Like I was saying.Until my Jack returns I will have to do my happy dance for someone else. His name is Mark Bendford. He's played by the delicious Joseph Fiennes who, unfortunately, isn't speaking with his British accent. Of course, if he was, I'd have to watch it while taking a cold shower. Although I know the second episode has aired, I've only watched the pilot and holy Mary mother of God, it was pretty freakin' good. Very reminiscent of the Lost pilot.
Long story short, FBI agent Mark (hottie) Bendford is chasing a terror subject when he suddenly wakes up in an upside down SUV. He gets out and realizes that the city around him as gone to shite. Airplanes have crashed, cars have run over people, buildings are on fire (not sure how some of those happen though) and everyone is standing around with a "WTF just happened?" look. Mark soon realizes, with everyone else, that everyone in the entire world had a blackout for about two minutes.
In Mark's blackout he's at FBI headquarters, swigging on a flask and looking at a board filled with what looks like clues in an investigation. Suddenly, masked men with assault riffles enter the room and Mark pulls his gun to defend himself. One guy, he notices, has three stars tattooed on his arm. That's where his vision ends.
This guy had a gun in his mouth when his flash forward happened. A gun in his mouth!!!Mark's wife, a doctor, was operating on someone when she wakes up from her dream, the poor patient dead on the table.
Everyone is utterly confused and Mark, with his partner, try to unravel what could have happened. They soon learn that everyone in the world passed out at the same time and had these mysterious visions. One of Mark's FBI guys calls the person who was in his vision, who was in London, and she repeats everything that she saw which happens to match. They slowly realizes that these visions were actually "fast forwards" into the future.
There are so many wonderful things about this. Mark's partner, whose name is escaping me, but is played wonderfully so far by John Cho is worried because during his blackout he didn't see anything. What's that mean? Is he dead? Mark tries to assure him that that could just mean that he was asleep, and honestly, that's what I would think.
What I like about this show is it could have gone very cryptic, with people lying about their flash forwards, not telling everything, but in the first few chaotic hours, everyone is very forthcoming. In a not as smart show, people would be keeping their flash forwards close to the vest. One of the things that was so moving during the horrible day of 9/11 is when all the news networks dropped all ideas of ratings and backstabbing and shared information with their rivals, contacted other news organizations and got missing parts of the story so that nobody was without vital information on that day. It's much like that. Yes, there are some things that are kept to themselves, like Mark not telling people about drinking (he's sober) and his wife refusing to tell Mark about her flashforward, but these things are personal, nothing, at the moment, that seems vital to finding out what the hell just happened. Plus, his wife does eventually tell him what she saw, which was her with another man. This man better be Brad frickin' Pitt (or Jack Bauer) because seriously, what sane woman would leave this hotness?
Dude, seriously. Brad frickin' Pitt. Or Jack Bauer.
In the final minutes of the pilot, after going through hours of tape, one of the FBI analysts finds that out of all the people dropping like flies for those two minutes she's found one instance where someone was awake. In a stadium in Detroit. A man in black is seen, although grainy, looking around and then walking out of the stadium. Eerie. And interesting.
The date of the flash forward is in late April (just in time for sweeps) so now our team has to find out what happened and how to, for some, change the future, or even be in it. Hopefully the show doesn't get lost in the cool factor (I'm talking to you The Nine!) and keeps us guessing (I'm talking to you Lost!) and wanting more.
