Who’d have thought? There might be something worth watching when “Lost” ends this spring after all.
While the world population of ABC’s new series reeled from the force of a collective “flash forward” of consciousness into the future (to 10 pm PST on April 29, 2010, to be exact), I’m sure a large number of viewers were hit by a wave of déjà vu—the opening sequence, with hysterical victims of a massive traffic accident in Los Angeles dodging fiery shrapnel while a cool-headed leader trying to calm everyone down and save the injured, reminded me so much of the “Lost” pilot that I was left gaping at the television. Not to mention the incongruous kangaroo hopping through the wreckage—can somebody please say “polar bear”?
“FlashForward” even features a few members of the (cult?) hit sci-fi series’ cast themselves—Sonya Walger and Dominic Monaghan, known to us “Lost” devotees as Penelope Widmore and Charlie Pace, respectively. The casting choices might answer a few lingering questions for the “Lost” fandom, actually—with these two signed on to “FlashForward” and Elizabeth Mitchell (the Dharma Initiative’s Juliet Burke) taking on a substantial role in ABC’s “V,” coming November 3, it looks like some of our beloved characters truly are good and dead (dead is dead, after all). Tragic. I was really rooting for Juliet and Ben to get back together. I mean—Juliet and Sawyer. Sawyer.
Nevertheless, the show doesn’t look to be strictly derivative—though issues of free will and determinism will have to be absolutely central to the plot (“Just because we saw these things doesn’t mean they’re gonna happen,” a number of characters repeat throughout the episode), the bizarre events of “FlashForward” occur on a much larger scale than “Lost” both geographically and politically. This global setting means the creators of “FlashForward” will have a lot more room to maneuver with people, places, and storylines in general. Just consider the central characters of each program:
In the “Lost” season one premiere, viewers were introduced to Jack Shephard, a surgeon who becomes the de facto leader of a group of stranded plane crash survivors. His medical training and competence is undoubtedly the most valuable skill set to have in such a disaster scenario, with dozens wounded and no access to any organized institutions we’d normally call on when, say, not trapped on a spacetime-hopping island filled with mysterious hatches and bloodthirsty smoke monsters.
“FlashForward,” however, ushers in Mark Benford as the natural leader in the program’s pilot: an FBI agent, he has access to information and political resources Jack Shephard could only dream of—not to mention that, as a government official, he represents an established power structure. Compare that to much of the first seasons of “Lost,” focusing on the formation of social structures in complete isolation from the rest of the world. Shephard and the gang were completely alone—but the simultaneous prescient experience of every human individual (well… that’s might not be exactly true…) serves to create greater social cohesion worldwide. Questions of the possibly deterministic nature of the future certainly torment both those who want to ensure and those who want to avoid the events they did, or didn’t, see in the 2 minutes and 17 seconds they blacked out—but that torment is shared on a universal scale. Even Benford’s young daughter isn’t spared a “bad dream,” ominously predicting that “there were no more good days left.”
Whether the freedom this situation allows writers and producers will turn out to be a good or bad thing will have to wait to be seen—tight, intelligent plotting is one of the reasons “Lost” has drawn such a rabid fan base, and I’m desperately hoping that “FlashForward” can manage to do what its predecessor has: keep focused, but keep us guessing.
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Isabela Morales is a History and American Studies student who rabidly reviews indie science fiction at http://thescattering.wordpress.com/