Queen Sacrifice

"Queen Sacrifice"
Episode	Season {{#pad:1|2|0|left}}, Number 15
Air Date	April 8, 2010
Title Image	a tube of lipstick
Written by	Byron Balasco Timothy J. Lea
Directed by	Bobby Roth
Guest Stars	Yuko Takeuchi as Keiko Michael Massee as Dyson Frost Barry Shabaka Henley as Agent Vreede Amy Rosoff as Marcie Turoff Vinicius Machado as Emil with Michael Ealy as Marshall Vogel
Co-starring	Lennon Wynn as Charlie Benford Kerri Higuchi as Hitomi Pascal Petardi as Agent Danforth Crowley Nick Roth as Mechanic Antonia Stout as Nurse Kim Jones Jonathan Spencer as SFPD Detective Terry Woodberry as Agent No 1 Justin Spraggins as Agent No 2
Uncredited	Seth MacFarlane as Agent Curdy
Transcript
Episode Images

"Queen Sacrifice" is the fifteenth episode of season one of FlashForward. It first aired in the United States on April 8, 2010 on ABC.

Summary

Mark and Demetri where Ian McKinnon has been murdered.

Before GBO

Mark had been shot and came to a hospital where Olivia expressed her worries about his dangerous job especially after now, when they have a daughter. He informs that he gain new surveillance job in counter-terrorist unit, taking him out of fire.

Los Angeles, present day

Mark says goodbye to Charlie and Olivia. Charlie offers him a new friendship bracelet. At FBI office Mark, Demetri and Wedeck watch video message from Dyson Frost. It reveals that Dyson himself had hundreds of flash forwards. In most of them he dies in March 15. He mentioned that his and Demetri's fate are "on collision course".

Lloyd and Simon are examining equipment from Ganwar tower. Mark made an attempt to use Dyson's passion to chess to track him down which led him to San Francisco. He also found encrypted messages in game protocol. It was a phone number. When Mark called this number there was answering machine with "Well done, leave your message" recorded by Frost.

San Francisco

Mark and Demetri arrived to San Francisco only to find out that Ian McKinnon was murdered.

Bryce and Nicole

Nicole accompanies Bryce to a round of chemotherapy. Knowing he will be sick after 24 hours of treatment she convinces him to go out on the town. While deciding where to eat and standing outside of the Sushi restaurant Bryce kisses Nicole. As they finally decide to go eat a burger they walk away, revealing that Keiko is drinking with her boss in the restaurant. Later, Bryce leaves a message to apologize for kissing Nicole then tells her he's not sorry for kissing her.

Keiko

Keiko was studying English. She came to Los Angeles following her vision and now she was low on cash. She meets a man named Emil Guterriez (Vinicius Machado) who she impresses with her knowledge of hydraulics. He hires her to work in his shop. That night she and Emil go drinking in the Sushi restaurant where she saw Bryce in her flash. She has been going to that restaurant daily hoping to see Bryce. She is having fun with Emil and doesn't see Bryce and Nicole standing right outside the window. The next day his shop is raided by ICE and Keiko is taken into custody for working in the US without the required visa.

Mole hunt in Mosaic Investigation

Room full of possible moles

An inter-agency force launches a full-scale mole hunt in the FBI office. They find a bug planted in Mark's keyboard. First one to be questioned is Demetri. While Mark doesn't actually suspect him, he wants the mole to think that everyone is under suspicion.

Marcie flees

Turoff is identified as the mole by Mark Benford and Demetri Noh. She begins a shootout with FBI agents and attempts to escape with the help of an unidentified helmeted motorcyclist wearing black. As the motorcycle evades Benford and Noh, Janis Hawk runs out of the entrance, and with the motorcycle approaching, she fires several shots. The bike crashes onto the water and the motorcyclist is either disabled or killed. Janis quickly subdues Turoff after a brief altercation, and arrests her.

The Second Mole

Following Marcie's arrest Janis and Simon have a conversation. She tells Simon that he sent a message by killing Uncle Teddy and that this message has been received, implying that she is a second mole. Simon, surprised by this news, comments that “not one person in the office would suspect it's [her]. Not one.”

Trivia

General

This is the second episode which has chess metaphor in title. First one was White to Play and both of them revolving around Dyson Frost

The name Ian McKinnon is an Easter Egg referencing a contributor to the Flashforcast podcast. Iain Mackinnon contributes a segment called "Iain's Isle" focusing principally on Easter Eggs.

Production Notes

• Brían F. O'Byrne (Aaron Stark) was credited but did not appear.
• Seth MacFarlane returns to his role as the unnamed FBI agent from "No More Good Days", a 13-episode gap.

Bloopers and Continuity Errors

• The "Sacrifice move" of the queen shown in this episode does not sacrifice the queen or even place it in jeopardy.

Furthermore, the chess board on which the alleged Queen Sacrifice is demonstrated is set up incorrectly with a black square to the right (as well as being rotated through 90 degrees from the more normal viewing configuration); the only twist to this classic blooper is that it proves the use of visual effects rather than a chess program on Mark's computer!

The revealing of the three end positions and move sequences leads to further inconsistencies, although in mitigation these are relatively subtle and only the alert chess aficionado would spot them without the aid of play-back.

Firstly, while it would be a little nitpicking to cast doubt on the likelihood of these positions occurring in sequence between two supposedly strong players bearing in mind that their brevity was a necessary plot device, we have the more fundamental problem that not one of them is any way related to the game containing the purported sacrifice (this being the only game in which Black has castled on the King side).

Secondly Mark states that "in the three games he made 50 moves, after which - he resigned". However, both games 1 and 3 show an end position in which Black is checkmated (although curiously the word "mate" only appears on the score sheet in game 3). Since it is not customary to resign when the game is already over, the only way in which this sequence could have come arisen would have been if game 3 had been played prior to game 2. With Frost playing Black in game 2 this would make some logical sense (putting aside the relatively minor inconsistency that Frost would then have had to have played White in both of the first two games and might in any case have been declared the winner with the score at 2-0) since a resignation in this ghastly position would not have been exactly premature.

Cultural References

• Gremlins: Nicole calls Bryce's future girlfriend a mogwai as a metaphor for Bryce's joke claiming this woman might be a sushi lover since gremlins have unique and strict eating habits.
• Chess: This episode's title is taken from a very risky move in chess, in which a player's queen (the most powerful piece) is deliberately sacrificed (allowed to be captured by the enemy without recapturing the enemy queen in return). The reasons for implementing such a move are many, but the reward for such a sacrifice (if done correctly) is far greater than the loss.
• I-9: Police stormed the garage Keiko had been hired at "off record", demanding I-9 forms from Keiko. The Employment Eligibility Verification Form I-9 is a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services form. It is used by an employer to verify an employee's identity and to establish that the worker is eligible to accept employment in the United States.

Literary Techniques

• Metaphor: This episode's title is a metaphor for how Mark left Stan out of the loop during the mole "blast fishing", in essence sacrificing his most powerful ally, in order to find the mole.
• Irony: Dyson Frost reveals to Demetri, Stan, and Mark on the 1991 Somali tape that he has had hundreds of flashforwards, most of which predict that he will die on March 15th, 2010, the very same day on which Demetri is to be murdered by Mark.

Unanswered Questions

Unanswered questions
Do not answer the questions here. Keep the questions open-ended and neutral: do not suggest an answer. Avoid questions that are unlikely to be answered. More details...

Theories for these unanswered questions should go on this article's theory page.

General

• Who was the motorcyclist attempting to help Marcie escape?
  • How did Marcie manage to call for an escape vehicle?

Flashes

• What did Emil Gutierrez see in his flashforward?

External links

• Episode's article on IMDB