Whoops, somehow my DVR didn’t record last week’s episode and I missed it. But Agent Al Gough (Lee Thompson Young) kills himself to stop his particular future from happening. His future being he kills a single mother in an accident and he also wants to prove that you can change things by choosing to do so.
Regardless, this week’s episode has Simon (Dominic Monaghan) and Lloyd Simcoe (Jack Davenport) play a poker game, and whatever-his-name is Benford’s Sponsor finds his formerly dead daughter still alive.
While on vacation for their anniversary the Benfords (Joseph Fiennes and the wax model known as Sonya Walger) are playing around in some house on the beach, before Fiennes gets a call asking him to come in. The reason being is someone caught some video footage of a mugging and the people doing the mugging had a triple star tattoo that Fiennes recognizes as one of the guys trying to kill him on April 29.
Investigating, it looks like the people in the mugging take a case from the muggee before shooting this victim. The witness, who took the video, is now being hunted by the muggers who kill her roommate. Nothing really comes of this besides some more of the usual questions “is this going to come true/isn’t this/are we powerless to stop it?” It’s starting to get annoying.
Fiennes and company end up using this witness to setup the guys after her. He uses this opportunity to change his future, by assassinating one of the guys thinking that he is actively changing his future. He isn’t, but there are other matters to discuss before we get to the climax of the episode.
Fiennes’s Sponsor and his daughter Tracy get into discussions about how she survived. Apparently, in Afghanistan, Tracy’s humvee was supposed to have been pursuing terrorist insurgents. What really happened was they were fired upon by Jericho (contract guys, basically mercenaries). That’s why she was in hiding for two years, because she saw something that threatened her, and that’s why Jericho put the hit on her platoon. She’s been on the run ever since, and she came home because she thought she would be safe.
The high stakes poker game between Simon and Simcoe is a bore fest of discussions of chaos theory and whatever else. The stake is if Simcoe wins the group that he and Simon are a part of goes public with how they caused the black out, Simon’s argument is that there is no way Simcoe will ever win because of quantum theory and chaos whatever. All arguments and lines cribbed directly from Jeff Goldblum’s argument in Jurassic Park. Simcoe wins just when we think he’s defeated and gives Simon the first pass at the speech for their coming-out party.
At the end of the episode, the case the witness saw in the mugging is being delivered by a whole plethora of guys with star tattoos. The case is delivered to none other than RICKY JAY! (I swear, this show has kick-ass guest stars) who quotes Oppenheimer of the Manhattan Project and reveals the case is full of rings that were supposed to have seven but only has six. He then shoots the man who delivered the case.
As the show continues to mount, I’m starting to get a bit of a Secret Invasion syndrome. Sorry, if this analogy gets a little too nerd-tastic, but just run with me for a second here. What I mean by this syndrome is the constant reminder that the world has changed and the Skrulls have taken over people the heroes trust, with FlashForward we have a similar issue where we’re being constantly reminded that maybe our future isn’t determined and we can change it. Could be?
