TV RECAP: ‘Flash Forward: A561984′

This is the last episode of ABC’s FlashForward we will see until March. Yeah, until MARCH. Can’t say I’m happy about that. Well, at least this episode went out on a bang.

We open on the mystery woman (Shoreh Aghdashloo), who informed Demetri Noh (John Cho) that he will be assassinated. She’s sitting at her desk, her own Mosaic chart laid out on the glass spread like a spider-web with a picture of  Cho with the number value: A561984. She is watching the classic A Christmas Carol.

A plane lands in Hong Kong, on it Benford (Joseph Fiennes) and Cho get off, discussing their plan to track down Aghdashloo.  They twice ignore calls from Wedeck (Courtney B. Vance) only to be met by someone with “Kid N Play” hair, who calls himself Marshall Vogel from the Hong Kong FBI office. Vogel tells the Dynamic Duo to get out.

Fiennes picks up his phone walking away to only get into an argument with Vance about going to Hong Kong. He gets into this argument so that if anyone goes down for disobeying orders it’s him [Fiennes] because Noh needs to keep his gun on him if he’s going to live past March 15.

Vance breaks one of his televisions only to have another one where a press conference is on at National Linear Project [NLAP] as it’s called, where a stooge announces Simcoe (Jack Davenport) who will address the crowd on the experiments he and Monaghan were doing on the day of the black out.  It gets hairy quick when this happens.

In this sequence, Davenport claims responsibility for the blackout and literally raises hell, saying their experiment was to reproduce the energies created by the Big Bang and may have contributed to the cause of the blackout. Total bedlam occurs when he says this: shots are fired, dogs and casts living together, mass hysteria!

Vance tells Christine Woods, to get Monaghan and Davenport into their office.  He assigns Woods to the hospital where Davenport’s son, Dylan, is under the care of Fiennes’ wife Sophia Walger to bring him in.

Back in Hong Kong, Cho and Fiennes wonder around, make some small talk about the Eartha Kitt Catwoman or something and stake out Persian restaurants in hopes of finding Aghdashloo. No dice, and we’re back at the Hospital where Bryce is trying to find his long lost love and Woods is just chilling waiting for Davenport. She mentions that she wants to get pregnant.

Back at FBI, Monaghan turns himself in to Vance and says he doesn’t think that he and Davenport’s actions are a crime.  He volunteers to work with the FBI to discover how and exactly why this happened, because he believes his experiments may have contributed to the blackout but doesn’t necessarily think that he is the sole perpetrator.

He convinces Vance to let him on the team because now that he’s come forward and claimed responsibility the chances of Vance’s Mosaic investigation being worth anything is negligible. Vance agrees to have Monaghan check out some information. Next, Davenport shows up at the hospital, concerned about Dylan’s safety. Woods approaches him offering protection for information and she gets shot down.

Back in Hong Kong, in an especially scenery-chewing performance, Fiennes threatens a Persian restaurant owner with disappearance and torture to gain info on Aghdashloo. I was literally doing high fives all around at this especially delicious bit of dialogue. Very well-crafted. Again he throws Cho out to protect him. They get sent to a Dim Sum place their target frequents.

Back at FBI, Monaghan shows his brilliance while looking at photographs of that town in Somalia we visited a couple episodes back.  Those towers that they captured, Monaghan claims responsibility for saying he designed it and “it is a specialized pulse laser for a plasma after-burner.” Apparently the thing accelerates radio frequency waves.  He says the concept should win him a Nobel, and mentions the imaging software they [the FBI] used is impressive and “the structure almost looks real.”

Woods relishes in this moment, saying it is a real structure, and it is a satellite photograph. Monaghan says it is not possible because the tech does not exist yet and they are merely running formulas, it’s barely in the design phase. Vance asks when he came up with the idea, Monaghan says 1992, and Woods comes right back says “this photograph was taken in 1991.” It’s kinda nice to seeing him get chumped from time to time.

Monaghan is quite perturbed. Vance and Woods give him the profile on D. Gibbons who they believe was awake during the black out. Davenport, meanwhile, tries to get his son transferred to safe location. The hospital admin gives him a hard time by offering to transfer him to a community low cost, and very poor hospital. Someone is taking their vengeance out on him, where Walger offers to have Dylan transferred to a nice place.

Gabrielle Union, Cho’s bride to be, keeps on trying to have Cho’s parents involved in their wedding but it isn’t working. At a funeral, she discovers a white rose, signifying passing she realizes that in her flash forward of their wedding she’s carrying a white rose. This triggers a realization yet to be revealed.

Its showdown time in little China where Aghdashloo, Cho, and Fiennes talk about what she knows. She reveals that Cho’s murderer is sitting at the table with them right now, and says its Fiennes, citing the serial number of his gun — which is the title of this episode. Fiennes flips out, pulls his gun on Agdashloo and drags her out of the restaurant to be intercepted by Chinese police and that kid FBI agent.

Walger and Davenport talk about the transfer, and they divine that they both would have met at Harvard in 1998.  Walger was supposed to go to med school and live at a place across from a pizza joint on Levitt and Walker and Simcoe lived above this pizza place.

They would have met, but Walger decided against going to school there when Fiennes got his job in LA. How annoying appropriate.  He talks about the alternate universe theory where on another Earth she went to Harvard. Blah.

Going back to Hong Kong, Fiennes reveals that this kid is CIA. Getting a call from Vance where he puts him on suspension, turning over his gun and badge to Cho. Aghdashloo looks at back at her wall of premonitions. She turns and says she can’t protect someone anymore, this someone is playing chess on a laptop and it is D. Gibbons.

Gabrielle Union shows up at the Noh’s saying that she knows why they wouldn’t show up at their wedding because of their cultural differences.  But they would show up to his funeral, which was what Union saw, that they aren’t going to get married.

Back at the hospital, Bryce gets a present from the Benford’s babysitter a Japanese cat model that brings good luck in love. Woods stops by and tells Bryce that she’s gay and wants to have a child, he gives her a fertility clinic.

Davenport escorts his son to be transferred. When all shit breaks loose and people are shot and Davenport is taken by the Ambulance drivers.  And that is it for this episode.  Cut to Ricky Jay narration and a preview of what is to come saying that there is going to be another blackout.

Too bad we have to wait until March for these episodes.