ABC’s new sci-fi drama Flash Forward has become one of the more eagerly anticipated new shows on the fall schedule (I would argue that it wouldn’t take much to be eagerly anticipated on THIS fall schedule, but that’s a rant for another post). I’ve been following the show for some time, including reviewing the pilot script for CliqueClack before I officially joined the team. Spoiler warnings do apply, but I do stay away from the big ticket items in that regard.
You’ve heard the log line: Everyone on the planet simultaneously experiences a nearly two-and-a-half minute long shared vision of the future, six months to be exact (lining up nicely with May Sweeps, I might add). One of the crazy side effects of the experience was that they, for all intents and purposes, blackout in the present. Cars crash, helicopters run into buildings, suicide attempts are interrupted. Once the world collects itself from the aftermath, they quickly turn to figuring out exactly what the flash forward means, and why it happened.
For the most part, the cast works very well. The only question mark for me is the main character, played by Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love). Truthfully, though, I’m not sure if my hesitation is due to the actor or the way his character is written in general. The jury is still out (at least the one that lives in the craziness that is my mind), but it was the only down check on an otherwise great cast. Everyone else does an outstanding job, specifically standouts Sonya Walger (Lost) and John Cho (Star Trek).
The action is well crafted. There are some comedic bits woven throughout, such as the reveal of Courtney B. Vance (Law and Order)’s flash, but I don’t think (or at least hope) that they’ll continue to be secondary to the drama. The family drama is key to understanding how the flash’s are affecting everyone, and while we really only delved into Wagler’s and Finnes’s home and child, I do expect to see more from the other characters as well. The last minutes provide a nice twist that will set things into motion going forward into future episodes. While the identity of the new character played by Dominic Monaghan (Lost) has yet to be confirmed, I’m sure he’s directly related to that final sequence.
The pilot was based on a novel by Robert J. Sawyer. The book was a great piece of fiction, but other than the main setup, the show looks to deviate a good deal from the source material. I guess the producers thought that a TV show about a group of scientists from CERN who think they caused the flash forward wouldn’t work so well in prime time. While I can’t exactly fault them for changing things to an FBI office in LA, reusing some of the names was a nice shout out to fans of the source material.
Much has been made of the Seth MacFarlane cameos as a FBI agent. Others who have had an opportunity to view the screener have talked about how distracting it is, and how it completely brings them out of the moment. Frankly, I think that is a fairly weak argument. First, while I’m a fan of MacFarlane’s work, I don’t think that nine out of ten TV viewers could pick him out of a line-up. Second, it’s no more of a difference than saying that Alex Kingston‘s (ER) short appearance in the pilot elicited a “Hey, she’s supposed to be teaching at Duke’s med school!!!” based on her work on the NBC medical drama.
The pilot shows a lot of promise to what kind of show Flash Forward can, and I suspect will, evolve into. ABC has been pushing the marketing from even before day one, running teaser ads before an official pick up announcement had been made. The show is being discussed as a natural pair to Lost this season, and hopefully an eventual successor next season. I’m hesitant to jump to those kinds of comparisons just yet, as I think you’ve got to catch lightning in a bottle for a sci-fi show to develop that kind of mass appeal, but I certainly think that the potential is there for Flash Forward.
Clacked by Ivey West 
on Aug 27, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
