8. Playing Cards With Coyote

I've just finished watching episode eight of FlashForward and I can say without fear of contradiction that this was the worst story yet. Actually, there wasn't a story here, just a series of unconnected scenes that painfully rehashed stuff that's already been resolved, reworked tedious character profiles and failed to progress the larger story arc in any meaningful way. It represents 42 minutes of my life I'll never get back, and the people behind this show deserve to ring everyone who saw it and apologise in person.

If that suspiciously sounds like I've completely lost my patience with FlashForward then that's a good hypothesis, because I have.

There were scenes here and dialogue in them that made the script of Sesame Street seem like the collective works of William Wordsworth. But shining like an exceptional beacon of crapola was the one where Aaron gets his opportunity to have it explained to him by his was-dead-and-is-now-alive daughter how that's possible.

Her reply is, "I survived, I don't know how."

What? Perhaps that should have been ‘I survived, the writers couldn't think of a way that made sense either.' She's been struck by an RPG round that's blown her leg off above the knee, exposing her femoral artery. Yet, she survives, but she doesn't know how... Utter bullshit!

But to be honest, almost everything else in here was equally garbage. The episode is broken up into three main plot lines: the one about Aaron I've already mentioned, another about Lloyd and Simon playing poker, which was also terminally stupid, and a flaccid detective sub-plot with Mark and Demetri. I'd love to tell you that Olivia isn't in it, wearing that expression of pain she does so often, but she is and it hurts.

I'm sorry to say, I don't care if these characters live or die, have a baby or a colonoscopy. They're uninteresting and two dimensional in the extreme.

Starting with a mildly interesting premise, it's come as something of a shock that, eight episodes in, what we've got here is nothing more than a penchant for insulting the intelligence of its viewers.

As a prime example, I'd offer the moronic image enhancement technology scenes, which are repeated, not once, but twice. They have an image where they can make out a tattoo on an arm, but not any facial features, and then they have the nerve to repeat the same rubbish that they can make out a man is wearing a ring on his hand but not what he looks like. This interpretation of what image enhancement can and cannot do makes the laughable stuff they put on CSI seem like documentary evidence.

At what point will the FlashForward script meetings be holding that all important part where they ask themselves does any of this make sense? Not soon, it seems.

Normally, I'd write more, but, frankly, this show doesn't deserve my time or yours. I wish we could all FlashForward now to the end of this mess and find something better to do than mildly inflate its increasingly poor TV ratings.

Check out our review of episode 7 here.