FlashFoward 1-2: “White to Play”
Mark and Olivia meet with the principal, who says that the other children talk about the blackout, but not Charlie. (Remember, she dreamed “there were no more good days”.) The principal thinks they need to make her talk about the Blackout, which makes for an awkward conversation, what with Mark’s future drinking and Olivia’s future infidelity. Neither of them saw Charlie in their Flashes. Mark and Olivia talk about how much they love each other, and assure one another that the future won’t come to pass.
Markham chews out the task force – she hates the Mosaic Project. They present their findings, including their belief that this was a manufactured event – it happened at exactly 11 AM, and if it were a random occurrence there’s a 1 in 3600 chance that it would happen at the top of the hour. She’s not convinced, so Stanford shows the smoking gun – the film of the guy walking around at Tiger Stadium during the Blackout. Even Markham is impressed by this.
Olivia brings Charlie to the hospital, since they’re having an issue with the babysitter. Olivia stitches up the stuffed animal, and then Lloyd Simcoe walks in. You know, the guy she’s living with in the future. Great horrified response from Sonya Walger here. By the way, both of the Lost Ladies are rocking their new projects – Walger is awesome here, and Elizabeth Mitchell is pretty much making V all by her lonesome. Good work!
Now, Lloyd doesn’t recognize Olivia, because in the Flash, his back is to her. He never sees her, so he doesn’t know why she thinks their meeting is so awkward. By the way, this would seem to mean that the 20 seconds or so of Olivia’s Flash that we’ve seen happen at the end – Lloyd is turning toward her as the Flash ends. Lloyd wants to thank her for saving his son’s life, and he mentions that Dylan is autistic. He hasn’t been taking care of Dylan, but the kid’s mother died during the Blackout. Lloyd’s not even sure how autistic his son is, and I would give them five dollars if he said “I hope he’s one of the good ones, like that Rain Man.”
Mark returns to work and Demetri is freaked out that he’s wearing the friendship bracelet. Everything that matches up with the Flashes makes him that much more certain that he’s going to die. Mark asks about “D. Gibbons”, and Demetri tells Mark that there are more than 15,000 – a thousand of them with criminal records. And one who drew Watchmen. Janis steps into Mark’s office with big news – a D. Gibbons just walked into the building and asked for Demetri.
D. Gibbons is Didi Gibbons, the 45-year-old owner of a cupcake store in Anaheim. (By the way, cupcake stores have not made it to the Midwest – I have a friend in Phoenix who always talks about cupcake stores, and I just assumed that was an affected way of saying “bakery’. Nope, there are actual cupcake stores.) She brought some cupcakes for everybody, which is very nice. She tells them that she’s nervous, especially since her name is on the bulletin board.
In her Flash, she was on the phone, arguing about pigeons. She tells the person on the other line that they have to talk to Agents Benford and Noh, and she’s quite angry. I love that she says Demetri is “Chinese or Mongolese, something –ese.” The group talks about her, and Demetri is not convinced by anything at all. What’s great is that Stanford totally walks off with the entire box of cupcakes.
Mark follows Stanford, and asks about his Flash. Stanford admits that in his Flash, he was taking a dump. And he was doing the same thing when the Blackout happened, so he didn’t immediately realize that anything had happened. When he woke up, he found another agent face-down in the urinal, drowning. Stanford gave him mouth-to-mouth, and he threatens Mark with a grim fate if he shares any of these details.
At the hospital, Olivia gives Charlie her newly-fixed stuffed animal, and it’s really very cute. Olivia gets the idea to walk Charlie past Lloyd, to see if she recognizes him. She doesn’t, which means she didn’t see him in her Flash. But when she sees his son, she cries out “What happened to Dylan?”, and she’s really upset. She says that she saw him in her Flash, which really has Lydia concerned.
In the FBI offices, Janis confirms that Didi Gibbons has a clean record. However, it seems like somebody’s using her credit card, as evidenced by a couple of simultaneous charges, one in California and one in Utah. Mark reasons that was the source of the argument in her Flash. Stanford and Janis figure that the “pigeon” she mentioned is the city – Pigeon, Utah. Stanford tells them to contact the Salt Lake City field office, and then Mark spots Olivia.
Olivia tells Mark about Charlie’s freak-out, and shares that the boy in question is the son of the guy in her vision. Mark doesn’t take this so well – now she’s met the guy in her vision, and Charlie’s as-yet-unrevealed vision seems to corroborate events. Demetri steps in to tell Mark that D. Gibbons’ credit card was used in Utah, and they’re on their way down to make an arrest.
One helicopter flight later, Mark and Demetri arrive in Utah. They meet a uniformed cop, Sherrif Keegan. They can’t give her much information, and she mentions that everybody in her town is still freaking out about the visions. Of course, she didn’t see anything. Well, I bet she’ll be around for a good long time, right?
In LA, Markham yells at Stanford and Janis some more – she wants more information about the guy at Tiger Stadium. Janis calls him “Suspect Zero”, and explains how they can tell the figure is a man. You don’t need the details, but it all makes sense. Markham wants to find him before it happens again, so she has apparently converted to the “Somebody caused the blackouts” school of thought.
At the hospital, it’s late, and Lloyd checks in with Bryce. He says Dylan wants a hamburger, and wonders if that’s all right. Bryce assures him that everything is going to be OK. He goes on to say that “There’s a gift in the knowing”, and the test now is for everybody to do their best with what they’ve seen. Hard to believe he was getting to eat a bullet last week, right?
Mark and Demetri watch the bus station – D. Gibbons bought a bus ticket, but never picked it up. Once again, Demetri tries to convince his friend that the visions are all a coincidence. As they get ready to leave, Mark notices an abandoned building – Keegan explains that they used to make dolls there, until the company went bankrupt. Since Mark saw a photo of a filthy doll head in his Flash, next to the D. Gibbons card, he decides it’s worth checking out.
Mark busts open the lock, and they notice somebody moving in an office over the factory floor. The carts full of doll parts make this scene ridiculously creepy. All those heads… Even creepier, as they look up the stairs to the office, they see a bunch of dolls hanging from nooses. Going up the stairs, they trigger a tripwire that starts the dolls moving while a tinny recording of scary children singing “Ring Around the Rosie” starts to play. That’s the freakiest alarm ever. They kick in the door, and a shadowy figure is holding two lighters over what looks to me like something explosive. In an English accent, he says “He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over”. He drops the lighters, and the weird fluid catches fire. He pulls out a gun and shoots Sheriff Keegan, and then runs through the fire. The nice lady who didn’t have a vision of her future is going to be OK, right? Right?
After the commercial, the clean-up guys are there, and they zip Sheriff Keegan into a body bag. One of the CSI guys takes a picture of a burned-up doll head. The same one that’s on Mark’s bulletin board in the future. Demetri brings some evidence – a cell phone and a single chess piece – the White Queen. What the heck does the chess piece mean? I mean, it gives us the episode title, but that’s pretty thin. Demetri also says that after searching the guy’s computer, they found out he was doing some heavy-duty hacking, including the NSA and the Mosaic Project. He thinks that the guy was investigating the Blackout himself, and trying to rule out possible causes.
Olivia, carrying Charlie, encounters Lloyd outside the hospital. It’s as awkward as you might expect, with Lloyd wondering how to tell his son that his mother is dead, but also clearly thinking that Dylan’s got a hotter Mommy coming in the very near future.
Back at the FBI, Mark puts the doll head photo on the bulletin board, then struggles to recall his Flash. I like how his is so much blurrier than the others – nice touch. Back at the hospital, Lloyd sits down with Dylan to tell him about his mother. Dylan already grasps that something is wrong. Lloyd finally explains that she’s dead, but that the two of them are going to be OK. Dylan just says that he wants to see Olivia.
It’s 3 AM, and we know this because Demetri literally walks into the scene saying so. He’s coming back to the office, where Markham, Stanford, and Janis are waiting. They pulled the records of D. Gibbons’ cell phone, and found that before the Blackout, he made five calls to a disposable cell. And then there was a 6th call placed 30 seconds into the Blackout. Janis triangulated the position, and it turns out, D. Gibbons was talking to Suspect Zero. Awesome!
Later, they search Mosaic, and Janis says there are 900,000 postings so far. She idly talks about how she’s never felt the urge to have a baby, but there she was, in the future. She decides to post her Flash on Mosaic, and we see a little more of it, where the tech tells a tearful future Janis that she’s having a girl. She then mentions to Demetri that just because he didn’t see anything, it doesn’t mean he’s dying. He might just be asleep. That’s actually a good point, that I don’t think they’ve addressed yet. Janis says that even if it does mean the worst, he can maybe try to find out how he dies, and then prevent it. Convince, he makes a Mosaic post. Um, shouldn’t he tell his fiancée about it first, before he shares it with the entire Internet?
Back at Mark’s house, he’s sitting up late. Olivia comes downstairs and tries to talk him into bed. He tells her that Utah was “a dead end”, which I don’t think is necessarily correct, but he’s being surly. Once again, they worry about their marriage, and we get a shot that shows his friendship bracelet in the fireplace. Where there is also a fire. I swear, I didn’t even catch that the first time.
In the FBI parking garage, Demetri gets a call from a mystery woman. She’s not named yet, but she’s played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, who is well known to 24 fans. Suffice it to say that she’s Middle Eastern, always mysterious, and has a voice that makes Dr. Girlfriend sound delicate. She says that in her vision, she was reading an intelligence briefing. Specifically, a briefing about his murder on March 15, 2010. The Ides of March!
Finally, Mark checks in on Charlie. She talks to him about the Flashes, and he tells her that only the good ones are going to come true. Charlie’s not buying that, mister. He tells her that the bad ones were warnings, and she says she doesn’t understand her warning. And then, the second episode in a row ends with Charlie creeping the hell out of me and all right-thinking people when she says “D. Gibbons is a bad man.” Oh crap.
Next wee, an ex-Nazi gets involved, and things go badly for the crows.
