FlashForward Cancelled – The Ultimate Blackout
Associated Content
Published May 14, 2010 by:
Robert Dougherty
Flashforward cancelled rumors were quite persistent all spring. The Flashforward cancelled outcome looked likely, given the free falling ratings ever since its premiere. However, since it was doing better overseas, some thought it had a good shot to return and cause more blackouts. But in America, the audience was shrinking and shrinking, as hopes were fading for the show to become the new Lost. Now that experiment is over, with Flashforward cancelled after just one year – which none of its infamous blackouts could foresee.
The Thursday night show premiered with a lot of promise, as the premise of the whole world seeing six months into the future intrigued many. But these days, no show other than Lost has been able to follow through on a big mystery premise. The problem wasn’t an inability to provide answers, but that less and less people cared about the endless “destiny vs. free will” debates, or the people having them.
Now with Flashforward cancelled, the Season 1 finale on May 27 will serve as the end of the show. Since the show should definitively answer if everyone’s visions come true on April 29 – and if another blackout will come afterward – there may indeed be nowhere to go after that. However, if the episode does have teasers for a Season 2, they will forever go unanswered.
Once again, ABC failed to develop the next Lost, as they had to give up just before Lost ended. With Flashforward cancelled, it may be another cautionary tale of how mystery shows are harder to make work than they look, if that’s possible.
But although Flashforward is cancelled, the network still has hopes for other mystery programs. V was their second shot at developing a new Lost, although it too met with mixed reviews and backlash after the pilot. However, they have enough faith in this sci-fi remake to give it a second season, unlike Flashforward.
Although V escaped the chopping block, others joined Flashforward in being cancelled. Scrubs’ one-year stint on ABC is over, while the critically acclaimed but low rated Better Off Ted was fired, and the short-lived Monday night comedy Romantically Challenged was let go.
With ABC’s decisions, the final cuts for fall 2010 are now under way, as shows find out if they still have a future, or have to close up shop. As one TV season ends with a slew of big finales, another is just on the horizon.
Since Flashforward is cancelled, it won’t have to see anything else on the horizon anymore – even though that was the show’s whole premise. This leaves just two episodes left for the season and series on May 20 and 27.
LOST Final Season Clues
Lost masterminds Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof have leaked the first clues to the final season of their crypto-drama, thanks to a video shot by comedian Paul Scheer. The clip from damoncarltonandapolarbear.com is a good-natured spoof of crazy Lost fans. And the entire site is designed to provide hints about the season debuting early next year. Scheer’s major revelation: The premiere will be called ”LA X.” How to decipher that title? Well, Lostophiles will remember that Oceanic 815 was bound for Los Angeles when it crashed on Mystery Island, and that season 5 ended with time-traveling Juliet detonating a hydrogen bomb with the hope of creating a new reality in which everyone landed safely at LAX. So ”LA X” may refer to the airport. But that intentional space makes my Doc Jensen brain go tingly. If we read the title as ”Los Angeles ’10” (the Roman numeral X equals 10, as in 2010), maybe it simply means the new season will begin in present-day L.A. That’s too easy! So I’m going with this: The characters touched by the maybe-magical Jacob — Jack, Kate, Sawyer, Sayid, Hurley, Locke, Sun, Jin, and Ben — will begin the season scattered through time as a result of Juliet’s explosive reboot. They’ll have limited memory of their past Island life, yet they’ll find themselves inexplicably compelled to gather in L.A. in 2010. Yes, I get all that from the title. And by being one of those crazy Lost fans.
Flash Forward: Meet D. Gibbons (Spoiler Alert!)
Tonight on Flash Forward, we got to meet three versions of D. Gibbons.
The first was Dee Dee Gibbons, age 45, from Anaheim, California. Her flash forward was of arguing with someone about pigeons and credit cards. Dee Dee owns her own business which specializes in fancy cupcakes. Soon we find out that Dee Dee credit card has been used to buy a bus ticket in Pigeon Lake, Utah. So Mark (Fiennes) and Demetri (Cho) head out to Pigeon Lake for a stakeout. Thinking things have gone bust, Mark looks across the street and spots D. Gibbons #2, which is the name of a mom and pop doll factory. They go inside and a man blows up the factory, but not before shooting the local female sheriff that is with them. Interestingly, she also had no flash forward dream just like Demetri. Her shooting proves fatal and we begin to feel the same ominous feeling that Demetri is feeling about his future. A photographer provides the burned doll photograph for Mark’s evidence wall.
Mark can’t sleep that night and stops by his daughter’s (Charlie) room after burning the friendship bracelet she gave him in the fireplace. She finally starts telling him about her flash forward; she has already revealed she knows Dylan, who is the son of Olivia’s future lover. But then, she introduces us to D. Gibbons #3 by saying “D. Gibbons is a very bad man.”
Other things we learned:
Mosaic is the Mosaic Collective Web site the FBI set up for people to tell their flash forward stores.
The blackout (the latest playground game) happened at 11:00am on the dot which has a 1 in 3600 change of happening at exactly that time.
The person in the baseball stadium in Detroit is now referred to as Suspect Zero. The FBI has determined it is a man, 5’8″ tall, 160 pounds.
The man who blew up the doll factory called Suspect Zero on his cell phone during the blackout.
We learn that a lady had a flash forward while she is reviewing the file of Demetri’s murder which occurs on March 15th, 2010.
I have read a lot of reviews of the show and they are very mixed. Some feel they are trying too hard to be LOST (e.g., same opening scene where Mark/Jack wake up and start trying to help in a catastrophe) or their use of animals in unusual places (e.g., polar bear on the island, kangaroo in the street). I did not read the early reviews of LOST, but I think people will become hooked very quickly to Flash Forward. Give it a chance and enjoy the ride. I am.
Flash Forward Rocks! Spoiler Alert!
