Television Review: ABC's FlashForward: Lost in Transition?

ABC finally debuted the much-anticipated, much-hyped science fiction show, FlashForward, on Thursday night, but it all felt like Lost 2.0.

FlashForward starts off exactly like Lost, with our main protagonist waking up in the middle of a chaotic disaster area. From there, it introduces related characters in a mosaic fashion until the show's main grabber happens: everyone blacks out for 2 minutes and 17 seconds, seeing themselves six months in the future.

It's not unfair to compare FlashForward to Lost. Ever since Lost became a surprise mega-hit in 2004, ABC has been one of the networks trying to capitalize on the science-fiction-tinged, serialized drama formula. In ABC's television graveyard are ratings failures like Invasion, The Nine, Six Degrees, The Book of Eli, and Day Break.

It's obvious from FlashForward's season preview that the show plans on riding Lost's coattails. Along with Sonya Walger, the show will also feature Losties Dominic Monaghan and Kim Dickens. To be fair, ABC's new alien show, V, features Elizabeth Mitchell and Matthew Fox's Party of Five TV brother, Scott Wolf.

Viewers are smarter than networks give them credit for. If FlashForward is to survive, it will carve its own niche. Already FlashForward has all the elements of every hit drama on television today. Equal parts hospital drama, police procedural, FBI versus terrorists, and trauma drama, it's a safe bet on a television landscape dominated by acronym shows.

The pilot episode could have taken a page out of Lost's book and lasted two hours. FlashForward's pilot felt claustrophobic, establishing a vast mosaic of characters without really anchoring. FlashForward's defining moment felt decidedly rushed, as it happened just twenty minutes in, before the first commercial break.

In fact, the entire premise of FlashForward feels truncated. Based on a 1999 novel of the same name by Robert J. Sawyer, it can take its time and resolve itself in book form without readers being exposed to horrible CGI effects and Sonya Walger's questionable facial expressions.

FlashForward already paints itself into a corner with the six month deadline of the main conceit. The flash-forward event of the show happens on April 29, 2010, which, coincidentally, is a Thursday. "Around 10 p.m.," one character states, almost urging the viewer to have popcorn ready.

Calling for an endgame, FlashForward virtually guarantees ABC will at least give it one year. Developed by 24's Brannon Braga and The Dark Knight's David S. Goyer, the main pull of the show will be the acrobatic chain of events that lead up to the events of the future actually happening. The cause of the blackouts is a complete mystery to everyone, including the viewer, and the only clue tendered in the pilot episode was the video of the trenchcoat-clad mystery man, the only truly eerie moment in a television show where the entire world blacks out and sees their future.

So what happens to the show when April 29, 2010 arrives? No television show willingly lasts exactly one year. Even so, there's an entire month of May sweeps to think about. My guess is that the events of April 29, 2010 will play themselves out, some spare bones thrown our way, and during the season one finale, another flash-forward happens. If FlashForward is going to emulate Lost in any way, it's certainly going to exploit a good yarn for all that it's worth.

Wikipedia, "Flashforward (novel)"