to sleep every night.
 
^ He found an empty bottle of (apparently) vodka by her bedside earlier in the episode. Presumably, that was a clue.

EDIT: Also, what Starbreaker said.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
 
You know, the doctor with cancer would be a more interesting story if there WASN'T A BIG FLASHFORWARD CONSPIRACY WITH LOTS OF DEATH AND DESTRUCTION AND COVERUPS!
 
I have to say that I don't care who's an alcoholic or not. Am I supposed to care? Because I really don't. Feel free to chug a fifth of Smirnoff every night if you want, just leave me out of it. These alcoholism plotlines are the kind of thing you'd see on Knots Landing back in the '70s, but I think even then it was all played out.

This show is toast. No second season for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if ABC decides to move this show to another night at some point. They'll make up some spin about too much "competition" on Thursdays, while quietly burning off all the remaining episodes on Fridays.
 
The only thing keeping me on board is next week's preview. But this past week's episode was a waste of time. Maybe if Keiko was tied to the overall larger conspiracy it could justify putting her and the doc front and center. I don't get why they decided to put this story up front, at this time, when there are much more important storylines-like, the central one about the conspiracy. BTW, whatever happened to the Somalia story? They just seemed to drop that.

Perhaps this episode was supposed to inspire, to be about the wonders and crap of love but it was boring. But Keiko was cute. This change in showrunner will hopefully be a good thing because I feel that FF has no direction. Its all over the place.
 
I think this was one of those "set-up and you don't know it" stories, not just filler. It'll be important later on but they just didn't beat us over the head with it.
 
Alright... these threads are getting irritating, just like back in the later years with threads of Voyager episodes... but I actually like this show...
 
They took the trouble of bringing her to LA, and she had bio-robotic scientific experience so they have a young smart hottie added. Why NOT make her recurring?
 
After all the stupidity and annoyances that keep cropping up in the "What caused the flash-forward?" mainplot, I have no problem having an A-plot of character development. I get it's boring if you're not interested in said characters, though. Indeed, I wouldn't have guessed I would find the suicidal doctor's flash-forward story and how it played out this episode so entertaining, but I was much more invested this week than watching yet another dark shoot-out.
 
It's nice to have a character piece, but the "love story" seemed forced to me.
Also why didn't get the cancer doctor a visit by the police after his freak accident with the old-timer?
He crashed the car several times and then left the scene.
Surely this is not standard procedure when having a breakdown, and surely the police must have have found him before he even got onto the plane to fake Tokyo.

I still don't feel the big picture or can connect to the characters.

Even with Lost I could invest into the characters in the first season, even though not much was going on.

Hmm, maybe I should watch less TV.
 
Finally! Japanese subtitles on TV that don't say, "It is my destiny to help people. How dare you help people? You're my sidekick. I'm the hero. It is my destiny, not yours." :lol:
 
Still a soap but there was something about the writing for this episode that made this a more tolerable sort of soap. Maybe I just like the guy who plays Bryce. I certainly don't care about his romantic search.

I also don't care about the alcoholic daughter and dad, but their scene was well written. He's angry that she's being so callous as to wave a bottle of wine in his face. She's angry about having lost her leg and being hunted by Cliched Evil Military Contractor Hit Squad(TM) so she'd acting like a rebellious teenager.

But I don't think I've ever seen a show so determined to make its lead character an unlikable douche. Now he's running around accusing his friend and boss of ratting him out to the wife, when it's obvious to me (and should at least occur to him) that the rat was in the flash forward and directly observed him drinking. Which makes the rat a prime suspect in the whole investigation or at least someone worth taking to. Shit, I'm a better FBI agent than this doofus. :rommie:

And lastly, WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL ASSUMING THE FLASH FORWARDS WILL COME TRUE!!!!??? Bryce is betting his life on the veracity of his flash forward. Well, if one guy's flash forward didn't happen, how does anyone know any of them will? Bryce could croak tomorrow, so why is he wasting time flying to Tokyo? It's like Gough's suicide never happened! Poor guy.
 
Maybe Bryce was just so happy about what he saw and felt in his FF he doesn't care that it might not happen. He had nothing left to live for, so he clings to the hope it gave him.

Remember, they didn't just see the FFs they felt everything they were feeling at that point in the future too. That stuff won't just fade away.

As for Mark, those two guys were the immediate ones to come to mind about the drinking thing. He'd have to go and eliminate them as suspects in his mind before he could move onto the hypothetical idea that it was someone from his FF who texted Olivia. At least he was straightforward and got it out of the way as fast as possible.
 
I'm just glad that they pretend there's a world bigger than the US. Of course, they don't really touch on the implications of the Flash Forward in Japan too much and they rely on the very easy and stereotypical "oppressed Japanese female learns to find independence in America" storyline, but there ya go.
 
And lastly, WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL ASSUMING THE FLASH FORWARDS WILL COME TRUE!!!!??? Bryce is betting his life on the veracity of his flash forward. Well, if one guy's flash forward didn't happen, how does anyone know any of them will? Bryce could croak tomorrow, so why is he wasting time flying to Tokyo? It's like Gough's suicide never happened! Poor guy.

There's no way for Bryce to have known about Gough's suiside and it's effects the same is true for most of the other characters as well.
 
And lastly, WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL ASSUMING THE FLASH FORWARDS WILL COME TRUE!!!!??? Bryce is betting his life on the veracity of his flash forward. Well, if one guy's flash forward didn't happen, how does anyone know any of them will? Bryce could croak tomorrow, so why is he wasting time flying to Tokyo? It's like Gough's suicide never happened! Poor guy.

There's no way for Bryce to have known about Gough's suiside and it's effects the same is true for most of the other characters as well.

The world knows about Gough's suicide and what it proved, the episode after he committed suicide it started off showing a newspaper stand with the headline being about Gough's suicide and you had some type of news show shown on tv with commentators talking about the future having been proven not to be unchangeable.

The letter Gough wrote to the woman he hit was delivered to her and then she went on tv and the entire world is aware of it. The only way Bryce would have no idea is if #1) He watches no TV, #2)He reads no newspapers, #3)He NEVER talks to anyone in the hospital about anything because that would have immediately been brought up to him, especially since Bryce can't go more then 2 seconds without mentioning his FF I'm sure someone would have said "So what do you think about the guy who showed the future isn't set in stone?"
 
I liked the episode, and for some reason I'm not bothered that the main plot didn't progress one bit. Yes, I liked the Japanese chick, plus she has quite a brain :D Also I liked the little twist at the end implying Bryce's flashforward happens in fact in the US and not in Japan.

During the NSA/FBI meeting, the NSA woman was quickly surrounded by FBI heroes, it was so predictable, I wonder why she came alone. Plus she doesn't strike me as someone who would work for the NSA, she must have felt really bad at the end.
 
And lastly, WHY ARE PEOPLE STILL ASSUMING THE FLASH FORWARDS WILL COME TRUE!!!!??? Bryce is betting his life on the veracity of his flash forward. Well, if one guy's flash forward didn't happen, how does anyone know any of them will? Bryce could croak tomorrow, so why is he wasting time flying to Tokyo? It's like Gough's suicide never happened! Poor guy.

There's no way for Bryce to have known about Gough's suiside and it's effects the same is true for most of the other characters as well.

Gough's suicide made headlines, I would presume worldwide. Certainly everyone in LA who is sentient has heard about it, since it was local news. There is no way Bryce could be that out of touch with reality, and even if he is, Mark, Dimitri, Olivia and the alcoholic dad are also behaving as though they think the flash forwards are still predestined. If the writers want to remove the predestination angle, fine. But now they're pretending like they didn't, so what was the purpose of having Gough commit suicide?

The real mystery is why there wasn't a Gough incident about 15 minutes after the flash forward. There are certainly enough suicidal people in the world who would want the attention, even if it were post-mortem. It really should not have taken that long.
Plus she doesn't strike me as someone who would work for the NSA

What is someone who works for the NSA like? I've never met anyone who works for the NSA. She seemed plausible enough - a bureaucratic type, kind of nervous but she had reason to be, if she knew she was sitting on info that was a life or death issue for one of the people in that room, and she'd been given orders not to say anything about it when she knew damn well that Dimitri had a right to know info that might save his life. How would she feel if she were in his shoes?
 
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