Trying to get through as much Thursday night TV as I can, on Thursday night, so really quick thoughts on the second episode of "FlashForward" coming up just as soon as I order a happy meal... It's early yet, but so far it feels like "FlashForward" has bitten off much more than it can chew. They need to depict the physical and emotional chaos that would be caused by the blackout itself, as well as the psychological trauma of the world getting a look at its future (or lack thereof), and it needs to move the plot forward, and it needs to make us interested in the characters and why they're so excited or upset by what they saw...
...and two episodes in, it doesn't feel like it's doing any of those things particularly well. The characters are ciphers, there are occasional allusions at best to just how dysfunctional society would be after a mass blackout, too much of the dialogue still feels like bald exposition, Joseph Fiennes still seems like a lightweight leading man (and has a distracting bow-legged walk), etc.
This episode is where Marc Guggenheim took over Brannon Braga's writing and producing responsibilities, and I had hoped that he would start giving the show and its characters a humanity that's usually lacking in Braga-written shows like "Threshold" and the "Star Trek" spin-offs. Instead, the major difference was that we occasionally got injections of pretty broad comic relief (an expansion of the boss's toilet incident, the racially-insensitive cupcake lady), complete with the nails-on-a-chalkboard Please Laugh Now music ABC loves to insert into the lighter moments of its dramas (including the Guggenheim co-created "Eli Stone"). I'm not saying comedy is a bad idea - "Lost" gets away with light moments all the time, and there were times when even Ron Moore admitted "Battlestar Galactica" was too grim - but the tonal shifts were jarring, and it felt like (lame) comic relief for comic relief's sake.
I'm in for a bit, in the hope that they can figure this out and make all the pieces fit together, but the show is not off to a promising start so far.
What did everybody else think?
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