Current Season: Season 1
Who’s in it?: A bunch of wooden idiots
Worth watching?: Not at all
Why are you watching it then?: I’ve no idea…
When I first heard about Flashforward back at the beginning of the summer I instantly had very high hopes for it. The premise – the entire (well almost entire), world blacks out for 137 seconds and in that time they see a “flashforward” of their lives in about 6 months time – was so solid that it seemed the show could not fail. It practically writes itself. I remember thinking that the only way they could possible fluff this one was if they created soulless uninteresting characters, hired planks to play them and filmed it with the style and direction of a Milk Tray advert. Sadly my flashforward turned out to be pretty much on the money
The cracks appeared in the foundations of Flashforward right from the beginning. The opening event of the blackout was remarkably underwhelming. Everything looked cheap and the CGI was pretty awful. By comparison with the flawless “you are here” feel of the Lost opening scene the gulf between the shows could not be more evident. If ABC are banking on this being the “new Lost”, which their blatant Lost reference would tend to imply then they have a lot of work to do.
The premise, as solid as it was, was only going to be as strong as the characters who lived through it. The cast of characters are sadly a truly forgettable bunch, to the extent that I can barely remember anyone’s name. Any conversations I’ve seen about Flashforward on forums are populated with characters like “The asian guy from Star Trek”, “Raplh Fiennes idiot brother”, “The black guy”, “The hobbit” and “the other black guy”. The way in which they investigate, or more accurately don’t investigate the phenomenon prevents any buy in as a viewer as no body on the show thinks is a way that can easily be related to. Unless you’re a moron.
Ok so everyone’s seen a glimpse of their future. The FIRST thing that should have happened was people should have tried to do something that would make their future impossible. But no, everyone went around thinking “oh bugger I guess I really am going to leave my husband, better just go along with it”. One guy, “the other black guy”, decided to test this as his flash had him finding out a woman he hit with his car had died. Yeouch, what’s a guy to do? Lose your driver’s license so you can’t drive on that day? Sell you car? Blind yourself? No, of course the only logical thing to do is to KILL YOURSELF! So other black guy climbs to the top of the FBI building and faceplants himself off it. I was almost expecting him to land on the woman but no, splay, dead. So now we know the flashes are not set in stone and are only things which may occur unless you change them…. Great you broke the premise ABC, now there is no sense of impending disaster, or at least a sense that the story is actually leading anywhere.
I’m gonna round up now because to be honest I’ll be stunned if this show lasts more than a season anyway. Plus i don’t like having the feeling that I have put more thought into this show than the people whose job it is to do so.
Invader_Stu
December 10, 2009
Sounds like it could have been a good idea but there seem to be so many TV shows now that try to have a cool premise like Lost or another great show but simply end up falling flat.
(ps – Large Marge sent me)