Flash Forward (s1ep11): Revelation Zero (Part 1) – ****
SPOILERS BELOW     

Previously: Everyone blacked out at the same time, but they all had visions or flashforwards. Special Agent Janis Hawk was getting a prenatal sonogram in her FF. Dr. Olivia Benford is married to Mark but was with another man she’s never met in her FF. FBI Special Agent Mark Benford was investigating the case about the flashforwards. One person was seen on a video as awake and was dubbed Suspect Zero. Olivia meets the guy she was with in her flashforward, his son is her patient. It turns out he (Lloyd Simcoe) and Simon Campos did an experiment and tell the public it’s a possibility they may have caused the flashforwards. Dr. Bryce Varley had a FF about a Japanese woman. FBI Special Agent Demetri Noh didn’t have a flashforward at all, which he takes to mean he’s going to be dead. A lady in Hong Kong says she know what will happen and that his partner Mark Benford will kill him. Meanwhile Olivia and Lloyd are involved in a scuffle while his son is being discharged and Lloyd is taken by a group of armed men.

[+] I love when this show investigates how the FF affected the public at large or people who aren’t main characters. An ominous voice tells us about a window washer who was unconscious as the blackout hit. “Many of us think that when divine intervention happens, it’s something big. But it can also be a small thing that seems so inconsequential in the moment. It turns out to be, the turning point of your entire life. Big or small, what if that moment affected everyone, everywhere, at the exact same time. What would that mean to you? Where would you look for answers? The answer is never about just one person. Every single person’s life was touched by the blackout. None of us are in this alone.” Nice, bringing the premise back from our main characters to relate it to all of us.

[+] Flashes of all our main characters awaking. “Each one of us is unique. But we are being stitched together to form a tapestry. Something larger that can’t be understood until we step back to see the whole thing. At some point we all wake up and then we have to choose. Do we walk in hope believing that what God is doing is good or do we stumble around resigning ourselves to chaos?” It turns out the voice is the window washer. Oh, and he’s also Gil Bellows from ‘Ally McBeal’. Impressive opening. Welcome back, show.

[+] AD Stanford Wedeck reams Mark over his actions in Hong Kong and pulling out out a gun. Mark suggests he needs to find D. Gibbons, Suspect Zero, and investigate the thing they saw in aerial views of Somalia. Wedneck tells him what he’s doing in all those areas. Mark is ordered to therapy before he can be reinstated. Meanwhile Olivia is telling Janis what happened with her and Lloyd. (And accidentally says Mark instead of Lloyd.)

[+] On Mark’s way out of the office he takes pictures of the entire mosaic of evidence. He sees Simon who is now the liaison for all things scientific on FF. He’s watching the video of what happened with Olivia and Lloyd. Just as Olivia and Mark meet up again and hug, the video shows her hugging Lloyd. The rest of them have a meeting and learn Marshall Vogel has now been added to the Mosaic Task Force. Elsewhere, Lloyd is being held by someone who wants answers.

[+] Hello, Lindsay Crouse aka Maggie Walsh from ‘BtVS’. She’s Nicole’s (Mark’s babysitter) mother and has something against passage Genesis 2:17 from the Bible as she reads it and sets it on fire. Olivia and Mark talk and reunite in a sweet moment. I love those two crazy kids, but I think I might be the only one. The team is still looking into finding Lloyd. Mark goes to see his therapist who is onto him quickly. She knows he thinks he’s the key to figuring out everything and wants to know why. What what? She tells him there is now a drug to enhance people’s memories of their FF. And there is a bum in the park with a poster counting down the days til FF day.

[+] Simon: Could you get me a beer from the refrigerator, please? Janis: We’re here as your security, Mr. Campos, not your servants. Simon: I’m trying to brute force an encryption here. I don’t have time to get up. I have even less time for explicating why said request should be obvious. So why don’t you toddle off, get me a beer? It’ll help me cogitate. That means “think.” Janis: That’s a big word for such a little man. Simon: I’m wounded. But I still want my beer.

[+] Janis goes to get him the beer and is met with masked men who leave her unconscious in the kitchen. And Simon joins Lloyd down in the dungeon. Simon: “Good, I found you.” For now Lloyd’s son is staying with him at the hospital. Demetri and Marshall are investigating a lead and find some dead bodies in a train car. The ones who kidnapped Lloyd. Elsewhere, Nicole arrives for work at the hospital and sees the person who drowns her in her FF. So of course she runs after him and he’s gone. An employee encourages her to join Sanctuary, a group created by our window washer.

[+] Simon and Lloyd are arguing about their place in the project and Ted Flosso (hello again, Ricky Jay) shows up. Flosso: “I have emphysema. I contracted it through years of habitual smoking. Disgusting proclivity, isn’t it? Only villains smoke. We know this, right?” Simon: “I’m sorry. You are…?” He flick’s ashes in Simon’s eyes. Flosso: “You may call me Flosso. And I’m a villain.”

[+] Flosso seems to know a lot about Simon and Lloyd and what happened, except the details. Flosso: “So, how many electron volts were generated?” Lloyd: “I’d rather die than tell you how to manufacture another blackout.” Flosso: “You think you caused it?” Lloyd: “I did.” Flosso: “No, Dr. Simcoe. All the two of you did was amplify it.” Dun dun dun.

[+] I’m not sure this is a good idea to give Mark, a man who is already addicted to another substance, a new substance he could get addicted to taking. Simon admits in his FF he kills a man. And Lloyd in his FF received a txt from Simon. Simon: I don’t understand. Why don’t our futures match? Lloyd: Because it’s a possible future. Clearly you weren’t paying any attention to the story about the FBI agent who committed suicide. Anything’s possible. Vision or no vision.” They try and put a ‘help us’ note in the window, but it flies away.

[+] Mark is in his induced state and sees all the evidence from the mosaic board including the ‘help us’ note, ‘red panda association’, and a hydra monster. He remembers a phone conversation with Lloyd. Meanwhile, Lloyd is questioned again, but refuses to tell Floss anything. So they take Simon away. Olivia is still at the hospital. Mark is now in his car struggling to not go into the Cocktail Lounge. He calls Aaron, his friend and sponsor at AA, and tells him about the conversation with Lloyd. It sounded like they were working together about a QED. And “There’s going to be another blackout.”

[+] Mark has a meeting with Wedeck and to keep the knowledge of another blackout to himself. He’s at home looking at his homemade mosaic and his daughter tells him to start at the corners and work his way in on the puzzle. Nicole is at a Sanctuary meeting. She tells window washer guy that she thinks the FF are God’s way of telling them to fix their lives before it’s too late. He invites her to talk about it over coffee. Mark goes to visit Red Panda. They work all over the world, including in Somalia. But not in 1991 when the aerial photos were taken.