FlashForward 1-18 “Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road”
He talks about Scott’s wedding and a Pixies concert and corn dogs and tells Olivia that she should be with Lloyd, then he mentions Raven River and as she runs for the door tells her “Don’t buy coffee today from the man who looks like Mr. Clean”. She yells out to the security detail that there’s a man in her house, and Baltar runs out the back. Man, if he came along earlier, this show would be so much more popular.
At the hospital, Janis is meeting with her doctor. The doctor says that Janis is anemic and hasn’t put on weight, so she needs to go a specialist.
Olivia calls Mark about Baltar, then arrives at work where a car has jumped the curb and run over the coffee cart, crushing the bald vendor. “Don’t buy coffee today from the man who looks like Mr. Clean”. Baltar may have saved her life!
We cut back to Two Years Before the Blackout. Janis is in a pet store, looking at fish. She tells the middle-aged woman that she’s looking for Red Dragon Flowerhorns, and it’s pretty clear it’s a code but Janis doesn’t know said code. The woman sets her up with an aquarium, and it’s clear that Janis didn’t know she’d be getting fish. But as she explains, if Janis is going to be coming in every couple of weeks, she needs an excuse. The woman explains that they want Janis to do her job and just keep them apprised of what’s going on.
In the present, Janis says that the photos in Frost’s possession when he died had two sets of fingerprints – his, and Hot Terrorist’s. Also, some soil on his person matched up with particulate from Afghanistan.
Cue the cut to Afghanistan. Aaron is hanging out in a seedy-looking café when a man approaches. The guy, Malik, says Stanford sent him, and the longer they talk, the more dirty looks they’re getting. One of the guys in the room makes a call, which Malik assures him can not have a good outcome.
Janis brings the blueprints to an antiquities professor. He’s pretty sure they’re important, but he doesn’t know what they’re for yet. Janis agrees to leave them behind for a couple of days. Then she stops in the pet show, where the lady tells her to bring in the original and destroy all copies. This is totally going to turn out to be a Rambaldi device.
That night, Janis dons a burglar suit and breaks into the professor’s home. She finds the blueprints, and also plugs a box into the outlet. When she leaves, she presses a button on a remote, and the box… shorts out the TV? I don’t know what just happened here. Janis needs a sidekick so she can explain what she’s doing. Maybe a plucky Brooklyn paperboy named Smitty.
At the Benford house, Charlie eats popcorn and watches that weird cartoon. Oivia looks through old photos of a wedding, and finds a picture of Baltar, who looks like one of the caterers. Must be Scott’s wedding! She finds him in the background of several other pictures, too.
Janis sneaks into the FBI building at night. She gets into Mark’s office and pulls the copy of the blueprints off his bulletin board. Of course, Mark has literally nothing else to do these days, so he’s actually in the office, and asks what she’s doing. Oh man, Mark is totally sleeping in his office. He’s Harry Crane in the first season of Mad Men!
Janis says she screwed up, which Mark considers an understatement. Janis unconvincingly lies that Professor Corey misplaced the original blueprints and Mark had the only other copy. Mark clearly does not believe her and presses the point a little. He calls it a “rookie mistake”, and tells her to leave the blueprints – she can get a copy tomorrow.
Olivia goes to Vreede to show him about how Baltar appears in some of her old pictures. Vreede thinks “Raven River” is a mental health hospital in Arizona that was shut down twenty years ago over abuses.
Aaron shoes Malik a picture of Tracy, and Malik wants proof that she’s alive. Aaron’s only proof is his Flash. Aaron shows him a sign he noticed, “Eyes on a Mountain”, which signifies a medical relief organization. Malik agrees to lead him.
Janis’ doctor gives her an ultrasound and says that her abdominal girth isn’t what it needs to be – she needs to take better care of herself and reduce stress. Mark calls – Professor Corey is sitting in his office and has some interesting information that doesn’t match up with what Janis said. Oh, it’s on now.
Janis arrives at the FBI, and Corey says that his hard drives were erased and the blueprints are missing. Luckily, he took pictures with his phone. OK, it’s not on now. Sorry. I was deceived. He explains that it appears to be an astronomical clock that calculates dates. When he runs the numbers, the first date that comes up is always October 6, 2009. The date of the Blackout.
We then cut back to the day of the Blackout – Mark and Demetri are pursuing Hot Terrorist, while patched in to Janis and Stanford. Then the Blackout hits while Janis is going down the stairs, and she falls. After the Blackout, she goes to the bathroom to cry and throw up. Then, the next day, she goes to the pet store and says she wants out. While they told her there was going to be an “event” they didn’t prepare her for this. She tries to quit, but the pet store lady says she’s in too deep and doesn’t have that choice.
Vreede and Olivia arrive at Raven River Psychiatric Hospital, and I really don’t think mental health facilities should have creepy names like that. Vreede makes a reference to being a Clint Eastwood fan, because he’s angling for my “favorite character” position. They enter the abandoned hospital with their tiny little flashlights, and then split up because this is going to be an episode of Scooby-Doo. Olivia looks through some things and then spots Baltar, who’s hanging out in the hallway. “I knew you’d be here, Olivia. You were always here.”
Mark confronts Janis and wonders why she’s been doing such a bad job lately. She tells Mark that she’s pregnant, which is kind of scuzzy to use as an excuse. But, you know, traitor. They talk about Frost’s last words, and Janis jokes that she’s the lady that Mark sees every day, and will thus save him. Mark thinks it’s Olivia, but I want to think it’s more abstract than that. Mark starts to think “the lady” refers to the Queen on a chessboard, since Frost was so obsessed with Chess that he could be a chess-themed Batman villain. So maybe it’s the Queen they found at the doll factory, that’s hanging from Mark’s Big Board. He smashes the Queen and inside is one of those anti-Blackout rings.
Malik drives Aaron through the night, and Malik doesn’t want to talk about his Flash – he was driving with his family when the Blackout hit, and his wife and daughter were killed. A group of gunmen stop the car, and Malik can’t tell what faction they are. They open fire, and Malik is killed instantly. Aaron manages to get out of the car and find cover. He manages to kill one of the gunmen, but then another group of soldiers arrives one the scene and kills his assailants. One member of the new group puts a gun to Aaron’s head, and walks Aaron out to see Khamir, the guy from his Flash.
Vreede finds Olivia, who is currently getting an earful from Baltar. Vreede is very interested in Baltar’s claim that he saw Olivia kiss Lloyd. Baltar leads them do the room where they experimented on him – “Every other day they put us to sleep”, and it sounds like they were exposing him to Blackouts over and over. He was part of Frost’s test group. Baltar was chosen because of his photographic memory – he could remember every detail of each Flash. Vreede tells Baltar that Frost is dead now, and he doesn’t need to be afraid.
Baltar explains to Olivia that she’s “going the wrong way”. In Baltar’s Flashes, he saw Olivia over and over again, always with Lloyd. So the Flashes are sometimes looks into the future, and sometimes an alternate future? He explains that her decision not to go to Harvard was “a fork in the road”, and they can’t solve the puzzle without Olivia.
At the FBI building, Mark presents the ring to Mosaic, including Lloyd and Dom. He says the lab guys can’t figure out what it is, and Janis recognizes the ring from the Suspect Zero ring. Dom identifies it as a QED – a Quantum Entanglement Device. I can’t tell if he’s playing along, or if he’s never seen the inside of the ring before and is just now putting it together. Dom explains how the science works, and I’m just going to take his word for all of it. Mark suggests that the people attacking him in his Flash were looking for the ring, rather than for him. As far as Mark knows, only two rings exist, but we’ve seen there are at least half-a-dozen.
We’re back to “Two Years Before the Blackout”, where Janis is meeting with her new contact. It’s Vogel, and for a second, I think this means he’s mole number three. The Mosaic Task Force has a really substandard vetting process. He explains that he’s the CIA, and they have reason to believe an organization will try to recruit her as a double agent. They want her to accept. So the CIA has asked her to be a double agent. So Janis has been on the right side the whole time? That means I can like her again!
She reports to the pet store lady that Mark has the ring, and pet store lady wants it back. She’s not happy with Janis’ recent failures and she has one last chance to get it right. Oh, also, she’s supposed to kill Mark.
Next week: Well, it’s already aired, so I’m playing catch-up. It’s a shame they didn’t get into sync with real time for this episode that actually aired on April 29. Good episode anyway, though. I’ll have another recap tomorrow, and hopefully I can stay caught up through the end of the season. I can’t promise to try, but I can try to try.
