Seeing the future
I’m enjoying “Flash Forward” so far. Of course, I wonder how long they can sustain the premise, especially since I understand they’re planning to reach the date of the flash forward on the real-world date of April 29, 2010. I can only hope they won’t simply have another black-out to renew the mystery after that.
Spoilers ahead. If you haven’t seen the first three episodes, you may not want to read this post.
I like the way the show is putting a new twist on a classic sci-fi premise from movies like “Terminator” and “Minority Report:” if you see the future, does that mean you can change it? I like the variety of reactions characters have had to their visions: some want the future to come true, some don’t. It’s interesting that some visions, like Olivia’s, depend entirely on her own choices, which she’s so sure she wouldn’t make. I’m also intrigued by the way the writers are introducing doubt about how accurate the visions really are. Aaron’s vision of his daughter alive in Afghanistan, for example, which seems to have been discredited. And the vision Demitri’s fiancee (did we learn her name?) had of their wedding. She says she saw him there, but did she really? I didn’t, in the brief flashes we saw of it.
I think stories about seeing the future, having prophecies, etc, remain popular because they address a fundamental philosophical issue: free will vs. destiny. Most people, including myself, are seriously conflicted about what to believe. The idea of having a destiny is comforting. It would be nice to think that there’s a plan, that we all have a purpose and things happen for a reason. At the same time, we want to believe that we make our own choices. The idea that we’re just going through motions which have already been planned for us with no free will whatsoever is downright depressing. So we wrestle with these ideas through drama.
I think our ambivalence about this particular question is demonstrated in the way we usually resolve the “can I change the future or not” dilemma with a compromise. In the “Terminator” series, for example, Sarah is able to postpone Judgment Day in T2, but it still happens in T3. In “Back to the Future,” Marty repairs the future by getting his parents together, but they’re changed. In “Minority Report,” Anderton technically fulfills the pre-cog’s vision of him killing someone, but the circumstances turn out to be more complicated. I’ll be very curious to see how “Lost” handles the idea of “erasing” the past by detonating the bomb. I predict it will be a similar compromise solution. They’ll successfully stop the plane from crashing, but the force of “destiny” will pull the survivors together somehow.
Now let’s see how well my crystal ball works…
Well, in the book this series is based on, there are more visions but each time they flash further into the future and there’s pretty cool ending as a result of this. (Won’t reveal if you haven’t read the book - but I recommend it!) Don’t know if they’re planning to follow along with the book, but there’s at least more of the story in that sense.
Comment by sara — October 11, 2009 @ 4:43 am
I had to stop watching after 3 episodes.
Let me preface this by saying that I’m not usually rah-rah/we need more diversity in shows, but this show, in particular, just grated at the glaring lack of any Latinos. It’s a global event, but I can buy the conceit that all the Really Important Stuff happens in LA. Fine. I get that. What I don’t get is how you can have a show set in LA which has ZERO Latinos. You could count Gina Torres as Latina, but she comes across as black, and when you’re talking about a city with a HUGE Mexican/Central American population, the absence of Latinos is that much more offensive.
This isn’t Mad Men. This is show set NOW. No excuses. And I’m not watching.
Comment by Moira — October 16, 2009 @ 6:40 pm
forget drama, how about those articles from last week about the real life physicists who theorize (kinda as a joke, but still) that the Large Hadron Collider is coming back in time to sabotage itself because a universe in which the experiment is successful would negate its own existence? it’s nice to know that the universe has our backs at least..
Comment by pete275 — October 22, 2009 @ 8:13 am
Another subject (sorry): Have you seen AMC’s new entry The Prisoner? I was looking forward to a good, new quality show to TIVO, tuned in to the first episode. Right off the bat I watched the main character run across rather open ground to pick up an old man he’d never seen before, throw him over his shoulder, and make off with him to safety. This while at the top of the hill a bunch of guys where shooting at the old man, and the dogs were going crazy with barking.
The guys at the top of the hill were evidently too dumb to let the dogs off the leashes. Or maybe it was that these were the stupidest, most inept dogs in all of the world. Well, I guess I could buy that (if I really had to).
But what I couldn’t buy was the main character, with absolutely no motivation at all (having just awakened from some kind of teleportation episode), runs out into the line of fire (of course those guys at the top of the hill evidently couldn’t hit the planet earth with anything above their knees), subject himself to whatever might happen as a result of the world’s stupidest dogs, to rescue some old fart he’s never seen before.
Let me sum up: Plausibility was challenged.
That challenge did not come at some point deep into the show, not about some futuristic detail that — eh — might go either way, but right there as completely up front and in-your-face as it’s possible to get: First show, first scene.
Message from writers to viewers: We don’t care about dramatic or story telling conventions and we especially don’t care about you in particular if you’re not willing to go along with really maladroit writing. It’s much easier for us, you see, if we don’t have to bother with all that old fashioned crap from the past that makes it so hard to craft something that is fresh and compelling and kinda, sorta believable, in a sci-fi way.
Message from viewer to writers: I won’t be watching. But I’m sure it’s of no consequence, I was only going to TIVO the show anyway.
Comment by BillJustBill — November 22, 2009 @ 4:01 pm