Here's the thing, everybody. I missed the first five minutes of this episode because of a variety of reasons. I missed whatever Dyson Frost had to say to Demetri. I missed the scene where Mark moved out of the house to protect his family. (I only know his motivation for this because it was in the helpful episode description that my Slingbox provides to me.) I missed some of the FBI stuff, I assume. But the episode filled in enough of these blanks that I feel comfortable saying I got it enough to know that the episode wasn't the one that magically fixed all of the show's issues. I also feel comfortable saying that somewhere along the line, this show got really, really funny, but not in a way that I think anyone involved with its production is intending.
Actually, scratch that. I think the cast knows exactly how stupid some of this stuff is. That's why the show is bearable at this point. Everyone in the cast is playing the hilt out of some of the goofier lines, even Joseph Fiennes. When he randomly exclaimed, "NOW, WE'RE TRAVELING" to close out that scene where he solved Frost's chess riddle, it was hilarious. When he said, "UNFORTUNATELY, ONE OF THEM IS MY ENEMY," it was even better. I think we need some sort of scale here, some sort of fair measurement that would suggest how close we are to Mark just randomly breaking out, "I WAS LOADED!" again. Assuming FlashForward crashes and burns and isn't renewed, I want "I WAS LOADED!" to become an Internet meme. I want schoolkids on busses singing its name. I want the whole world to get just a taste of what this show has become.
Because in tonight's episode, we spent a good portion of screentime following around a character we've met just three times (once in someone else's flash forward) as she attempted to find a job and ended up falling in with a bunch of racial stereotypes who worked at a garage run by a kindly Latino man with a gruff exterior but a heart of gold, a guy who just wants to work on his cars, man, and is willing to employ undocumented workers to do so. All of this was wrapped up in a tale of how Keiko and Bryce just keep missing each other and have each found new romantic interests. But as little interest as I have in the romantic pairing of Bryce and the babysitter, I have even less interest in the pairing of Keiko and some guy I've just met, especially as it hinges on a number of pieces of information I've just learned that the show clumsily forced in there, chief among them the fact that Keiko is apparently a genius auto mechanic.
As a serialized sci-fi drama in the back half of its first season, building up to the moment when the flash forwards pointed to, there should be more of a sense of things falling into place in FlashForward than there is. Instead, there's a sense of things madly scrambling around so that everyone gets something to do. Some of that probably stems from the constant cut in production order, which probably forced a few episodes to get smushed together to give the end game a better sense of how it was going to play out. Some of that probably stems from first-season jitters, a show that doesn't have its serialization sea legs under it just yet. Most of that stems from the fact that the show is awful. Or, y'know, TV'S BEST COMEDY. Whatever works. I got a SENSE of what the show was pushing for when Bryce called the sexy babysitter to tell her he wasn't sorry he kissed her and the ICE VAN CARRYING KEIKO SCREAMED ALONG BEFORE HIM, OMG, but that was mostly because it didn't involve Bryce looking over at the camera or an extra or a friendly dog or a dead crow or a creepy doll head or Ricky Jay's disembodied nose and saying, "We just keep missing each other. Failed connections are one of the themes of the show." Visual storytelling. Use it.