Review: FLASH FORWARD Asks Can the Future Be Changed?

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Review: FLASH FORWARD Asks Can the Future Be Changed? (But It’s No Lame STAR TREK Retread)

Posted on 21 September 2009 by Brent Hartinger, Editor

Four Torches (Out of Five)

What would you do if you had a glimpse of your future, and it was bad? Or what if everyone else had a glimpse of their future, and you didn’t seem to have one?

It’s a good bet you’d do everything you could to try to change that future, to make sure what you saw, or didn’t see, never happened.

But can the future be changed? We all know what the producers of Star Trek think, but is that the truth?

These are the questions that drive the new show Flash Forward, the premiere of which airs this Thursday (ABC, 8 PM/7 C).

The series is based on a (pretty good) book by sci-fi author Robert J. Sawyer, about how the whole world “blacks out” at the same time for just over two minutes. In the TV series, during these black-outs, everyone has a vision of their futures six months ahead.

(Incidentally, those scenes of disaster on that Los Angeles freeway after everyone blacks out? That’s not all CGI — they actually shut down that freeway in order to film it. There were apparently lots of angry commuters!)

Anyway, will the solution to the central mystery of how these visions came to be end up being the same as in the book? It’s hard to imagine how they could come with any other explanation.

But honestly, this series isn’t really about the solution to that mystery — not any more than Lost is about how they got on the island.

No, it’s more about the individual characters and how they deal with the fact that their futures are not necessarily what they expected. Some of the characters are looking forward to their futures. Some are confused and frightened by what they’ve seen. And some — those who see nothing but blackness during their black-out — are downright terrified.

The pilot, screened for critics by the network, is gripping and fast-paced. But because the show has a large Lost-like ensemble, it’s hard to get a sense of any of the characters, so it’s difficult to know just how engaging this show will be over the long-term.

(Truthfully, I’d just finished watching the pilot for the remake of V and, as single episodes go, I’d found that a lot more intriguing.)

Still, the show is obviously well-done, and there is a plot-twist toward the end of the first hour that’s not part of the book, and it will definitely get everyone to sit up and take notice. It did me.

Better still, the producers promise that, unlike with Lost, almost all of the mysteries introduced in the pilot, including the intriguing plot-twist I just mentioned, will be wrapped up by the end of the first season.

Does that mean that if the show has a second season, the whole world will have another “flash forward”? I think it’s more likely that individual characters will have such visions.

Now I’m getting way ahead of myself.

Flash Forward didn’t strike me as the zeitgeist-y, must-see show that the network is clearly hoping it will be. But it’s worth watching.

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