If you were in put in charge of Flash Forward...

[Joe Washington]

I'm sorry. But after watching few episodes or so of the show, I just don't find it very compelling. It doesn't have that addictive quality a lot of great shows have. The characters don't seem very interesting. And it's just that there are things that don't feel right in the show that's keeping it from becoming a show worth watching every week.
If you were put in charge of Flash Forward, what would you change or improve?

 

[Gojira]

I watched the first 3 or 4 episodes and lost interest despite thinking the premise is good and even many of the stories with the characters are good. The problem? It is too slow and dragged out which I found frustrating and a bit boring.

This would have been a great idea for a 2 hour movie or a miniseries but not a whole series.

 

[bigdaddy]

I like how FlashForward drags on after 6 episodes, yet it took 2.5 years for LOST to get anywhere.

 

[Checkmate]

LOST had the benefit of interesting characters played by good actors in a story with multiple intriguing mysteries.

Flash Forward has one mystery that they keep reminding you of over and over and over each episode and the characters are so mind-bogglingly dull that even the few decent actors they have on the show can't make the appealing.

Kind of a big difference, that. Slow storytelling only works if you can actually pull it off.

 

[Trent Roman]

First, jettison the whole soap opera routine. Pointless and dull. Rework the cast so that it's a group of professionals investigating and/or dealing with the consequences of the event: scientists, law enforcement, media, etc; not a handful of professionals and their varied family members, friends and passing acquaintances whose petty troubles one could not give a damn about against the backdrop of world-altering events. Speaking of which, the show should have had a more global scope--this happened to everybody worldwide, not just a few blocks of L.A. Something along the lines of Heroes' globalism was merited here.

Plot-wise, the consequences of the blackout faded far too quickly. The first few episodes should have felt like a disaster narrative. It makes no sense for a handful of FBI agents in one city to be making all the breaks in a global event, which is something I think could have been fixed in part by having a global cast across professions. And naturally, things have should have happened much earlier (like debunking predestination), would happen much earlier. I like the mystery they're creating around the causes of the event, but I would hit it more often. Something like this, if intentional, should not have a simple cause, so there ought to be plenty to chase without spoiling oneself too earlier.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Orac Zen]

[...] Speaking of which, the show should have had a more global scope--this happened to everybody worldwide, not just a few blocks of L.A. Something along the lines of Heroes' globalism was merited here.

[...] It makes no sense for a handful of FBI agents in one city to be making all the breaks in a global event, which is something I think could have been fixed in part by having a global cast across professions.

Those are my big issues with the show.

The characters are okay enough to keep my attention - so far, anyway - which is always my first concern with any TV show. But beyond that starting point, it's necessary that what the characters do to makes at least some sense. It makes zero sense to me that a handful of people in America are making all the running over a global event. The few crumbs that have been thrown (Alex Kingston's character, the Nazi) are pathetic. If it's supposed to be a global event, show that people everywhere are affected and people everywhere are working to find out what happened. As it is, the show seems to suggest either / both that the world consists of a few people in America and / or they're the only ones concerned / bright enough to investigate the event. The fact the show's made in the US isn't sufficient reason to all but ignore the impact of a supposedly world-wide event on the rest of the planet, or to suggest that a few FBI agents are the only people on the face of the earth looking into what happened.

 

[wamdue]

am I to understand that for all the worldwide hype of Flashforwad the show is failing? and I was totally right not to bother with it?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

If I were in charge...

I'd admit that FlashForward's basic premise is shallow and gimmicky. If I didn't like that, I'd do another premise. Given the choice, I would do another premise, but let's assume I'm not being given the choice. So I'd embrace this gimmickry and make the most of it.

The sole interesting thing about the show is that you have impossible scenarios that, if we assume predestination is ruling this universe, are "impossible." A main character (who we assume is important enough not to be written off the show) is going to be murdered. A seemingly faithful wife will be unfaithful. A determined recovering alcoholic is going to fall off the wagon. An almost-infertile woman is going to become pregnant. A father's dead daughter comes back to life.

The gimmick is, how will all these scenarios turn out to true anyway? Clever writing could create a path for all of them to be true, because what we think the flashforwards represent isn't the case at all. There's another explanation for all of them, or at least most. Some of the writing doesn't even need to be all that clever. The "evidence" that the daughter is dead could be concocted - deliberately swapped DNA plus an eye witness who didn't bother to check for a pulse.

The thing I wouldn't do is just to throw up my hands and declare the premise unworkable and decide that none of the above is going to happen because predestination isn't ruling this universe after all. Then you loose the gimmick and the reason for this premise to exist in the first place, and you are left with only the characters and the mystery of what caused the flashforwards to interest viewers.

Neither of those elements is strong enough to carry the story - the characters are mundane TV types and the mystery of the flashforward doesn't much matter anymore if the flashfowards are not even going to come true. Then the story is about the world having some hallucinations which have some percent chance of coming true between 0% and 99%. If the percent chance is, say, 5%, then who gives a flip? If the chance is not 100%, then how do we know these visions are anything for anyone to worry about at all?

So the short answer is, I would try REAL hard to get myself another show, because this premise sucks, if the best you can get from it is gimmicky "clever" writing. Not all premises are worth the effort to craft stories from.

I like how FlashForward drags on after 6 episodes, yet it took 2.5 years for LOST to get anywhere.

Lost has characters who are far better than mundane TV types, and even if the writing was incomprehensible for the first 2.5 years or so, it was creative and amusing enough that they could get away with it. All that nonsense about pushing the button, for instance - what complete BS, yet incredibly entertaining!

If FlashForward could do that, I'd probably take the same attitude as I did with Lost - perfectly patient to be entertained while waiting for explanations. But when I look at the TV landscape, I see how rare that is. Most shows are like FlashForward - middling characters, middling writing.

V, for instance, is very much in that mold. But the premise is a durable one - alien invasion OMG OMG OMG!!! - so if they frak that up, they should really be ashamed of themselves. Given the choice, I'd jump ship for V, the show with the much easier to execute premise.

am I to understand that for all the worldwide hype of Flashforwad the show is failing? and I was totally right not to bother with it?

Oooh I dunno. It's better than most of the crap on TV - police shows, doctor shows, sitcoms. And even if I think the premise wasn't something they should have tackled, I'll give them credit for trying to tackle a tricky premise in the first place. Check it out, see if it grabs you after five episodes or so.

And there are some unfair criticisms in this thread:

1. No private lives for the characters. Well, I'm not wild about the soap opera either, but to just focus relentlessly on the characters as being defined

2. We need scientists. We do have scientists. They're the "bad" guys. But at least we have a sci fi show with scientists at all, that's progress.

3. Too American. The aforementioned bad-guy scientists are both British. Well okay, they're bad guys. Blame Disney and George Lucas for warping our tiny American minds. But seriously, they can't diffuse the action geographically; they could have FBI types from all over the world descend on the LA office to keep the action focused on one place, but it would still be in LA.

 

[Trent Roman]

The thing I wouldn't do is just to throw up my hands and declare the premise unworkable and decide that none of the above is going to happen because predestination isn't ruling this universe after all. Then you loose the gimmick and the reason for this premise to exist in the first place, and you are left with only the characters and the mystery of what caused the flashforwards to interest viewers.

But predestination was never the premise. It wasn't in the book, and I rather doubt anybody went into this show on the production side thinking it was either. They, for now, seem to be confused as to the exact metaphysics of the flashforward, but nominally, it should represent the future that would have unfurled had there not been flashforwards, and how knowledge of the future will impact and change the life of the characters. The fault, as you say, is that so far, they haven't made us care enough about the characters to interest us in their fate. After all, predestination is bunkum, intellectually and emotionally. BSG fell into that trap and invalidated years of often good storytelling in one fell swoop.

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Predestination, which really would only be a gimmick as the basis for a story, was the sole thing keeping me going thru the bland characters and soap opera. I was curious to see whether they could write scenarios clever enough to have their cake and eat it too.

Most shows have characters who are no worse than the FlashForward crew. They aren't horrible, just unmemorable. So if the show has a weak premise, then it's very unwise to depend on the characters turning out to be compelling enough to carry the story forward on their own.

But if the writers decided that in their universe, predestination wasn't "bunkum," I was interested to see what they could make of this idea. Even watching them struggle and fail would be better than what we now have - a bunch of people who either want their futures to be one way or another way.

This is just what people normally do in life. The only difference is that everyone has a reason to believe a certain outcome is more likely than they otherwise might have imagined, but so what? I'm more likely to be living in the city where I'm living now, and working in a job like I'm working in now, than to become a circus acrobat or a Romanian princess.

Even if I were to see myself dying in a car crash on a certain date, so what? I just don't get into a car on that date. To be doubly certain, I could take a backpacking trip a hundred milles away from the nearest road on that date.

I just don't see how this show is interesting unless there's some reason to believe it will be at least difficult for these people to avoid their fates, but as of now, it may be ridiculously easy - we have no idea what the odds are anymore. If there's actually just an .00001% chance that Demitri will be murdered - and from what we know, that might be the actual odds - so much for the dramatic tension.

The odds of the flash forwards coming true might actually be zero. Just because people who were together at the time saw the same thing does not mean they were seeing the future. It's just as easy to believe they were psychically linked and having the same hallucination with no connection to reality, past, present or future. In fact, isn't psychic phenomena more believable as an explanation than time travel? At the very least, not less believable.

What makes me really angry is thinking of shows with much better premises like Revolution (civil war between Earth and Earth colony) and Beyond (realistic, near-future NASA manned mission to Mars), that never saw the light of day. Why would anyone look at the FlashForward premise and think it was particularly worth basing a TV series on? I just don't get it.

BSG fell into that trap and invalidated years of often good storytelling in one fell swoop.

If you can figure out what the frak BSG was about, you're doing better than I am! However, thanks for reminding me of a rare show with a killer cast of characters that dragged the audience through some pretty sketchy writing and a DOA premise that really should have been thought through a lot better than it was.

 

[Candlelight]

7 episodes in and it's waaay better than Lost. HOWEVER:

The only thing I would change is make it a one-season show. The show doesn't lend itself to the mystry arc for anything longer.

Seriously, if we get a second season it better have a good reason for it.

 

[Obiwanshinobi]

I'd like to see Demitri at an In and Out. Take a bite and say: "Man this just isn't the same..."

 

[Joe Washington]

What if Flash Forward was radically altered into a remake of Odyssey 5?

Think about it.

It's present day and a team of astronauts is setting up a satellite in orbit of Earth like the original show. The twist is that a ball of energy collides with the astronauts' shuttle, rendering the crew unconscious and frying the satellite they are setting up to a crisp. The crew wake up a few minutes later and, after telling NASA what happened, are ordered to return home. When the astronauts start settling down after going through a thorough examination, they start recalling the visions they had while they were unconscious. Visions of things to come three years from now on. For example, the female reporter character gets a vision of her son being dead due to an illness which causes her to obsess bout her son's health like the original show. But what really gets the ball rolling is when the astronaut commander recalls a future vision which shows him the destruction of Earth. And the commander suspects that the new satellite they'll being setting up to replace the other one may play a role in that destruction. Meanwhile, little do the astronauts know they are being watched by a mysterious group of people who sense the energy inside of them that gave them their visions. And the astronauts' superiors who seem to have an unknown connection to what's going on have implanted the astronauts with a tracking agent to keep an eye on their movements in case they start displaying activity that they should be aware of.

The series would focus on the astronauts dealing with the burden of what they know, the consequences of what they saw rippling into their personal lives, and banding together in the fight to save their world from an impending apocalypse.

And in this show, some of the things the astronauts saw won't be altered despite what they do while others are free to be changed but with consequences.

 

[OmahaStar]

If it was me in charge, every act would end with Joe Fine-ass and Jonny Cho making out.

 

[Morpheus 02]

What i would do to make it better?
Simple: find out that the "Flash Forwards" people experience might SOMEONE ELSE's Flash Forward. So for example, Dimitri's non-Flash Forward was that of someone else's death. Or his friend who comitted suicide -- that was HIS flash forward!

The Flash Forwards feel so real, you'd think it was you. But have a someone look in the mirror, or even their hands, and they realize the truth.

 

[stj]

Start every episode with a different character's flashforward and aftermath of the blackout.

 

[DarKush]

If I was in charge...

I would only make the show one season, lasting 12/13 episodes to keep it tightly paced and moving along. They are not doing a good job of mix important stuff with the filler needed to expand the series.

I personally don't mind the 'soap opera' stuff. However, I would like to see a larger cast. I can understand why they focus on one particular group of characters-budget, storyline, etc., but I would like to at least see more of the global impact talked about or mentioned, and more of a global response in which the LA FBI office is just one part of a much larger effort. I enjoyed the Congressional hearing when they talked about China because it got me thinking more about what would the world's reaction be, especially if the US seemed to be the country hit the most by the blackout. Seems like there would be more paranoia and fear about terrorism.

I think the writing on the show doesn't do a good job fleshing out the ancillary characters. Like with the female and young black agent. They hovered in the background and then bam, they are pushed to the forefront and then something tragic happens to both. There's not a lot of emotional investment when they do that. It would've been better to at least focus on the ancillary characters a little more before they get all that sudden facetime and experience a life altering event.

More Gabrielle Union. I've had a thing for her for a long time. I wish they had made her an FBI agent. She kicked ass in Bad Boys 2.

Definitely include a 'good' scientist among the main cast. Someone who can do the technobabble bit. I guess the female FBI agent is supposed to fill that role somewhat, but an actual scientist or two would be nice.

Wouldn't have revealed Olivia's future lover as a being part of the conspiracy so soon.

 

[Australis]

Agree with those who said one season, but a full season (22/23 eps). Keep it tight. Some soap, less angst (you're worried you're going to lose your wife and become a piss artist, we GET it! Man up and move on!)

Much slower reveal for the villains. I have less of a problem with it being focused on the US for the simple reason that, for example, where I live, we'd mostly be asleep anyway, so the consequences would be much reduced. Certainly more focus on the countries that were in day, like the UK and Europe (FlashForward UK, anyone? )

Here's a problem: now they've shown predestination can be bypased, what's everyone going to do on 10 April 2010? That's right - stay home, not fly, not drive, not do any damn thing. None of the flashforwards will happen! Which then raises an interesting point - if they aren't, in effect real, what did they see? And what will happen next time?

(Although I said 'next time', I still think one season).

 

[Mooch]

I haven't seen any episodes, but it doesn't sound much like the book, which I enjoyed. I don't remember any scenes in L.A. in the book.