The Final Flash Forward Blog Ep. 6-8 (new due date)

Watch Episode 6 here: http://abc.go.com/watch/flashforward/235637/239645/scary-monsters-and-super-creeps

Episode 7: http://abc.go.com/watch/flashforward/235637/240432/the-gift#sl-0

Episode 8: http://abc.go.com/watch/flash-forward/235637/241106/playing-cards-with-coyote#sl-0

In episode 6, we finally learn more about Simon Costa (Dominic Monaghan from Lost and Lord of the Rings) and Lloyd Simcoe - that they're involved in this flash forward / black out that "killed 20 million people." According to Wikipedia, Costa is a Stanford quantum physicist who worked w/ Simcoe. In later episodes, Lloyd has second thoughts about what they have done and wants to come clean and expose his involvement in the experiment. Simon comes to L.A. to "clean up" this mess - possible exposure to the world about this experiment (in particle physics?). And then lately, Lloyd and Simon play a game of poker for the right to turn to expose the experiment to the press. Lloyd cheats in order to win!


Simcoe's son, Dylan, an autistic boy who provides an extremely awkward moment when he arrived at the Benford resident in episode 6 saying, "this is my home too." Of course, Bryce, the fomerly suicidal intern, has caught on to Dr. Benford's cold shoulder for Lloyd. And, I think Bryce has the hots for the tragically doomed beautiful babysitter, Nicole (and after watching episode 9, vice versa). Just a thought.


As the FBI investigation goes forward, Benford, Noh and the rest discover what seems to be a "death cult" called the Blue Hand where people with no flash forward visions tempt fate and play Russian roulette, indulge in weird fantasies, etc. In essence, nihilism at its worst - everything goes b/c there is no tomorrow. Ironically, what brought the Blue Hand all together is the FBI's website, the Mosaic.

At the end of the episode, "The Gift", Agent Al Gough jumped off of the L.A. FBI building so that he would not kill a woman in the future, one he is overheard talking about in his flash forward. It seems that in episode 8, "Playing Cards with Coyotes", his death, his sacrifice is hailed as a sign that the future isn't written in stone (Duh!). Agent Gough's death has been an inspiration to all (as well as a tragedy for his fictional family and all the ladies who were looking forward to him as weekly eye-candy).

And Agent Hawk recovers from her gunshot wounds and comes back to work in episode 8. Is it still possible that she has a baby? Who knows? But the attack on her makes no sense. This is referenced throughout episode 8 that there must be some leak in the LA office - that this group is one step ahead of them. Remember, just b/c things occur at the same time doesn't mean there's a causal relationship.

But still so may questions remain and there's barely half the season gone:

1. When the FBI task force was in Washington D.C. and they were attacked by that heavily armed, highly skilled group of Asians, I think that we (the audience) were left to assume that the attack and the Blue Hand were one and the same. Then you have to add in the attack on Agent Janis Hawk and something doesn't add up. I think this has something to do with the woman who warned Demetri about his death (she was in Hong Kong!). Just b/c two things occur at the same time doesn't mean they're connected - one of our philosophers said this. What do you think?

2. What is going to happen with Lloyd and Simon after the exposure of their experiment? What did they do that affected the entire world?

3. Who is Suspect Zero at the Detroit Stadium?

4. How is Olivia and Mark's daughter connected with this? How does she know about D Gibbons if what she saw in her flash forward involves her hanging out at the Benford house with Dylan Simcoe? The only other person in the house is Lloyd Simcoe. Could Lloyd be D Gibbons? *Does anyone find it amazing that for a doctor and an FBI agent they both lead "regular" lives

5. What is gonna happen with Aaron and his daughter (who apparently witnessed something terrible in Afghanistan - something that military contractors Jericho had perpetrated)? In episode 8, in Aaron's flashback, an Afghan medic tells him that the "accounts are secured".

6. What would you do if you had no flash forward? How would you prepare for the end?

7. Do you think that by killing the tattoed man did Mark change his future? Or was he just one of many tattoed military-looking men that we see at the end of episode 8 (could be Jericho? Could this thing that Lloyd and Simon were working on be a weapon that Jericho is pioneering (given the awkward Oppenheimer / atom bomb reference at the very end)?)

Pick 3 of the questions (one of them should include #6) and complete it by MONDAY evening, 11:59 p.m. November 30th. Max 12 pts.

The Mosaic - http://abc.go.com/shows/flash-forward/mosaiccollective

People add/invent their own stories about what they were doing in their flash forward. Kinda cheesy, but an interesting social experiment.

Flash Forward extra credit blog #5 - "Gimme Some Truth"

The show begins with a sudden attack on Benford, Special-Agent-in-Charge Wedeck, and other FBI agents as they're leaving a parking garage. A big black panel van smashes into their car, three Asian men emerge from the van and blast the FBI car w/ a rocket propelled grenade. We don't know who survives until probably next week. Despite the call from the mysterious woman in Hong Kong, could this be the moment that Demetri is killed instead of March 15, 2010?

Also in this episode, we see that Special Agent Wedeck is buddies with the President of the United States. Apparently, most of the world's leaders decided not to reveal what occurred in their flash forward, though the show gives us a glimpse into what happened w/ the President's FF. He's lying in bed and is awoken by a Secret Service agent who tells him that "something's happened." The President states that there's too much to do in the present to worry about the future, but with all of the world's leaders staying silent about their FFs, I'm beginning to think that their silence plants the seed for a thousand conspiracy theories within the reality of the show.

- Why the silence?

- What could it possibly give away?

- What do the leaders know that's so vital?

Also, if this unknown event that is looming in the President's future has already occurred before he was woken up, how come the Mosaic or Benford's group hasn't picked up on it from everyone else's stories or another source?

We're also given glimpses into Wedeck's background as he returns to Washington D.C. to testify at the Senate's finance committee. There's a reference to something shady or damaging in his past that involves the senator who's in charge of the committee that would provide funds for his Mosaic task force. What do you think this damaging past could be? But, the President offers Wedeck the important Cabinet post, Director of Homeland Security.

Olivia overhears Benford and his sponsor, Aaron, discussing Benford going to an AA meeting since he's in a stressful situation. She discusses the possibility of Mark drinking again, and Aaron reminds her that alcoholics "never need a reason to drink."

During this episode, the President mentions that "the Chinese see opportunity in chaos." Is this an allusion to chaos theory? The theory could mean trying to find order in random or chaotic systems (1), or in mathematical circles in which a system is highly sensitive to minute changes like the weather (2). Where some people see insanity and mayhem, others see order. In fact, chaos theorists show what might have been a tiny error at the beginning of a chain of events could lead to a much bigger error later on. In other words, things may appear to be random at first, but in fact, they are determined by that tiny error or fluctuation that occurred in the beginning.

You may have heard of something very similar called the butterfly effect:

"The flapping of a single butterfly's wing today produces a tiny change in
the state of the atmosphere. Over a period of time, what the atmosphere actually
does diverges from what it would have done. So, in a month's time, a tornado
that would have devastated the Indonesian coast doesn't happen. Or maybe one
that wasn't going to happen, does."
(Ian Stewart, Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos, pg. 141) 1

Add the newest revelation that Olivia's future lover, Lloyd Simcoe, might be involved with the blackout (given the call at the end of this episode), it makes me wonder what went wrong and how he's involved.

With this in mind, there's a couple things to think about (pick two to answer):

1. Do you think that such a thing as the butterfly effect is plausible? Why or why not?

2. Speculate on how Lloyd Simcoe is involved in the blackout and how his relationship w/ Olivia might begin;

3. What would drive Mark Benford to start drinking again? Olivia said it occurred last when he was away from home and testifying in a committee hearing.

4. Why do you think world leaders have chosen not to reveal their FFs?

Due next Friday, November 6 at 11:59 p.m.

Biblio:

1. http://www.imho.com/grae/chaos/chaos.html

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

To dig deeper into chaos theory, follow these:

3. http://www.mountainman.com.au/chaos_03.htm - an excerpt from a book on chaos by James Gleick;

4. http://hypertextbook.com/chaos/ The Chaos Hyper Text book which includes an intro and chaos's application.

5. http://www.societyforchaostheory.org/ - The Society for Chaos Theory in psychology and life sciences.

Choas is defined in the following quotes:

"The complicated, aperiodic, attracting orbits of certain (usually low-dimensional) dynamical systems." Philip Holmes - mathematician

"A rapidly expanding field of research to which mathematicians, physicists, hydrodynamicists, ecologists and many others have all made important contributions. And: A newly recognized and ubiquitous class of natural phenomena." Hao Bai-Lin, physicist

"Apparently random recurrent behaviour in a simple deterministic (clockwork-like) system." H. Bruce Stewart, applied mathematician

"The irregular, unpredictable behaviour of deterministic, nonlinear dynamical systems." Roderick V. Jensen, theoretical physicist

"Dynamics with positive, but finite, metric entropy. The translation from mathese is: behaviour that produces informatin (amplifies small uncertainties), but is not utterly unpredictable." James Crutchfield, Santa Cruz collective

"Dynamics freed at last fromt he shackles of order and predictability ... Systems liberated to randomly explore their every dynamical possibility ... Exciting variety, richness of choice, a cornucopia of opportunity." Joseph Ford (3).

Flash Forward Extra Credit Blog #3 - Leap of Faith

Well, after this 3rd episode, some things may have become slightly clearer (how vague is that statement!).

Commentary about the episode:

1. Somehow, the widespread death (murder) of crows is possibly connected to the blackout - as evidenced by the scene in Somalia in 1991. The tower that the boy saw appeared to be man-made - there was a clear scene of a ladder on the outside of it. Is this tower transmitting some kind of radio waves or microwaves that kill the birds and cause mass unconsciousness?

2. We discover a date when Demetri Noh will be murdered - March 15, 2010 (Ides of March -the day of Caesar's murder??), but the mystery woman calling from Hong Kong won't divulge any more details.

3. The date that the blackout occurred was October 6, 2009, a date that is entirely plausible for a baseball game to occur in Detroit (if it hadn't been for the Sports Illustrated cover jinx and the Tigers collapsed down the stretch against the Twins and White Sox in the last week of the season - how's that for fate or self-fulfilling prophecy?).

4. Aaron's daughter's DNA was matched w/ the corpse that was buried two years previously.

5. The Nazi might have just "outed" Agent Hawk w/ his analysis of why she's wearing a ring on her left thumb. After that scene, I would like to take back my prediction that she and Noh would hook up and becoming pregnant. She's been very straight forward from the beginning that she doesn't want a baby nor has a boyfriend.

Blog Questions:

I would pose a few questions and you should do at least two (I thought that this episode was supposed to be a character-developer and didn't have much plot/action to it, so there's little to discuss):

1. Signs are pointing to something man-made causing this flash forward + blackout. Several questions popped up: If this happened before in Somalia in 1991, did the people see the future too (and did the future come true for all of them)? Were there any side effects for the Somalis affected by the black out (if it kills crows, it's reasonable to assume that there might be side effects on humans)? Did the black out have anything to do with the famine that killed 300,000 in Somalia later that year or the civil war that tore the nation apart? What do you think?

2. More self-fulfilling prophecies: The FBI director's wife is already counting on being the new adopted mother of the boy in her vision. She said that "people are saying that these visions are true" at lunch w/ Dr. Olivia Benford. I've heard that saying in all three episodes (I think), but my larger question is, how do people know that these visions are true if they haven't come true yet? What constitutes Truth for someone in this situation? Just b/c five billion people say it's true, does that mean it is (I'm being facetious here, but only sorta)?

3. If it's true/accurate that Aaron's daughter's body is really in the casket, then how does he explain the vision? Is the TV show showing us w/ the possibility that some of these visions can be incorrect? Or, even more insidious, what if the vision is correct and his daughter is still alive? Why would the military have covered that up? Check out the 60 Minutes story on former NFL player turned military man, Pat Tillman, here for a story of a military cover-up.

- To expand on this for a second, given the infinite possibilities within the human experience, it has to possible to assume, even likely, that not everyone saw the future (Demetri Noh, sheriff in Pigeon, Utah) or that some of these events are bound to be incorrect b/c of circumstances beyond their control.

4. I think the Nazi w/ news of 137 seconds connected to the Kabbalah might just be a red herring (or false lead). The people associated with Lost are not above dropping false hints in public interviews, and so I wouldn't be surprised to find out that these numbers mean nothing at all. There is the obsession with the Lost numbers, so maybe the producers of FF are trying to copy it or fake it.

5. When Benford and Aaron talked about a leap of faith, this could be a direct reference to Danish philosopher Soren Kierkegaard's concept of a leap of faith. SK believed that a leap of faith was necessary in order to believe in Christianity b/c there were some contradictory elements in it that you could not accept at the same time. To quote Wikipedia's page:

In his book Philosophical Fragments, Kierkegaard delves deep into the paradoxes that Christianity presents. One of these is the belief that there existed a being (Jesus) who is both 100% man and 100% God. Since neither logic nor reason can reconcile this, one would require faith to believe it in light of the paradox. So, when one decides to have faith that a being existed as both God and man, one makes a qualitative change from non-belief to belief, and thus makes a 'leap of faith' that it is true. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_of_faith)

Do you think that Kierkegaard is right and that we need a leap of faith in order to believe? Why or why not? If someone is not a believer in a higher power, then the leap of faith could be applied to different situations that are relevant to his/her life.

Please pick 2 of the questions above and answer them by Friday night, October 23, 11:59 pm.

Flash Forward Extra Credit Blog #2

In episode #2, we watch Officers Benford and Noh discover the real D Collins who arrives at the Los Angeles' FBI office b/c of her vision. She's complaining to her credit card company about the charges racked up on her bill. She didn't do it, she said. She doesn't know anything about pigeons.

Pigeon, Utah is where Benford and Noh head next. The sheriff of Pigeon tells them that she didn't have a vision (like Noh), and when the shooting starts, she ends up dead. Uh-oh, you're thinking the same thing I'm thinking. Demetri Noh is toast and will not marry the love of his life and dance to "Islands in the Stream."

In the rubble of the blast at the doll factory, they find a melted cell phone which Agent Hawk is able to get some numbers off of. Soon, we discover that the person who used this phone also was awake during the black out (or can we assume that?) because apparently the phone called the dark. mysterious guy at the Detroit baseball stadium (called Detroit's Outside Super Stadium) who was caught on film being awake.

At issue:

1. The officers interpret dark mystery guy (DMG)'s movements as deliberate and fully aware of what is going on, as if he was involved in the conspiracy to make the entire planet lose consciousness for 137 seconds. I would disagree with that assessment. I think, judging by the man's movements, he looks disoriented, shocked, and not exactly sure of himself. Logic also follows that if he was involved in the plot, why would he be somewhere where he knows that he would be filmed like at a live baseball game? Why would he want the world to be able to see him? (It will just be a matter of time before we see the man's face when the image comes back from the supercomputers at the NSA).

2. What was the deal with the whole elaborate bomb at the doll factory? The 2nd mystery person (2MP). Hard drives left in fish tanks full of flammable liquid? 2MP standing near them with lighters - how did he get away w/o blowing him/herself to pieces? How did Benford and Noh survive this blast? It looked pretty wicked, but then again, Hollywood blasts tend to big on bang, small on substance. Again, maybe I missed something, but Benford jumps to the conclusion that 2MP was looking for the cause of the black out too. Why did he jump to this conclusion? What was his evidence?

3. I've got a theory on how Agent Hawk becomes pregnant. Near the end of episode 2, it seemed that she and Demetri shared a nice moment together, and that made me think that either the two have a history or maybe they might hook up before he dies. She falls for him, they have a fling, he's killed, and a piece of him lives on in the baby girl that she's carrying inside her (and for some reason having an ultrasound at 10 pm at night? - not a normal time for these procedures). What do you think?

4. Mark and Olivia Benford's daughter, Charlie, seems to be the key to unlocking the secrets here. She doesn't want to play the "blackout game." She recognizes the boy, the son of the man who is supposed to have the affair w/ Olivia but doesn't recognize his father. And did anyone catch a mention of nightmares? Is it possible she's having additional visions? Last, Benford burned the friendship bracelet in a fleeting hope that by destroying his daughter's gift he'll change his destiny. But I have a feeling Charlie will notice the first one is gone and make him another one; I came to this conclusion based upon the observation that in the flashbacks, the one Benford was wearing was brighter and more vivid in color whereas the first one was sorta blah.

Your thoughts on this idea?

5. Thinking about the intern, Bryce, and the babysitter, Nicole, and both of them turning to God for the explanation why the blackout occurred, why is it these two in particular turned to God? What were they doing at the time of the blackout? Did that have anything to do with their explanation?

6. The big picture: why would the blackout happen? What could be the overall purpose and how could this actually happen?

Pick 3 of the 6 questions above and answer them by 11:59 p.m. Friday, October 16.

To watch episode 2, click here: http://abc.go.com/watch/flash-forward/235637/236877/white-to-play

Extra Credit - Flash Forward Blog #1

Flash Forward is the new TV show on ABC whose premise is that the entire world blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. During that blackout, many people had visions of events that would occur 6 months into the future, on April 29, 2010 at 10 p.m. (Pacific Daylight Time). Here's the TV show's summary from their website:

"Los Angeles FBI Agent Mark Benford (Joseph Fiennes) is
desperate to uncover why this happened and who or what is behind it. And he's
not the only one. Before long, everyone starts asking, "What did you see?" As
Mark and his team struggle to figure out what caused this bizarre event, they
begin to piece together the future by creating a huge database of people's flash
forwards from all over the world - The Mosaic Collective. No one knows what
these flash forwards mean or exactly what the future really holds. But it is
clear that across the globe people who've never met will somehow be intimately
connected and will have an impact on each other's lives in the next six months.
Some will fear what's coming, others excited; but not a single person will be
unaffected."

The questions that we raised in class concerned concerned self-fulfilling prophecies. How likely are the characters to fulfill their destinies? Mark Benford, the FBI agent investigating the blackout, worries about falling off the wagon. His wife, Olivia, worries about breaking up her marriage w/ a mysterious stranger. Will Demetri Noh, Mark's partner, figure out why he didn't have a vision in time to avoid a potential death? How will fellow FBI agent Janis Hawk become pregnant? Will Mark's AA sponsor and friend, Aaron, find his daughter alive in Afghanistan after believing she'd been dead for 2 years?

"Just because we saw these things doesn't mean they have to happen."

Questions (choose one of the following):
1. If you see a vision like the ones that these folks have seen, why doesn't it have to happen? Or, do you believe the opposite: these visions are glimpses of the future and that no matter how hard you try, you won't be able to avoid it? Or maybe we wish / desire something to happen so badly that it actually occurs?

2. Why do you think that some of the characters (Nicole, the babysitter and Bryce, the intern who almost committed suicide) turned to God as an explanation for the black out? Is it easier to turn to God as an explanation for this event or harder? Why?

3. Could our consciousness move somewhere else? In the TV series' example, it moves temporally six months into the future. Do you think it could happen? Why or why not? As a related question, where does our consciousness go when we dream?

Answer one of the questions with a minimum of 150 words and have it completed by Sunday night, October 12th, 11:59 p.m.