Episode: “137 Sekunden” (Season 1, Ep 3)
Original US Air Date: October 9, 2009
It’s only the third episode, but this train is not losing any steam! The mystery of the FlashForwards (FFs) deepens with the clues of 137 sekunden and a murder of crows.
Deal with the devil… or in this case, an opportunistic Nazi
Rudolph Geyer, a Nazi in prison in Munich claims that he knows why the FF lasted 137 seconds. He is the man Mark saw in his FF- a picture of this elderly man on the wall, next to the label “137 sekunden”. Geyer wants to return to America a free man in exchange for what he knows. His FF checks out with another person in his FF where Geyer saw his release and return to America and Mark makes the deal with him. Geyer claims that if you add up the numerical values of the word “Kabala”, you will get exactly 137. The only other piece of intel he’s got is that a large number of crows died outside the jail. Geyer secures his freedom, leveraging his FF and beguiling antics.
Choose hope
The clock is ticking for Demetri. Faced with the news from the mysterious caller in Hong Kong, he must decide how to deal with the information that he will be murdered on March 15, 2010 by 3 shots to the chest. The mystery caller was reading a briefing containing that intel, but she would not/ could not divulge anything else. The call could not be traced. As Demetri sees other people’s FlashForwards confirmed, he chooses hope for the sake of his fiancé, Zoe, and himself. He lies to corroborate her FF and they set their wedding date according to Zoe’s FF for April 29, 2010.
Aaron’s hope is for his FF to be true, that his daughter really is alive. He exhumes her remains only to find out that they DNA test out to indeed be his daughter. He is understandably crushed. (Though in his FF, he only saw her torso…)
The ‘blackouts’ have happened before
The seemingly useless piece of information from Geyer about the crows dying proved useful after all to Mark’s investigation into the blackout. In 1991, crows died in massive numbers in Somalia coinciding with mass loss of consciousness of the local population. We see a flashback of this and see some sort of tubular structure reaching high into the sky at the epicenter of this event. There is what looks like a mushroom cloud emanating from the top of the structure.
FlashForwards change the way people make decisions
Mark is so driven by trying to understand the blackout and FFs. Is this overriding his judgment? He let a Nazi convicted of war crimes walk! This sort of moral relativism does not sit well with Janice. Mark focuses on the fact that believing in these FFs is a leap of faith, but people are acting on what will happen instead of what could happen. People are living by the future instead of for it, doing things they normally wouldn’t.
BURNING QUESTIONS:
Mark confides in Aaron about Charlie’s knowing who D. Gibbons is. What the heck does she know? What can Mark do to protect his family?- What happened to Nicole, the babysitter? The Benfords can’t contact her.
- How did Zoe see her and Demetri’s wedding if Demetri is dead? The groom was far off in the distance in her FF. Perhaps she assumed it was him?
- Who is the boy that Agent Stanford Wedeck’s wife (played by Gina Torres) saw in her FF that would be her adoptive child (see pic above)? Is he a child whose parent was honored at the FBI memorial?
- When Geyer in his FF said “I have a murder to thank for it”, did he mean a murder of crows or Demetri’s murder?
- What IS that structure in Somalia and who is behind it?
Watch the mystery unfold. “FlashForward” is on ABC, Thursdays 8/7 C.
Check out our preview of tonight’s ep here.
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