Yes, another forking episode of this forking show. And for those who are sadistic enough to follow it, I’ll warn you from the outset that there are spoilers from here on in! How bad this part is sets the entire tone of the story, which, if you hadn’t guessed, resolves the whole Demetri-must-die and how issue. The way the adults talk to Charlie in this opening scene had me wanting her to become possessed, as in The Exorcist, and then puke on them all. It’s nauseating, and they talk to her like she is three, not six. But then the bit where we see her meet Dyson Frost is equally creepy, because he seems to believe the way you talk to children is to imitate the odd voice of Johnny Depp in Willy Wonka! Meanwhile, Zoey’s decided that Alda Hertzog is her best hope to stop Demetri being killed, and obviously she wants something in return, as all incarcerated people always do. This is a repeat of what happened in episode 3, as I recall. Demetri isn’t doing so well, as he’s sat in a chair with a gun mounted into a contraption pointing at him. Would that be Mark’s gun? The writers seem to have long ago given up with the prediction element to the show. We’re then given a flashback of Alda meeting Frost for the first time, and him explaining his Garden of Forking Paths, which represents the various chronological events and how they intersect, with his ‘escape’ marked out in white dominos on the floor. Very visual, even if it didn’t make much sense to stand all those dominos up to make a point to a person he’d never met 60 seconds earlier. Obviously, the dominos weren’t a sufficient explanation, so they then move forward to the present for Frost to give Demetri the total exposition, which, as he’s trapped on the chair, means he’s got to sit through. The one piece of interesting information we get is that Dyson is also supposed to die that day, and it’s his belief that once you’ve glimpsed the future it then tries to make you conform. Dyson is big on conforming. He’s fallen out with his ‘associates’ and wants to give himself up, but goes about this in an entirely unbelievable way. Alda gets her day in court, has little information, and escapes like anyone could have guessed she would. At any point does anyone in the production staff read these scripts and say ‘err…that’s very predictable’? I guess not. But for sheer silliness, the winner this week goes to the scene where Olivia is taken to see the body of the homeless man whom Frost shot with Mark’s gun. The examiner doing the autopsy has his brain out, yet we see the body and there is no indication that he’s had the top of his head removed, so how he get it out, osmosis? Demetri would be toast, but Mark is an intensively trained FBI agent, and has been on the course marked ‘Using a Sat Nav’, which knowledge he applies to Dyson’s car. Mark arrives at the location where Demetri is being held, but, presumably because he uses AT&T, he’s got no signal with which to call backup! He runs around, and then magically, he’s got a signal! (It’s definitely AT&T!). Mark has three minutes to save Demteri, but which building to go in? The one piece of information Alda gave up wasn’t total junk after all, phew! It’s my regrettable task to inform you, Demetri lives. But Dyson’s The Garden Of Forking Paths is erased when Demetri stands up, removing all the clues. Shame Mark didn’t use his phone to take a picture, isn’t it? This was a really bad episode, but it wasn’t over yet. James Callis turns up as a savant called Gabriel to spook Olivia while she’s buying coffee, doing an impression of MC Hammer. He repeatedly says, “You can’t touch this.” Disappointingly, she lives. On the map Dyson created the ‘End’ is in 2016, but I’m confident FlashForward will hit the buffers long before then. Read our review of episode 16 here.
