Sonya Walger Fan

Is ABC’s Flash Forward the new Lost?

Posted on 24. Sep, 2009 by gertiebeth in FlashForward, Reviews

All the hype is right. Flash Forward really is the new Lost. After the premiere on September 24, get ready to read into things and obsess over subtle details. It’s totally compelling.

Flash Forward opens in the middle of a crash, just like Lost did. The Greeks called it “In medea res.” We get all our character development visually in scenery and encounters. It’s the professional way to set things up. Not the most nuanced, but not insulting.

The flash forward is an easy to understand occurrence with deeply complex and profound ramifications. Seeing the future means different things for different people, some hopeful, some horrible, some so unknown it would make you crazy. You don’t want it to end because there are so many possibilities. You don’t want to take a week off from thinking about it.

The characters are smart. They know exactly how to analyze this situation. There’s no time wasted explaining it. They get right to it. Compiling flashes of news is a fascinating protocol to outline the future. They address permutations like time zones. Some people’s flashes are humorously mundane.

There is good action for TV. Cars flip, roll into some interesting places, stuff explodes, people get crushed. It looks epic, if in more fleeting moments than the feature film equivalent. It definitely holds up with 24, Prison Break, Alias, Terminator, etc.

It’s not just about the potential consequences of the event either. I’m into the chaotic aftermath immediately following the big accident. It’s not I Am Legend but you see some survival, some self-centered defense and just plane wreckage.

The flash itself is a haze. We get a sense of what’s going on but it’s dream-like enough that it’s mysterious. We’ll definitely be filling in gaps week by week, probably obsessing over red herrings and overanalyzing irrelevant details. The flash happens in some really inopportune situations too. Some people just have an inconvenience, others end up in some serious sh*t.

A mistake with The Nine was that there really wasn’t that much new to reveal. So we got five more minutes of posturing during a standoff. Here, we may see each person’s flash in different weeks, so that’ll be new. By the time they go through everyone, they’ll have a new flash to start.

Some details I noticed, which you’ll appreciate after you see the premiere:

• It’s funny to notice generic brands. Looters hit Voltage City for free electronics.
• Spoiler alert: There’s a kanagroo in downtown L.A. That beats Fringe’s cow.
• They do say “Flash Forward” in the episode. I like when they say the name of the show in the show.
• Question: On April 29, does everyone black out again or just live the 2 minutes they foresaw?

The characters played by Joseph Fiennes and Sonya Walger have a shtick of saying negative things as terms of affection. That’s not cute to me. Negativity is powerful. There’s no substitute for honest love.

Anyway, I’m hooked. I hope they never explain why this happened. It should just be the gimmee. This is what happens. We’ll have fun with it, but creating some technobabble reason will rape it of it’s powerful impact. Unless it’s really, really good.

Source: Crave Online