FlashForward 1-3 “137 Sekunden”
Air travel is finally resuming, and we finally meet Demetri’s fiancée. Of course, we don’t know that right away. It’s worth noting that she’s African-American, which I bring up only because certain characters, namely Demetri’s parents, really seem to make it an issue. She’s sitting next to the airline CEO – all the executives are flying today, to prove the skies are safe, only he’s totally freaking out. Ha! Then we see there are only about five people on the plane.
Demetri asks Al to trace the phone call from yesterday, while Mark checks in with Janis and a guy we haven’t seen before, coordinating various Blackout theories, one of which is summed up as “the Earth farted”. Unknown guy says he’s got a file from Germany, where Herr Geyer claims to know why the blackouts lasted “137 sekunden”. That’s German for “seconds”, but it’s also a phrase that appeared on Future Mark’s Big Board. He also recognized the photo of Geyer from his Flash, so it’s time to investigate. Even better, Geyer’s claim references Mark by name. Stanford is not excited that Mark wants to fly to Germany to talk to a Nazi, but Mark is insistent, so he gives in.
Demetri meets Zoey at the airport. She really wants to talk about her Flash, and says that she’s sure he saw the same thing. Oh, this isn’t going to go well.
Aaron visits a bar, where the woman tending the place isn’t happy to see him. Her name’s Kate, and she’s Aaron’s ex-wife. She’s also played by Kim Dickens, who was the mother of Sawyer’s daughter on Lost and Joanie Stubbs on Deadwood. He tells here that he saw their daughter in his Flash, and she’s outright angry about it. She saw herself behind the bar, same as every day – she calls Aaron’s Flash “wishful thinking”. This may not be the best time, but he asks her for her signature on a court order to exhume Tracy’s remains. That’s when she throws him out. Old Aaron’s not so great at reading the temperature of the room.
Zoey and Demetri are in a hotel room, basking in afterglow. She talks about her Flash, and we see her on the beach in a lovely white dress, approaching a gathering of formally-dressed people. She says that she saw Demetri there, even though we don’t see him in her Flash. Demetri lies and says he saw the same thing. Now, I figured this one out early, mostly because of 30 Rock. White, you see, is the traditional color of Korean funerals. Yeah, you have to get up pretty early in the morning to sneak something past me.
It’s raining in Munich when Mark and Janis arrive at Quale Prison. They are notified that they have no actual authority, so it’s a warm welcome. Geyer is as immediately creepy as you’d expect from a Nazi. He wants to return to America and have all charges dropped. Well, sure. But only if Brad Pitt gets to carve a swastika on his forehead first. He wants this assurance before he gives up any information.
Back in the States, Olivia has lunch with Stanford’s wife, Felicia, who is played by Gina Torres of Alias and Justice League Unlimited fame. They talk about how their husbands are throwing themselves into their work. Felicia talks about her Flash, where she was putting a young boy to bed, a boy who called her “Mom”. Hmmm.
In Germany, Geyer offers one piece of information, with the rest to come after the pardon. Mark asks him why the 137 seconds, Geyer starts talking about the Jewish people he met in his old line of work. Then he takes a break to call Janis out on being a lesbian. I’ll be honest with you, that was a pretty awesome way to let us in on that. Then he goes back to talking about kaballah. See, when you spell “Kaballah” in Hebrew, then give each Hebrew letter the number it corresponds to, it totals 137. Seriously? I don’t even think we’re supposed to take this as a clue – it just shows how far the guy will reach. Mark is just pissed off now, and demands useful information. Geyer finally says that he knows his information pans out because in his Flash, he was headed back to America. Specifically, he was in an American airport, talking to a customs agent named Jerome Murphy. In his Flash, he says it’s too bad that “Agent Benford isn’t here to welcome me”. He then tells the customs agent that he’s returning home and has “a murder to thank for it”. Geyer’s lawyer steps in and say if they find Jerome Murphy, they can confirm his client’s story, and he will then divulge what “murder” he’s talking about.
During a break in the Nazi chat, Aaron calls Mark. Hope he knows Mark’s in Germany, because those international rates are killer! Aaron asks Mark if he can get Tracy exhumed. Mark doesn’t think it’s a good idea, but Aaron talks him into it.
In the US, Demetri tracks down a Jerome Murphy who applied for a job with the Customs Department. He goes to Murphy’s house, where he finds the guy dancing in his underwear. He’s very excited to find that he’s going to be a customs agent. Jerome recognizes the picture of Geyer, and mentions the “murder”. On his way out, Demetri trips over a giant bong. Jerome panics and begs Demetri not to bust him – his future won’t happen if Demetri arrests him. That’s more than a little tempting for Demetri, but I think he’s trying so hard to believe that the Flashes don’t mean anything that he can’t even allow himself to try and change one. Trying to do so acknowledges their power, and he can’t do that.
Mark and Janis eat dinner in a German restaurant. They argue about the ethics of dealing with a Nazi, and I really love this show, but they’re driving this point into the ground here. It may turn out to be loaded with meaning later, but this episode features people rehashing the same points at length just a little too often for my tastes. During this, we get a quick scene of a backhoe digging up Tracy’s grave. There’s a quick scene where Al tells Demetri that his mystery phone call came from two towers at the same time, which is either somebody covering their tracks really well, or the work of ghosts.
Later, Mark signs Geyer’s release papers, and I don’t know how the hell he has the authority to pardon a prisoner being held in a foreign country. I’m willing to admit that I just don’t know things and move on, though. So Geyer shares his last piece of information – when he woke up from his Flash, he looked out the window of his cell and saw the ground littered with dead crows. A “murder” of crows. (If they were owls, they’d be a “parliament”!) He says he doesn’t know what the crows mean, but his vision indicated that the crows were the key to his release. Mark is not at all convinced that this means anything. And here’s my question: Is the fact that crows specifically died significant, or did animals black out, and anything flying dropped out of the sky?
At the Benford home, Olivia is sleeping when Mark comes home. He gives her a kiss, and she wakes up. He complains about the trip, leaving out the part where he released a Nazi for what might turn out to be a dumb reason.
Aaron shows up at Kate’s bar again, and he looks wrecked. He’s not drinking, though. He tells her, shakily, that the remains were, in fact, Tracy’s.
And in one of my favorite scenes of the series, Stanford delivers a eulogy for the FBI agents who died in the Blackout. It’s really well-written, and has the line that sums up the series for me. “We’re all prophets now. And you know, I can’t think of a prophet worth a damn that didn’t suffer. And I also can’t think of a prophet that God didn’t love.” Courtney B. Vance is just rocking this scene.
Felicia sees the little boy from her Flash at the funeral. Demetri and Olivia are barely holding it together. Al looks like he’s in pain. This whole scene kicks ass.
Afterwards, the agents are gathered in a bar, talking about how there must be thousands of these funerals going on all over the world. The phrase “all over the world” jars Mark, and he pulls Janis away from the crowd. Back in the office, Mark has the idea to track worldwide crow population trends for the last year. Sure enough, the population plummeted on the day of the Blackout all over the world. Janis is unimpressed, but she finds that in 1991, in the Ganwar Region of Somalia, “all the crows died on the same day”. They also find that the inhabitants of that region suffered a mass loss of consciousness on that day.
We then cut to the Ganwar Region. I assume it’s supposed to be 1991, but they don’t tell us. The sky is full of crows, until they suddenly all drop to the ground. A young child herding goats runs over the ridge and sees people lying on the ground all around the village, and we see a huge tower, almost like a factory smokestack, emitting something that looks sort of like a mushroom cloud.
Next week: Who’s Simon? And did somebody change races in their Flash Forward? And remember that lady who got arrested at the beginning of the premiere? What’s her deal, anyway?
