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"No More Good Days" is the first episode of season one of FlashForward. It first aired on Thursday, September 24, 2009.
A mysterious global event causes everyone to simultaneously experience, for two minutes and seventeen seconds, their lives six months in the future. When they wake up from the "flash forward," everyone is left wondering if what they saw will actually happen. A Los Angeles FBI agent named Mark Benford tries to figure out what exactly happened and why it happened. His supervisor directs him to create a database of people's flash forwards from around the world.
Summary[]
Prologue[]
Mark crawls out of his wrecked car
Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent Mark Benford crawls from the wreckage of his overturned car to find all of Los Angeles in chaos.
Four hours earlier, Mark dresses for work and unlocks a safe to retrieve his weapon and badge. He finds a note reading, "You're a crappy husband. I hate you." Leaving the note in the safe, Mark walks to his bed and tenderly tells his wife Olivia that he hates her, too. She sleepily reminds him that the garage door is not working properly. Moving into the kitchen, Mark greets his daughter Charlie, who is watching the Squirrelio cartoon show. A short time later, Mark crawls out under a partially opened garage door and greets the yard contractor, Hector. Nicole Kirby, who babysits Charlie arrives and Mark asks her to stay late that day because Olivia has to work the late shift at the hospital; she agrees. Inside the house, Olivia tries to call Bryce Varley, a doctor who works for her, but ends up leaving him a voice mail message.
Bryce is walking on a pier. He looks at surfers enjoying themselves, then places his cell phone with three missed calls from Olivia and his wallet on the railing of the pier. He opens his bag and removes a revolver.
Bryce removes a revolver from his bag
Aaron Stark is speaking at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting with Mark in attendance. He tells the audience how his daughter Tracy, a Marine, died in Afghanistan and that he only received thirty-seven pounds of remains from a woman who weighed 118 pounds. He adds that he took a drink that night. After the meeting, Mark asks Aaron if he had contacted a nurse friend of Olivia yet for a date; Aaron promises to call the woman.
Back at the Benford residence, Nicole is engaged in foreplay with Joel while Charlie takes a nap.
Mark and Demetri wait
Mark and his partner Demetri Noh are engaged in a surveillance of an unidentified woman and Demetri photographs her as she greets Khalid and Omar. While he works, Demetri explains that his fiancée Zoey Andata has selected a song for their first dance to which he will be embarrassed to dance.
Aaron, who works for the Department of Water and Power, prepares to climb a utility pole.
Olivia talks with a nurse about children while they scrub for surgery.
Mark and Demetri watch as the unidentified woman, Khalid, and Omar enter a black sport utility vehicle. Mark radios other agents to prepare for mobile surveillance and calls the Los Angeles Field Office. Janis Hawk answers his call and Mark tells her he needs to speak to their supervisor Stanford Wedeck. The occupants of the sport utility vehicle realize they are being followed and attempt to evade. The mobile surveillance turns into a high-speed chase through the streets of Los Angeles.
As the vehicles weave in and out of traffic, as Bryce cocks his revolver and points it at his head, as Nicole appears to be approaching climax, as Aaron climbs the pole, and as Olivia enters the operating room to begin surgery, the Global Blackout occurs.
The Global Blackout[]
Mark is in his office at night, alone and anxious. He posts things on a bulletin board, drinks from a flask and writes down the words “Who Else Knows?” on a page-a-day calendar. The date on the calendar: April 29, 2010. Red beams pierce the room; they are laser sight guides from rifle scopes. Masked intruders are coming for Mark because he knows too much. They are closing in. Then another flash occurs.
We are back in the present, where disaster has hit.
A kangaroo hopping along the streets
Everyone on the planet blacked out for two minutes and seventeen seconds. The repercussions of the event are severe. Massive car pileups, downed airplanes, raging fires and there is even a kangaroo hopping along the streets of downtown LA. At the Benford home, Charlie says to Nicole, “I dreamt there are no more good days.”
The blackout interrupts Bryce's suicide and he has taken this as a sign that it was not meant to be. He rushes to the hospital to help Olivia. She is treating Dylan Simcoe, an eight-year-old boy who, somehow, knows her name. They save the boy’s life, but his mother was killed during the mass blackout and they cannot locate his father. Back at FBI headquarters, Mark and Demetri bring in the lone female survivor of their terrorist suspects. Mark reveals the details of his blackout vision. He says, “I was having a memory, only it wasn’t of the past. It was of the future.” Turns out everyone had flashes of events that have not yet occurred, all taking place on April 29, 2010—six months from now. Demetri is concerned because he did not have a flash. He wonders if that is because, six months from now, he will be dead. Flashes from others include:
- Janis sees that she was seventeen weeks pregnant, which is odd because she does not have a boyfriend.
- Al Gough is in London meeting with their New Scotland Yard liaison, Fiona Banks. Her and Agent Gough have exactly the same recollection of each other’s flash.
- Aaron sees his daughter, Tracy, very much alive.
- Olivia lovingly says, “Hey, honey” to a man in her living room, but that man is not Mark.
Mark’s vision seems to indicate that he is investigating what caused the "flash forward." That is enough for Wedeck to assign him, Demetri and Janis to run point on the case. Janis wants to create a Website so people from around the world can post their visions. This way, they can search for patterns. That is exactly what Mark was doing in the office the night of his flash. The key things Mark remembers are:
- The name of the investigation is “Mosaic.”
- The name “D. Gibbons” was written on a note card.
- There was a photograph of a doll that was burned with a bullet casing nearby.
- The words “Blue Hand” were written on another note.
- One of the masked men coming to kill him has a tattoo on his arm—three stars.
- He was wearing a friendship bracelet, like the ones kids make.
- He was drinking again.
After a long day, Olivia is upset because of the strong feelings she had for the mystery man in her flash. Mark tries to comfort her by saying, “Just because we saw these things… doesn’t mean they’re gonna happen.” Mark is trying to convince himself of this, too. At the hospital, Lloyd Simcoe, the father of Dylan, shows up to be with his son at the hospital. Lloyd is the man from Olivia’s flash. Charlie later tells Mark she had another bad dream. Mark notices Charlie has something in her hand. It’s a present for him. A friendship bracelet. It is the same bracelet Mark was wearing in his flash. After Charlie puts the bracelet on Mark, he hugs her, overwhelmed by an ominous feeling. Back at FBI headquarters, Janis has spent five hours going through footage from hundreds of surveillance cameras. All videos show the same thing. Everyone collapses for two minutes and seventeen seconds at every location on the planet except one. At a sporting event in Detroit, the entire stadium crowd passes out except for one solitary figure. He slowly walks along the concourse before ultimately disappearing into the darkness of the exit. Janis asks the question, “Who the hell is that? And why are they awake?”
Trivia[]
General[]
- "No More Good Days" is a quote of Charlie, who after waking up from the GBO tells Nicole that she had "dreamt there were no more good days".
- In a film clip released through the website www.jointhemosaic.com the date of the blackout is specified to October 6, 2009. This was later confirmed in "137 Sekunden".
- The code Mark entered to open the safe is 2009.
- The plate number of the black SUV of the terrorist suspects is 8QR722Y.
- The sum of the digits of 10/6/2009 - the day of the GBO - and 4/29/2010 - the day to which everyone flashed forward - both equal 18.
- The address of the Benford home is 1684. 16, 8, and 4, are all prominent numbers from another J.J. Abrams show, LOST.
- The Detroit Tigers played their last game of the MLB season on October 6, 2009. But they played it in Minneapolis, where the Twins beat them, 6-5 in 12 innings, in the tie-breaker for the AL Central championship. The Tigers had spent 146 days in first place and became the first team in Major League history to lose a three game lead with four games left to play.
- The blackout's duration is 2:17. In the Bible, Acts 2:17 reads "'And it shall be in the last days,' God says, 'That I will pour forth of my spirit on all mankind; and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams'".
Ratings[]
- This episode pulled in 12.5 million viewers on ABC in the United States. On Five in the United Kingdom, it had 3.2 million viewers, gaining a 13 percent share of the available audience at the time. On its series debut telecast, FlashForward became the first regular program since "Friends" in 2004 to beat "Survivor" in the key young adult sales demo. It was an exceptionally strong draw among Adults 18-34, dominating its time period and qualifying it as TV's No. 1 new drama series this season. The new series is greatly improving ABC's time period year to year, boosting the hour by 1.8 million viewers and by 32% in Adults 18-49 over the same nights last year. Based on DVR playback during season-premiere week, FlashForward finished as TV's biggest freshman gainer, as its numbers jumped by 2.0 million viewers (12.5 million to 14.5 million) and 8-tenths of an Adult 18-49 rating point (4.1 rating to 4.9 rating) from the initially reported next-day numbers to DVR finals.
Production Notes[]
- This episode served as the pilot episode for the series. On May 8, 2009, the episode was screened before several ABC "network brass," and was received very well, prompting the network to order the production of thirteen episodes.
- Four of the promotional flashes that aired during commercials between episodes of Lost were taken from this episode, be they actual flashes (like that of the Mosaic card or ultrasound) or events of the present (like that of the kangaroo or surfer).
- A different cut of the TV spot discussing the GBO, as seen by several of the characters, is included in the "About the Mosaic" video.
- The character of Dylan Simcoe is portrayed by two actors in this episode: Bryce Robinson and Ryan Wynott.
Music[]
* "Goodie Bag" by Miss Eighty 6. (Nicole drives up to the Benford house).
* "Quiet Dog" by Mos Def. (Nicole & her boyfriend on sofa while she's babysitting Charlie).
* "All Your Tears" by Mojave 3. (Olivia arrives home as Mark works on the garage door).
* "Islands In The Stream" by Kenny Rogers & Dolly Parton. (Demetri watches a music video while talking to Zoey on the phone).
Bloopers and Continuity Errors[]
- When Fiona Banks answers Al Gough's call, there is a half moon outside her window; however, on late October 6, 2009, the Moon phase was almost full.
- During Janis' sonogram, the monitor moves from one side of the table to the other.
Cultural References[]
- There are several references to Lost:
- An Oceanic Airlines billboard appears in the background of one scene.
- Advertisements for both Lost and Desperate Housewives appear on the side of buses. Both shows air on ABC and are co-produced by ABC Studios.
- The Vatican: FBI director Stan Wedeck sarcastically inquired if the Pope has chimed in with an explanation of the global blackout.
- Visual references to other ABC TV series:
Literary Techniques[]
- The entire premise of this show, as deliberately explained with the idea of flash forwards, is the foreshadowing of events.
- This is also understood from what Charlie Benford said about her "dream", "I dreamt there were no more good days."
Unanswered Questions[]
| Unanswered questions |
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- Theories for these unanswered questions should go on this article's theory page.
Flashes[]
- What do the drawings seen at the beginning of Aaron's flash mean?
- How did the flashforwards happen? Are they a side effect of the GBO or the reason for having the GBO?
- "Who else knows?" what?
Demetri[]
- Why was Demetri not in the car immediately following the blackout?
- What was the "suitcase" Demetri said the FBI knew about?
Other[]
- What was a kangaroo doing running free in the streets of downtown Los Angeles?
- Why is the Rutherford case important?
External links[]
| FlashForward Season One | |
| "No More Good Days" • "White to Play" • "137 Sekunden" • "Black Swan" • "Gimme Some Truth" • "Scary Monsters and Super Creeps" • "The Gift" • "Playing Cards with Coyote" • "Believe" • "A561984" • "Revelation Zero, Part 1" • "Revelation Zero, Part 2" • "Blowback" • "Better Angels" • "Queen Sacrifice" • "Let No Man Put Asunder" • "The Garden of Forking Paths" • "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" • "Course Correction" • "The Negotiation" • "Countdown" • "Future Shock" | |