TVSquad

(S01E06) Some big revelations this week, both in the flashforwards case, as well as in the situation at the Benford household. In fact, it was at the Benford household that it went down. I was also very proud of the writers for choosing a more challenging route for Mark's character than the tired cliches we've come to expect.

We also got the first encounter between Lloyd Simcoe's son and the Benford daughter, Charlie, and so many things became more clear. A couple more flashforwards to round out the hour and I'm still happy with the series.

And speaking of Charlies, those who've been waiting all season for Dominic Monaghan to finally get down and dirty as a series regular on this little show need wait no loner. His name was even right there in the opening credits under 'Starring.'

My first question about Simon is whether or not he really is a quantum physicist genius, or if he's just some sort of tech hacker who could control what images come up in google. And she selected and blew up that pic of him in his skivvies pretty quickly, didn't she? There is much to learn, and I think the injection of a character so mysteriously menacing is just the sort of drama the show needs.

Everyone else is pretty likable, and with a faceless enemy, it's harder to really get behind your team. That's why the Cigarette-Smoking Man was such a popular character on The X-Files. He put a face on evil and gave us someone to hate and mistrust right along with our favorite FBI agents.

Now we have a new batch of agents, and it looks like a new face of evil. So, in that closing sequence when Simon was in the back of Lloyd's car it got me to thinking. Simon is clearly an amoral bad sort of dude. Is Lloyd not? He seems to be reluctant and remorseful about his involvement in whatever this group did.

"Our experiment killed 20 million people, Simon.What more is there to say." --Lloyd

He was part of whatever caused the blackout, and he is complicit in their efforts to keep that secret. Is he complicit in the shootout at the DC Corral last week? If so, how far is he willing to go to try and undermine Benford's investigation? Would he instigate a relationship with Olivia and help push Mark into drinking again? Would he if blackmailed or coerced?

I have to wonder if everyone was drinking on Halloween night. How else can you explain a kangaroo jumping down the street. I'd call it symbolic imagery, but everyone saw it. And then there's the Nixon masks; the same kind Mark's assailants were wearing in his flashforward. I knew it would just be vandal teens, but everything connects, right?

I've also connected Wedeck to Janis in a romantic way. The way he hovered by her bedside in the hospital and the look in his face was far more than a superior concerned about his agent. He cares for her, even if he's not sure what to do with that. I don't know if he's aware of her orientation, though I suspect he is not. Could he be the father? If so, why would he be on the crapper in his flashforward and not by her side, unless she takes off. The fact that they left that sliver of possibility that she could still get pregnant keeps the flashforwards active.

As long as they're active, they can be seen as inevitable. Once someone breaks one of them, they become possibilities. I'm going on the assumption that they're inevitable, which means that having the flashforwards was an essential part of their coming to pass. After all, it changes behavior. It's already changed the level of trust in Mark and Olivia's relationship.

I was so happy to see that Mark told Olivia about his drinking, rather than continue to lie and have her confront him. It was nice to see the more unexpected conversation route explored. Mark isn't as one-dimensional a dick as he could be, and I'm so glad to see it.

Another moment of Mark's dimensions came when he ultimately did shake Lloyd's hand. Regardless of what we know about Lloyd, from the point of views of Charlie, Dylan and Olivia the fact that they were all in the Benford house at the same time is still rather innocent in their intentions.

And Dylan's autism makes it where he can't differentiate between a future memory and a past memory, thus his recollections that "This is my house, too" and his familiarity with the cookie jar, Charlie and the envelope with the address. As for Charlie, we now know that in her vision she was downstairs and came in on Dylan. Where was she before that, that she knows "D. Gibbons is a bad man"? Was she closer to Lloyd, perhaps overhearing a conversation, or are there more people downstairs that we don't know about yet?

As for the case of the blue hands that Agents Gough and Noh handled this week, I've got nothing yet on that. It was certainly a bizarre string of clues that led them to the bodies and the genesis of what will become Gough's Rutherford case. It looks like we'll get more on that next week.