Movie Review: FlashForward Part One Season One

FlashForward Part One Season One, again with the partial season releases, is the beginning of a global mystery where everyone on the planet blacks out for over two minutes.

Film making 18/25
Video 20/25
Audio 20/25
Bonus Features 8/25
Total 66/100

FlashForward starts out with a global, uh incident, with implications of biblical proportions but the actual origins are more down to earth, man. Someone has figured out how to make the entire world pass out at the same time, they even have a ring that protects the wearer from its effects.

When everyone in the world blacks out for over two minutes the hunt is on for its cause and as you would expect not only are people jumping to religious conclusions but millions have died. Just think of the precarious instant, people standing along a train platform at the fatal moment and the train barreling into the station.

Other serious situations occur globally as people all around the world die due to a whole host of situations just before they black out. Buses careen into ponds drowning the driver and passengers, people on planes suddenly with no one in control, you get the picture.

Whoever is responsible for the global terrorism has just caused millions to die and the plot only continues as the rest of the world soon finds out more may be to come. FBI agents from Los Angeles are in the forefront of the investigation as Special Agent Mark Benford sees himself investigating the incident.

Did I forget to mention that everyone, well almost everyone sees what they are going to be doing six months in the future. Aside from the fact of how do they know its six months, convenient glances at calendars' in their FlashForward I guess, people see a variety of events.

Special Agent Demetri, Mark Benford's partner sees nothing in his FlashForward and after other events of people who have seen nothing die it is commonly believed that anyone who saw no FlashForward will be dead before the six month deadline. Agent Benford uses his two minute long glimpse at an evidence board to fill that board in the present with the clues and evidence of the FlashForward the team uses as the center of their investigation.

When it is soon discovered that there was someone walking around a baseball stadium during the blackout the team digs further at a similar event in Africa and discover it has happened before on a smaller, almost test like scale. Towards the end of the partial season release one FBI Agent thinks he has nothing to live for because his vision shows he is responsible for a woman's and her two sons deaths.

Even though he had a vision that showed him receiving the news they take the woman he has never met off of life support he sacrifices himself by jumping off the building to prove the visions are not set in stone. He hits the pavement, dies and the world now knows that the visions everyone has seen is not the exact future many are dreading but many events are still occurring that lead up to the visions.

Parts of the show are a bit too recurring like the obsession of Agent Benford and his return to drinking or his wife's vision of being with another man. I can understand the quandary of having an affair or returning to the bottle for an alcoholic but they dwell on several of these events while excluding the much more interesting global terrorism of the FlashForward blackouts.

The show plods along for several episodes in the middle with only a few interesting events thrown in here and there and a crucial bit of evidence revealed in each episode. But these tidbits of useful story and interesting events are buried in the boring daily events of people fighting to stop their own personal demons of the visions from coming true.

For the most part many of these smaller events would be inconsequential and even boring but here they are keys and clues to larger events but the show dwells on them a bit too much. The premise is great and aside from getting part of the season the show does pretty good overall but you can probably skip the middle half of the ten included episodes and still get a clear picture of the story.

Each episode has an interesting start with a scene of just before the blackout and what happens right when people black out, bus careens into pond, woman falls into fountain and drowns, all kinds of interesting ways to show how the millions died right at the moment. The show is good but just misses that great story, well directed plot and great follow up between episodes to create an overall compelling show.

FlashForward is filmed in standard definition with great video and audio so you get a really good show technically speaking with good surround sound. The video has no problems and audio has some decent surround sound from the 5.1 Dolby Digital audio and comes with French and Spanish subtitles.

The ten episodes have a couple of bonus features on the second disc but not enough to warrant excitement as only the making of feature, Creating Catastrophe: The Effects of a Global Blackout is worthy. The making of feature is a look at the series opening scene where they show the events of the blackout in various places.

The other two features are a look at episode 11 of the second half of the season and an even quicker look at the continuation of the show. The one feature is a fun look at the show's opening but this does not make for much in the way of additional content.

Again I do not like how they have been releasing part of a season as it only looks like they are wanting to get more of our money for less of a series. The cost for this half season is about $30 while often you can pay that much for an entire season of other shows.

FlashForward shows promise but gets off to a stuttering start with some episodes much better than others but overall worth watching. You might want to wait till the entire season is offered in one package before a purchase that will be available in August 2010.

FlashForward is an interesting show and has the promise to be a worthwhile drama but the show is still only in the first season which is the usual make or break in period.