Episode: FLASHFORWARD “White To Play” (Season 1, Ep 2)

Original US Air Date: October 2, 2009

This ep has a slower pace than the series opener. It establishes the hunt for Suspect Zero and D. Gibbons.  Pieces of the puzzle start to fall into place- Lloyd Simcoe, the white queen, burned doll; others reveal more of a mystery- Dylan and Charlie and death date for Demetri.

FBI is investigating this as a scheduled event and Suspect Zero

The FlashForward happened at exactly 11 am Pacific Daylight time.  The odds of a worldwide event happening at exactly the top of the hour are remote.  Someone has caused this.  Homeland Security is now involved in the investigation.

The man awake at the stadium in Detroit is now referred to as Suspect Zero- 5’-8”, 150 lbs, male.

D. Gibbons

Didi Gibbons comes to the FBI following up on her FF and mention of Agents Noh and Benford and something about pigeons.  This leads the team of agents to Pidgeon, Utah where someone has been using a cloned credit card in Didi’s name. Demetri and Mark go there to arrest this person of interest, but he escapes, blowing up his computer hardware in his exit and killing the local Sheriff (who didn’t see anything in her FF either).  It is this crime scene where the chess piece of a white queen and the photograph of a burned doll take their places on the Mosaic board.  They discover that this D. Gibbons was talking to Suspect Zero during the blackout.

Hello, Lloyd Simcoe.

Olivia discovers that the man she saw in her FF is the estranged father of Dylan, the autistic little boy she operated on.  Lloyd doesn’t recognize her and she realizes that he didn’t see her in the FF.  Also, she doesn’t seem to remember that Dylan mysteriously knew her name, but we as viewers can see that there’s a bigger picture relating the Simcoes to the Benfords.  Even after Lloyd manages to tell Dylan that his mother is dead, Dylan asks for Olivia.

What did Charlie see?

Whatever Charlie, the Benford’s daughter saw, it scared her so much that she won’t talk about it.  This ep also brings up an interesting dimension to this: Where was Charlie in the flashforward?  She wasn’t with her parents in theirs.  Olivia tests Charlie by pointing out Lloyd Simcoe, but Charlie instead recognizes Dylan, Lloyd’s son.  Charlie freaks, asking “Who hurt Dylan?”.  She knows much more, telling Mark at the end of the ep, “D. Gibbons is a bad man”.

FlashForwards are a test of who we are

Bryce says that the FlashForwards are a gift and that they are a test of “who we are now and what we chose to do with what we’ve seen [in the FlashForward six months into the future]”.  At work, Mark is betting on his vision, but at home, he fights it tooth and nail. Mark burns the friendship bracelet Charlie made for him.

Sheriff Keegan makes an alternative point in that people are torturing themselves over what they saw.  Can you really treat the FF as a warning of what’s to come and change it?

BURNING QUESTIONS:

• What did Lloyd see in his FlashForward? Or did he not because of his involvement with Suspect Zero?
• Was the Pidgeon, UT lead a trap? A test? Fulfilling destiny?
• Who is the lady in Hong Kong that called Demetri about his Mosaic website posting to tell him that he dies on March 15, 2010?
• Does Demetri die because Cho has the Star Trek sequel to film?
• D. Gibbons says to Mark, “He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over”. What did he mean by that?  It is a quote by Beilby Porteus.

Who is D. Gibbons? Check out this Flashcard:

Watch the mystery unfold. “FlashForward” is on ABC, Thursdays 8/7 C.

Missed an ep? Go to the show site or www.hulu.com to watch full episodes.

Do you have a theory about FlashForward?  Go to our Forum and share it!