MovieChat Forums > Flashforward (2009) Discussion > Why didn't it work?

Why didn't it work?

posted 13 years ago by dazfiddy
49 replies | jump to latest

On paper, this series should have been a monster. Not a King Kong sized monster like Lost, but a serious contender. I have started watching it again, and the first episodes are good. What went wrong?

Here are some of my thoughts:

1. The characters were not interesting enough.None of the main characters, like Mark, Olivia or Dimitri grabbed me.Compared with Lost where you had Jack, Sawyer, Hurley and Kate. You cared about them all stuck on that island.

2. The Flash forward was too short a time frame, it should have set 12 months ahead rather 6 months.

3. Too many characters were FBI agents which then made a show a police procedural rather than a sci-fi mystery, or worse, a hybrid of the two.Why not have a priest or even a writer?

4. The action should have been set in other cities or countries. The black out was global, yet we only saw glimpses of the rest of the world.Heroes was a able to covey the impression of various characters from all parts of the globe.

5.The producers cast two actors(Sonya Walger and Dominic Monahagn) who had been in Lost!To me, that indicates a lack of faith in the whole project.

I would love to know what others think.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] dazfiddy 13 years ago

There are so many perspectives from which the blackout could have been viewed, ranging from a religious one to a media/journalism one. As you state in point 1, the show never explored this.This, would have been the biggest global event, even dwarfing 9/11!!The producers of the show failed to follow this through.Some of the characters should have been in the military and or working in the finance sector.We could seen the impact of the black out through their eyes.

I was never quite convinced by Joseph Fiennes as the Fed. He was miscast, despite his decent American accent.

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] johnyperks 13 years ago

I agree with many of the things people have said on this thread. The premise idea was very fascinating. And the Premise created so many different possible story lines or threads that you could never possibly get in any other type of TV drama. This made it very intriguing and exciting. It started off very strong and the more it went along it seemed to weaken.

• I agree that they could have possibly explored the impact more in different countries since it was global, they lost sight of that a bit. As if it only happened in LA.

• They got to close to finding out who masterminded it to quickly. As the episodes went along The blue hand group that went to far and I didn't believe a lot of those characters.

• One of the episodes where they go back where a young white guy was on a bus that went off into a pond in a park and nearly drowned. In his Flash Forward he was a Black confident guy picking up girls in a disco. That was a laughable story line.

• But Most of all. That episode where they go to Africa to see those mysterious towers. That was OK, but :- They meet that African War lord. He shoots one of the FBI armed guards. It turned into a bad episode of the "A Team" The Chinese/Asian FBI agent gets the Lesbian FBI agent pregnant. I just didn't believe that. After that particular episode I just gave up on it.

Shame; it was a great and original idea but in the end the makers couldn't handle the complexity of it, it's self.

[–] princexjeo 11 years ago

Flashforward was very interesting for the most part. Considering the scale of the calamity and the propensity for it to spin out of control i think the writers tackled the most important parts police procedural/geo-political.

That said some things just did not work. Every time Lloyd was in the same room as Olivia I cringed. How do you go from loyal highly respected wife and Doctor to cheating, inconsiderate and skulking behind your marriage in under 6 months?!

Bedford started to sound like Batman in season 2, and overplayed that hand. But I'm glad he actually got to do some detective work.

Oh and charlie. What a pathetic kid, annoying, needy and spoiled. She needed therapy but instead Olivia brings Lloyd into the fray to further confuse her *sigh*

The most interesting characters were 1. Janice (very strong female lead) and Agent Noh (sleeping with your lesbian friend? Mad skills bro!), Keiko and the Surgical Attending (pulled on heart strings, though resolved abruptly). Everyone else was just there for the ride.

All in all its a solid B+ Series, much better than Lost(I stopped at season 3, too aggravating to continue) and that atrocity "the Event" (couldn't get passed episode 3!)

[–] eskaty 13 years ago

Also:

4. Characters were too stupid. Especially the women. I can't tell you the number of times I exclaimed: "Oh come on! No one would do that!" The men were cartoon characters who overreacted to every situation, and the women went from devoted to fickle to witchy with little provocation.

5. Cliched action sequences. E.g. Unless there was plot point involved, the bad guys ALWAYS missed their targets. Even when they had machine guns versus the good guys' revolvers. Unless they were aiming at an extra, a minor character, or Seth McFarlane. Seriously.

6. The solution, when it came, was too facile. I was like: "Really? The Big Board all comes down to a connect-the-dots? Really?"

So much potential. So little payoff.

[–] JoeyBagOfDonuts 12 years ago

How did Mark know exactly where to place the push pins. That's the part that I didn't get. if he was off by an inch here of there, he never would have been able to figure out the date of the next flashforward.

Brains are good, especially when sauteed with carmelized onions.

[–] meikido 10 years ago

Mark didn't place them. Gabriel did. And Gabriel has seen the board several times in his countless flash forwards and he has the ability to remember every tiny detail.

[–] sweiland75 13 years ago

The reality television generation has virtually no attention span so exposing them to a long-term story line is futile.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5GZIDnMzZQ Why does Canada need a queen?

[–] Disneyfan16672 13 years ago

^^That, along with medical, crime, and soap dramas of which there are already way too many of these days...

Must-See 2011 Films:
Deathly Hallows: Part II
POTC: On Stranger Tides

[–] sweiland75 13 years ago

It all leads to a lack of originality an imagination to create something new. That's ironic, now that I think about it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5GZIDnMzZQ Why does Canada need a queen?

[–] crazy_old_days 13 years ago

It was just like the book. The book started out smart, but almost halfway through it it became predictable and the characters stale like the author just wanted quickly tie things up and finish it. I liked the casting and I was hoping that the show would veer off from the plot and be more interesting but I was disappointed. This is one of the few shows that I don't feel bad that it was canceled, but I would prefer this over all the reality shows that are polluting the time schedule.

[–] There_Is_No_Sayid 13 years ago

I had much more cogent critiques when the show was closer to now. But I agree with some of yours.

1. A lot of the leads WERE weak. The only real strong performance on the show from a regular was from Christine Woods. In particular Joseph Fiennes was pretty damn bad as Mark Benford Legend.

2. The six months didn't bother me so much.

3. I somewhat agree. I think an indepdendent investigation might have been more appropriate, or even just people dealing with the aftermath of the flashes.

4. I disagree with this. If the show had gone on longer they could have gone farther afield like they did with the trip to Somalia. But the problem for the show is that the whole thing is too sprawling. With everyone in the world impacted you had the potential for things to spin out of control.

5. I don't understand what you mean here.

Anyway, among other issues that I think dragged it down is

a) That a lot of the conflicts weren't very believable. For example they set up as one potential conflict the idea that Olivia might cheat on Mark in the future. But they never sell the attraction between her and Lloyd. There's no spark there and given her vehement protests that she will never cheat there's no sense that there's any danger there.

b) Related to this is the fact that the show had IMO too many characters. The plethora of characters meant that none of their storylines could be fully developed. This contributes to the Olivia/Lloyd fiasco. But it also left other storylines like the Keiko/Bryce one dangling somewhat or feeling rushed. As I said above the problem is that the premise is global in scope and so there's always new characters you could work in.

c) While I liked aspects of the conspiracy, particularly the reveal that they'd been doing flasheforwards for a long time on a personal scale, some of the stuff was just flat out goofy. When you're LOST you can get away with a certain level of goofiness because it's on this fantastical Island. But Flashforward is set in the real world and thus needs to maintain some verisimilitude.

"Unless Alpert's covered in bacon grease, I don't think Hugo can track anything."

[–] Disneyfan16672 13 years ago

I chalk up the failure of "FlashForward" to 3 reasons:

1.) Advertising for this show was remarkably low in its second half. I don't remember any promotions for its return or the subsequent episodes that followed to gain any sort of attention to the show itself.

2.) The weak first half. The story became way too convuluted in its mythology during the first half of the season, and took all of the focus off the characters who got lost in the weak writing. Characters who could have been greatly developed came off flat, but were improved during the show's second half when it was too late for the show to recover.

3.) As stated before, I agree that the flashforwards themselves should have been taken on a more personal level. Less strange (like the early "white-to-black" episode), and more revealing and believable flashforwards would have been preferred. As stated before, most people found it unbelievable that Olivia would really cheat on Mark considering all the time she spends in the early episodes where she tried to avoid Lloyd at all costs. It was too unbelievable for me to take seriously, and certain revelations that could have been interesting were only made less interesting by the unbelievable circumstances under which they were discovered. Although, I'm willing to forgive the show for instances like that (it is sci-fi after all), I would have preferred at least a small bit of realism, as the events of the global blackout were taken seriously in the pilot.

Despite these reasons, I don't think the show was a complete disaster. It just took its time to develop itself, but by that time it was too late to recover from its low ratings. If anything, I prefer this show way more than I do that travesty airing on NBC called "The Event". Even with all the mistakes "FlashForward" made, "The Event" was just pure torture to try to sit and attempt to enjoy. The characters are cardboard flat copies from other shows, its story is all over the place, and it still doesn't know where it's going (nor what "The Event" actually is). By the time "FlashForward" was at the point "The Event" is now it at least knew where it was going. I'd much rather watch a second season of "FlashForward" than the last few episodes left to air for "The Event".

Must-See 2011 Films:
Deathly Hallows: Part II
POTC: On Stranger Tides

[–] 13 years ago

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[–] tom-1356 13 years ago

I completely disagree. IMO this concept as well as how they carried it out was superior to Lost.

The most LOST thing about the series LOST was the series itself. Ask 10 people what it was about and you get 10 different answers...not surprising for a LOST show.

FlashForward, OTOH, had a lot more believable story-line, and I disagree about the main character, Fiennes (sp?). I thought he did a great job...better than the actor that played Jack in LOST.

Any way, my favorite character in the series was Keiko. Married to a beautiful Chinese woman I am usually very attracted to beautiful Asian women in general, but this actress is over the top beautiful, an unparalleled smile.

[–] superspudz2000 13 years ago

Theres no reason why it shouldent have worked!

surly its better than 90% of the garbage on TV these days.

how the hell is dancing with the stars still on the air???

[–] murasakiotto 13 years ago

The plot was fun, but the stories were uninteresting and slow. This would have been a big hit if done right. Mottainai!!

[–] s-mmaneage 13 years ago

the writing only got better. I think the writers realized that writing for Benford's character meant giving him more clever private eye story lines as opposed to the whole marriage ending thing...which still weighed in, but giving his character room to lose it was all for the better. And the series did look more into the global effects of the blackout.I mean, it had freakin' Keiko!
I think that the series tanked more because of timing. Lost was going pretty full throttle at the time. I'm not sure if people were up for another convoluted plot (though I think that the writers did a better job at managing multiple story lines as the show progressed...more seamlessly than Lost). Anyways, great show. Its a shame that Syfy didn't pick up this show. I'd def still watch it without the special effects.

[–] 13 years ago

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