thanks for the mystery (but keep the marsupial to yourself)
Dear ABC,
To begin, thank you.
Thank you for anticipating the entertainment abyss that will follow the final season of LOST. Thank you for attempting to deflect the agony of having nothing to discuss TV-wise when the All The Answers finally come. Thank you for charging Brannon Braga (24, Enterprise, Star Trek: Voyager) and David S. Goyer (Blade, The Dark Knight, Kickboxer 2: The Road Back) with the Herculean task of making an instant mega-hit out of your brand new Friday time-slot, supernatural mystery thriller FlashForward (no spaces). But upon viewing, I noticed a recurring and disturbing element to your program: With regard to the manner in which you have chosen to cross-market said supernatural mystery thriller with itself…Just Stop. Tacked ham-handedly onto every commercial break, and without even a moment’s breath to process the strange events your show just moments earlier depicted in slow motion, your marketing department hospital-passes “clues” to the hapless viewer. Clues which plugged your show’s website while drawing massive blinking red arrows at the (supposedly) mysterious elements of a, thus far, tightly-packed and well-made series with an incredible amount of potential.
You’ve got a killer premise (based on the novel by Canadian author Robert J. Sawyer), with the entire world blacking out and then mentally fast forwarding in their respective lives six months. All of which causes a great deal of havoc, chaos and full-on destruction since planes were flying, cars were driving and doctors were surgery-ing while people everywhere synchro-power-napped. Folks were out for precisely two minutes and seventeen seconds and I’m certain such a distinct duration for the global party faux pas will also prove significant (you will no doubt TELL ME in big block letters that it is so). Joseph Fiennes (name something other than Shakespeare In Love. Go on.), John Cho (still gonna be Harold for a while, just ask Stifler) and Sonya Walger (something called LOST…) rush around (often politely, in slow-motion) in their respective circles trying to figure it all out and they acquit themselves quite nicely. Well done Casting department.
But dearest ABC, I will thank you to know that I will remember, or I will forget, the goddamn kangaroo as I damn well please. And I will allow your show to tell me, at the pace your writers decide, more about April 29, 2010, 10pm; the time all your characters witnessed in their visions. How dare you tell me what clues to follow, or where to double-click in order to jump the plot arc. Just how special stupid do you think we all are? This smacks of a desperate need to put up big early numbers to claim “newest hit-mystery-puzzle-thriller, did-we-mention-if-you’ve-even-heard-of-LOST-you’ll-dry-hump-THIS” status. Which would no doubt cement FlashForward as the heir apparent to your outgoing island-based head-scratcher (sixth and final season starts February ‘10, pre-order your Seppuku kits now) and keep as many folks as possible hooked before all that challenging brain activity starts to give them a headache.
But seriously, do you watch your own shows? We faithful fans are accustomed to piecing it together and being rewarded for taking it all in, without being spoon-fed. A huge facet of LOST’s appeal is the fan-made conversation and consternation about the plot twists and character dynamics. Once you start marking the important parts with purple smoke, the search, and thus the fun, is over. LOST is like a corn maze you pull over to on a family trip, maybe a bit too close to sundown, with the tiny fear that you might not get out before the light fails. So far, FlashForward (no spaces) is smacking more like a funny pages pencil maze, but not without the potential to become the mindfuckingly terrifying maze from Cube.
Please don’t let me be misunderstood, there’s a real and unique attempt at story legitimacy here, with appreciation for authentic reactions to such fantastic circumstances. In one flash forward, you have a dude fulfilling the mundane human necessity of taking a dump. No one, at any point, takes a piss on television these days. Not on 24, certainly, and there’s no way Bauer could go all those days without rupturing his kidneys. Here you’ve got a high level character reading the Sports page and pinching one off. Kudos for the gritty realism. But don’t hit me over the head with your cleverness. The series premiere had the best hook of a cliff-hanger ending I’ve seen since True Blood went off to Hiatusville (admittedly not that long, but solid nonetheless): More often than not, any CCTV footage in TV land can be blown up and enhanced well past anything we as a technologically adept species can achieve in real life. Here the blurry works as a brilliant veil. But please don’t, as you’re going to commercial, tell me someone up and moving during the blackout is significant. If I can’t figure that out myself, I shouldn’t be allowed to operate a television.
So ABC, please, keep FlashFoward (no spaces) blurry and stop “informing” me that a kangaroo jumping down a Washington, D.C. street is remarkable. Now a polar bear in the jungle, that’s different.
