Experience the nonstop action, excitement and drama of the first ten episodes of the critically acclaimed FlashForward and get set for television's "best new show" (Mark A. Perigard, Boston Herald) to grab hold of you from its first explosive moment! Chaos reigns after a mysterious event causes everyone in the world to lose consciousness at exactly the same time. Was it an act of nature or something far more sinister? During the Global Blackout, every man, woman and child was given a flash of his or her life six months in the future. One elite law enforcement team jumps into the investigation, attempting to solve the mystery, as the world's population wrestles with the choice of whether to embrace the fate they've seen or fight to change the future. Relieve every brilliant twist of FlashForward's first ten episodes, and prepare yourself for what's to come in the second part of Season One.
At first, the sci-fi/action/drama series
FlashForward compared favorably to its logical model,
Lost--both shows hinged upon a devastating event that changed the lives of a vast array of characters who then struggled to understand what had happened to them. But despite solid performances from its cast--which counted
Lost vets Dominic Monaghan and Sonya Walger among its number--
FlashForward couldn't replicate
Lost's ability to lure viewers back to the island each week for five years. Part of the problem was the way its intriguing premise was handled; after a worldwide blackout allows numerous individuals to glimpse their lives six months into the future, a government task force is created to investigate the phenomenon. Joseph Fiennes (
Shakespeare in Love) and John Cho (
Star Trek) head the team, grappling with both individual responses to the blackout as well as their own experiences and that of their families, which include Fiennes's wife (Walger), her intern (Zachary Knighton), and a host of supporting players. Sprawling, multilayered series such as these require a subtle balance between character development and action, and
FlashForward never found it; dialogue was overripe, characters were broad and underdeveloped, and the program never found the proper way to reveal aspects of its core question--what did happen during that two-minute-and-17-second blackout--in a manner that would bring back repeat viewership. As a result,
FlashForward limped to an ignominious finale, which took place, ironically enough, four days after the final episode of
Lost.
The five-disc Complete Series--which renders the previous Part One, Season One set useless--includes a healthy selection of supplemental features, most of which are included on the fifth disc. A single commentary track by Dominic Monaghan and producer Jessika Borsiczky is featured on the two-part episode, "Revelation Zero"; it's breezy and occasionally informative, like Monaghan's commentary on the Lost DVD releases. Architects of Destiny is a 20-minute overview of the series as a whole that focuses on the main participants, while five FlashForward on Set featurettes look at several set pieces from a behind-the-scenes perspective. Less intriguing are faux interview segments with blackout survivors, 10 deleted scenes, and various promotional clips for the show; the disc 5 menu also has an Easter Egg that yields the nine-part Stories from the Mosaic, the documentary-series-within-the-series about individuals' experiences with the blackout. --Paul Gaita
