“SAY WHAT? I’m gonna last how many episodes?”

Episode 2 White to Play

It’s Thursday afternoon and it’s time for me to recap the last episode of Flash Forward before tonight and more importantly to check in on John Cho’s character, Demitri Noh and see if he’ll survive the first season.

This recap of “White to Play” is full of SPOILERS. If you haven’t seen the episode and want to before reading, visit: http://abc.go.com/shows/flash-forward

The second episode of Flash Forward opens with the kids playing a game of “Blackout” where they pretend they are sleeping for a few minutes and then tell each other what they saw. Charlie was the only one who was awake and observed all of the children lying on the ground. When the other kids awoke they confronted Charlie about her vision. She didn’t want to share it and was bullied to do so and as the children began to get into a fight, Charlie’s doll is ripped apart sending her running.

It was a grim and damn-near depressing scene and I think it’s a great observation on the youth that if something were to hit world-wide like this, that children would in fact not be able to be sheltered from this but in fact be more open in accepting of such a strange phenomena. It’s a great commentary too about how less innocent children really are in the world and how much they are aware of the reality of the world.

Olivia brings Charlie to work with her where she meets Lloyd Simcoe, the father of the child she saved in the pilot, and the man who appeared in her flash forward, who we come to assume she will have an affair with. Lloyd doesn’t let on that he had any vision with Olivia in it so she pushes him off to her intern Bryce, and refocuses her attention to Charlie. Lloyd is trying to muster up the strength and words to tell his autistic son that his mother died in the blackout. It’s then when Charlie sees Lloyd’s son Dylan, and she recognizes him from her “dream.” And let’s not forget that Dylan knew Olivia’s name in the first episode. Hmmmmm…..

D. Gibbons is a woman? Yeah right.
Okay, consider me a bit thrown for a second in my fanboy dreams that D. Gibbons would somehow tie into Dave Gibbons of Watchmen fame (That’s how he signs his name). He is actually a she, Diedre Gibbons, an owner of an Anaheim cupcake store called Didi Delicious. She knew to come to the FBI office because in her flash forward, she is arguing with someone on the phone over her credit card. She repeats to person on the line that they need to call FBI Agents Benford and Noh. The word “Pigeon” is in the flash as well.

Agent Hawk who is compiling the data for the Mosaic website discovers that Didi’s credit card was charged in two places at nearly the exact time, by way of a cloned card and this other location was by another D. Gibbons (Aha! I knew it) who lives in Pigeon, Utah. Agents Benford and Noh follow the lead to a factory of dead-looking dolls strung from the warehouse rafters where they find a mysteriously looking character surrounded in high tech computer equipment, who utters “He who foresees calamities suffers them twice over” and proceeds to detonate that portion of the warehouse. Mark and Dimitri survive (whew!) and Mark is later given a crime scene photo of a melted doll, the same one in his flash forward.

Hawk continues to follow the leads from clues at the D. Gibbons bunker in Utah and discovers a cellphone that was found at the scene made a phone call 30 seconds before the blackout to none other than someone at Detroit stadium. Which brings us to the big break in the Noh Watch.

John Cho AKA Slim Shady?

Already freaked that he sees Mark wearing the exact charm bracelet he wears in his flash forward creeps my brother out. Demitri posts a story on the Mosaic website, per Agent Hawk’s request, of his lack of flash forward in the hopes that someone recognizes his name and knows why he didn’t experience a flash. He is called that night by a mystery woman who tells him that she read his post and knows that he will be murdered on March 15, 2010. Damn, now my Asian brother isn’t even going to make it to the final month of the season. Or will he?

This column is going to have a shorter run than I originally thought. The end of the episode shows Mark who realizes that more and more of his vision is coming true, builds a fire and tosses the friendship bracelet Charlie gives him into it, therefore changing his future. So that’s a promising tidbit for Dimitri. But how about that, knowing the exact date you’re going to die and believing it will happen. And most of all, you get the news from Shohreh Aghdashloo (House of Sand and Fog, 24) who may have one of the coolest voices in show business. I mean if you’re going to get the worst news of your life, Aghdashloo is the woman to deliver it. Supposedly we get to see Dimitri interact with his fiancée, Zoey (Gabrielle Union) tonight who claims she sees herself married in her flash forward (gathered from the trailer). Maybe he does something so drastic to change his future that it doesn’t even involve Zoey.

Conspiracy theorists already have thrown out a variety of possibilities about Dimitri. Jon and Matt from PCS have already weighed in with theirs. Maybe he’s the shadowy figure in Detroit stadium, he’s the one who gets Janis Hawk pregnant, he’s not in the car with Benford right after the blackout, maybe the future already happened, wha-what?! I love that everyone is talking about Dimitri and how many are hoping he’s not the bad guy of all this. Some fans are even checking out Cho’s IMDB to see how many episodes show up under his name. C’mon, people you know that they update that weekly for television shows, right? It’s not going to be THAT easy. I’m just enjoying everyone having an opinion on the matter.

My bet is that David Goyer is a PCS reader and sees just how popular John Cho has suddenly become on the site and keep him through to next season. Okay, maybe not, but brother can’t honestly be up to this just so he avoids getting married, could he?

So did any of you see the trailer for tonight’s episode? There is a SHADY long-haired hippie looking Asian holding a rifle about to smoke someone. Damn, now we’ve got two Asian brothers up in this house. Represent!

Other observations from “White to Play”

* The dark and shadowy figure is being called “Suspect Zero.”

* There is a wall being started in town of vanished and missing people from the black out.

* Didi offered two kinds of cupcakes, Coconut and Carrot Cake. Yes it sounds tasty. Damn that’s a messed up pairing if I ever heard of one.

* What is the significance of D. Gibbons in Utah playing chess and why is he gathering data on the blackout?

* Instead of people dealing with their past, there are support groups dealing with their future.

* The time of the black out was 11:01.

* Agent Benford’s supervisor Agent Stanford Wedeck reveals his flash forward to Mark, telling him that after having a bowel movement, he rescues someone from who passes out and nearly drowns to death with his face in a urinal, and then has to perform mouth-to-mouth. Nothing ominous about this, it’s just funny and a ghastly thought. *shiver*