FlashForward

Well, that was a big waste of time. FlashForward was a show that lived off building a mystery that span years, and now it's been canceled. So all that really happened was a bunch of people saw their futures, worried about the implications of their visions for a few months, and then their futures (mostly) came true. In really irritating ways, too. They push the idea that no matter how hard people fight it, they can't avoid their fate. Except when they do. Demetri was supposed to be killed, but he wasn't. Some FBI guy managed to kill himself to prevent a woman from dying, but she gets hit by a car... and the show doesn't bother to say whether she actually dies or not. A guy who saw himself uniting Somalia gets killed.

In terms of people's visions coming true, Mark was drinking in his flash despite being sober... and a few hours before a random guy on the street hands him a flask, which he promptly starts drinking. Good job, dude. It's a miracle how you managed to Die Hard a room full of bad guys while sauced. Olivia and Simon seemed to get closer together for no other reason than their visions said they should. No real romantic chemistry, no real reason for her to cheat on her husband... it was just sort of like, "Well, okay, let's do this. It's our future, right?" If Keiko does end up finding Bryce after all, why doesn't her mom remember being detained in an American airport? Ugh. If all that complaining seemed like a mess, welcome to the experience of watching the show.

Despite a premise that can't actually decide what it's really about and a muddled collection of undirected subplots rather than a direct story arc most of time, the show's biggest problem is that the characters are all terrible. They're not likable, their problems aren't interesting, they do stupid stuff for no reason... it's hard to enjoy a show when you don't have fun watching the people on it. And I'm seriously not exaggerating. Every single character is bad! How does a show get this far with a boring, angsty protagonist surrounded by boring, angsty supporting cast?

I will say, I liked the pilot. Its portrayal of the destruction caused by the whole world blacking out for two minutes was impressive and exciting, and the beginning of the mystery was intriguing. But it was only downhill from there. Without the bad guys having a clear reason for anything they do makes it hard to be interesting in their schemes, and simply too much time is spent on characters whose problems they forgot to make interesting in the context of a world that knows its future. You have a pretty high concept here, do something with it. Instead, it was pretty traditional, uninteresting melodrama. There were a couple episodes and bits I liked, but they were few and far between. There were some particularly bad bits I could pick on, but I don't really feel like it. The show is dead, no reason to keep poking the body.