FlashForward: The Future
Posted: September 29th, 2009 | Author: Jacob Rhodes | Filed under: True Stuff | 5 Comments »Last week ABC premiered a new show with thrilling potential. FlashForward is strong on pretty much all fronts: a mind-bending concept, a stellar cast and enough thrills to satisfy even the hungriest of Lost fiends. In fact, it’s Lost meets Heroes with none of their flaws (yet) and a more mature voice out of the gate.
The solid performances are led by Joseph Fiennes with Sonya Walger in hot pursuit and John Cho finally showing some depth, supported by other well-chosen talent. (Randomly, Seth MacFarlane– the iconoclast gazillionaire behind Family Guy– makes a guest appearance in the pilot, and claims that he will hold a semi-regular role on the show.) The score induces actual nail-biting, within a stone’s throw of The Twilight Zone.
Watch a clip:
The business angle of the premise is brilliant: two minutes and seventeen seconds of mass syncope that reaches every corner of the globe. That means millions of stories waiting to be told, which spells hundreds of spin-offs in as many countries, which lights my money candle. If FlashForward were stock and I were rich I would buy a fat chunk, because this show has a very bright future. Incidentally it airs on hulu, which could go one of two ways: a) it could actually float on ad rev from the website, or b) it could be a ploy to cultivate an audience (the old bait-and-switch: after Season 1 it’s available to network-watchers only).
The show has one very visible flaw: its sadly bland print ad campaign. Its posters and billboards are overlooked on the buzzing boulevards of Los Angeles, and probably every major city in America, because they lack even a shadow of the show’s gripping, apocalyptic intrigue. Instead they could pass for ads pushing a local news special or a failing radio show (see video above). FlashForward is chock-full of cinematic meat that is a slow pitch over the plate for good marketing. It’s shameful, but not fatal.
Tune in because everyone is going to be talking about it soon. Roll over, Star Trek.
Awesome. Just watched the first episode. So many possibilities. So ridiculous and yet it could be good.
Having just watched the first episode, I agree that there's a LOT of potential. However, I see two potential problems for a long-running franchise.
First, the show is based on a novel by Robert J. Sawyer (presumably of the same name; no, I've not looked it up, since I don't want any spoilers at this point). That potentially means that someone could buy the book and find out what happens in the next episode.
Second, April 2010 is not that far in the future. Six months is not a long time to tell your story. The great fun of so much foreshadowing, fate v. free will, etc, will all be lost come April. Unless of course there's another "flash forward," which brings us to…
…potential solutions. It seems to me the solution to both issues is thinking beyond the first flash and beyond the novel (which may not have gone further). Moreover, it's essential to do this from day one. Nobody likes a series that writes itself an opening in the last episode of the season, allowing for another season. And nobody likes a television/film sequel to a novel which doesn't have one. Perhaps Sawyer wrote more. Perhaps not. But it's essential to be throwing out extra threads now, (a) so that the series differs from the novel and (b) so there's plenty of material for future seasons.
I, for my part, am looking forward to watching at least a few more episodes. This could be good.
Two interesting points – that it’s based on a book that could spoil the grand premise (more on that) and that it has to end this April.
The first episode was awesome, but after a few episodes, I must say I’m tired of being strung along. I feel used. They could toy with me for a whole season and then just start hinting at the easiest cop-out of all: the supernatural (like in the umpteenth season of Lost).
However, Aaron you made me think of a brilliant marketing possibility. What if they are planning some cool publicity stunts for April 2010? We should not be surprised that, not coincidentally, a new episode of FlashForward will air on that Thursday night, April 29th 2010. When the characters catch up to the “future” present, will it also be our present? This is going to make social media go nuts. Congrats Marc Guggenheim and David Goyer for an intriguing show. Now, stop stringing us along and drop some more hints.
Oh the April 29th, 2010 episode is definitely deliberate. And it should generate a good amount of publicity. To Aaron's points: I'm sure that the writers are taking full advantage of their new medium to diverge from the book, and I am sure that they are doing all of their longer-term set-ups for next season's pay-offs.
I, like John, have lost a little enthusiasm over the last couple episodes. I can't pinpoint the source of my growing apathy beyond that I feel like I am participating in a formula… and last episode was just disappointing on every level. It felt over-acted (over-directed), under-structured and somehow bland.
Pick it up, people. And fix the title graphic already.
Just watched episode 2. Afterward I wanted to know about a couple actors, so I did a Google search for FlashForward and wiki, ie, looking for the Wikipedia article. Instead the first hit was for FlashForward's own wiki: http://flashforward.wikia.com/wiki/FlashForward_W...
Without even looking at the page, I knew what it was: Mosaic, the FBI's wiki of vision information in the TV show. Ok, so it's not exactly Mosaic; it is, by and large, just a wiki about the show, so far as I could tell. (I didn't want to poke around too much, for fear of spoilers.) But even the website's tag line, "What did you see?" clearly invokes Mosaic.
Perhaps the site is simply a wiki for fans. But the possibility of using it as a tie-in to the show really intrigues me. Here we have a show already blurring the lines between the fictional world of TV and the real world (which will no doubt meet in the spring, when the time of the "visions" arrives), and now one of its central elements really exists (after a fashion). Moreover, I'm sure the folks at the show wrote the first few articles, just to get the wiki off the ground. But what if they seeded it with clues? The possibilities for using "new media" here are pretty wild…
(And, yes, I can see how, even in the second episode, the show is becoming a tad formulaic. We're getting way too many flashbacks, I think. If I put in the effort to watch the previous episode, I already know what's going on and I don't need to be reminded. But I guess you've got to be able to pull in folks who are channel-surfing in the middle of the season.)