A 'Flash' of something tasty

After a Glee-ful entrée, let’s move on to the main course—a suspenseful science-fiction show. I read the book Flashforward by Robert J. Sawyer over the summer, and was very excited to see that a TV show was going to be made based on the book. The pilot of FlashForward lived up to most of my expectations, although there are several things that are quite different from the book, including a major plotline that was not in the book at all, which makes the two storylines vary greatly.

The show opens with one of the show’s protagonists, Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes), regaining consciousness in his car, which has apparently flipped over in an accident. He pulls himself from the wreckage and sees a huge scene of destruction in Los Angeles—people are injured or dead everywhere he looks.



The scene jumps to four hours earlier. It’s a normal, peaceful day, and everyone is going through with his or her daily routines. Everything throughout the day runs smoothly—until everyone in the entire world loses consciousness for two minutes and 17 seconds. However, consciousness isn’t lost. The consciousness of the entire world’s population jumped forward six months.

Of course, this discovery (which has been proved because many people had the same “visions” because they were together six months in the future) changes everyone’s worldview. Some are worried—they saw themselves with someone who was not their significant other. Some are hopeful—one man saw himself with his daughter, who was presumably killed overseas in the military two years ago. And others are frightened—Demetri Noh (John Cho) didn’t have any vision at all, because six months in the future he is dead.

FBI investigators—Benford included—are put in charge of the situation to try and figure out why it happened. They reach a lead when they see a video of a stadium in Detroit. Everyone is unconscious except for one man, who is walking around. It becomes their goal to find this man and find out why these visions happened.

As for myself, now I am going to let my own consciousness go forward into sleep. Critique (and college student connection!) coming soon!

I leave you with a promo video for the pilot episode. Chew it over.