When FlashForward first appeared, a great many people drew parallels with Lost, in that this was obviously going to be a convoluted story that might occasionally wander away from the central themes. I’m not going into the deep details of what happens in Course Correction, but needless to say, minor characters come back and the previously entirely discredited notion of ‘destiny’ is once again resurrected. My frustration with all this is that they’ve already told us things that make this not a real possibility, not least that flashes forwards contradict on occasion, and there is no one perfect destiny for everyone. Yet, not soon after this story starts, we get told by Lloyd that ‘the forces of the universe may be pushing us towards the futures we’ve seen’. Err? What ‘forces of the universe’? Is he talking about ‘God’, perchance, or if this one of the forces that we’ve previously not noticed? There are also obvious holes in this argument, because presumably these mystical forces don’t have the ability to bring Al Gough back to life, since he stuck one finger up to his destiny earlier in the season. The counter argument is that whatever happens to everyone was always the way it was, and that the flashforwards visions were just a perverse component in making these events happen. But forgetting that conundrum, what else did FlashForward bring us this week? I’d say a couple of bad things and one utterly brilliant one. On the less wonderful side of the coin is their rather ham laden attempts at soap-style romance. They’ve been slow simmering Bryce and Nicole for a while now, but decided to put some spice in that arrangement by now revealing to Nicole that Keiko is in the vicinity. It now makes perfect sense why Nicole can speak fluent Japanese, even if she’s determined to have a pay grade of a person who can’t even speak English. It’s presumably so she can tell Keiko to ship back to the land of the rising sun, and keep Bryce for herself. The other ‘romance’ is that between Olivia and Lloyd, which after at least 12 episodes of whining about saving her marriage to Mark but doing absolutely nothing about, Olivia now entirely buys into. I guess it was Gabriel McDow telling her that, with Lloyd, they were as like ‘sliced bread’ that pushed her for some lip-locking action. I do hope that at some point Gabriel corrects himself on the bread analogy, and says he meant ‘toast’. But it’s Gabriel, brilliantly conceived by James Callis that is the highlight of Course Correction for me. There’s a scene where he’s brought a burger that isn’t exactly to the specification he requested (never ask the FBI to bring you lunch), which is one of the few intentionally funny sequences FlashForward has managed so far. If I read it right, James Callis’ intuition looks well founded, because it’s just been reported to me that FlashForward is cancelled. While obviously distraught on the inside, yet smiling on the outside, I’ve decided to interpret this as a special TV force in the universe which must balance good and renewed shows against bad and cancelled ones. To keep the fine balance of cosmic energies it has decided that this one’s destiny is to end very soon, thankfully. Those not wishing to accept this reality have three episodes to put their QED rings on.
