Playing Cards with Coyote

"Playing Cards with Coyote"
Episode	Season {{#pad:1|2|0|left}}, Number 08
Air Date	November 12, 2009
Title Image	an ace of hearts playing card
Written by	Marc Guggenheim & Barbara Nance
Directed by	Nick Gomez
Guest Stars	Genevieve Cortese as Tracy Stark Elizabeth Rodriguez as Ingrid Alvarez Mark Famiglietti as Mike Willingham Ricky Jay as Rings Man Julio Oscar Mechoso as Det. Rick Malchiodi Dominic Rains as Kahmir Dejan
Co-starring	Ryan Wynott as Dylan Simcoe Erika Ringor as Harriet Creagen Dow as Billy Cory Blevins as Neil Parofsky Bo Kane as High Roller Sam Ingraffia as Dealer Kent Shocknek as Hansen Phillip Palmer as Campbell
Uncredited	Lena Georgas as Celia
Transcript
Episode Images

"Playing Cards with Coyote" was the eighth episode of season 1 of FlashForward. It first aired on Thursday, November 12, 2009 on ABC.

Summary

Prologue

The headline

When Celia publicizes the details behind FBI agent Al Gough's suicide, pundits talk about proof that the future can be changed. Janis Hawk, freshly back at work from surgery for her wounds, tries to submit a resignation to Stan Wedeck, saying that her life is too confused and that she does not know how to approach the pregnancy she saw in light of her injury; he refuses to accept her resignation, telling her that he needs her and that she should not let a bullet determine whether she does or does not have a child. Aaron ponders his good luck at having Tracy back. Simon Campos interrupts Lloyd Simcoe while he is entertaining his son Dylan to berate him about dropping out of the sight of his colleagues following the GBO. Simon complains about Lloyd's rush to judgment about the cause of the event. Lloyd responds that the scientists had killed twenty million people and had to take responsibility for their actions. Olivia and Mark Benford are vacationing. Mark has just given Olivia a gift when Demetri Noh interrupts with news that a man was robbed of a case he was carrying then shot dead by a man with a three-star tattoo on his forearm.

Nicole finds a flyer for a group called Sanctuary that, it would seem, has a much more positive view of the future than does Blue Hand.

Poker

Lloyd's Email

Lloyd Simcoe sends an email to four recipients at the NLAP, Gordon Myhill, Elizabeth Rhee, Gabe Clayson, and Philippe Tarhan, urging them to go public with the experiment and take responsibility for the Global Blackout. Simon opposes this course of action and suggests a game of Texas Hold 'Em to resolve their impasse. If Lloyd wins, they go public and hang themselves out to dry. If Simon wins, Lloyd stays mum.

Simon is an excellent card player. Most of the chips are stacked on his side. He suggests one final hand, winner take all. It doesn’t look good, but Lloyd is in. Simon has four of a kind. There aren’t a lot of hands that can beat that. But a straight flush would. And that’s just what Lloyd draws. Looks like all those sleight of hand cards tricks he’s been playing with Dylan have come in handy. We’re thinking the world may be receiving an interesting press release in the near future.

Janis returns to work with plans of resigning. She wonders if getting shot was a sign that her baby wasn’t meant to be. Wedeck says, “You gonna let a bullet decided whether or not you bring a baby into this world?” He refuses her resignation and she reconsiders her baby options.

A woman named Ingrid Alvarez captures the murder of Neil Parofsky on her cell phone camera. The gunman and his accomplice are seen taking a case from the man. Enhanced images show the gunman with a three-star tattoo on his arm, just like the one adorned by the assassins who were hunting down Mark in his flashforward. Trying to hunt down Alvarez, the tattoo men kill Alvarez's roommate Blanca. The FBI figure the gunman will continue to come after Ingrid, so they opt to use her as bait in a trap that goes bad, leading the team to think that they have a mole in their department.

Tracy thinks she has to run again when she discovers her dad told Mark that she’s alive. But Aaron reminds her that she’ll be all right, as she was alive in his flash forward. He further tells her that, in his flash, a man told him “the account has been verified” after Aaron handed him an envelope. Aaron doesn’t know what this means, but Tracy knows the person her dad spoke to that day. He’s a field medic named Kahmir and he saved her.

Stars and Rings

Back on the job, Janis checks out video footage of Suspect Zero that has been processed and digitally enhanced by the NSA. She and Wedeck notice that he is wearing a ring. At what appears to be a military base, a bald man riding as a passenger in a five-ton truck with three stars tattooed on his arm hands a briefcase to another three-star tattoo man. The case resembles the case that was stolen from the man who was murdered in the cell phone video. Two other men with the three-starred tattoos are seen carrying larger, sturdier cases around the area.

The murder victim’s case is delivered to a bearded man in a sparsely-filled structure similar to a vehicle maintenance garage. He opens the case. There are six rings inside. The visible sides of the rings are engraved with a Greek alpha. The rings man says, "There are supposed to be seven.” He then closes the case, quotes Kenneth Bainbridge from the Trinity test of the Manhattan Project, and casually shoots the delivery man dead. He calmly walks off with the case of rings.

Trivia

Production Notes

• The nlap.us.com domain name was registered by ABC, Inc. [1]
• The Referendum.com domain name was filtered for privacy. [2]

Music

Unthought Known by Pearl Jam

Bloopers and Continuity Errors

• The Los Angeles Post featuring the story about Al Gough's suicide is dated October 6, 2009 (the date of the GBO); Gough committed suicide on November 3, 2009. ("No More Good Days") ("The Gift")

Cultural References

• The coyote, associated with the Raven, in Native American mythology is often thought of as a trickster, and the Raven even the creator of human beings.
• Aaron describes Tracy's experiences as being "something out of a Baldacci novel." David Baldacci is a U.S. author of fictional works which often involve U.S. Government misconduct.
• The number seven, as in the seven rings, occurs frequently in science, religion, mythology and other disciplines. In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings, it was the number of rings cast for the dwarf lords.
• Although the logo is not shown, Lloyd uses a modified version of Gmail to send the e-mail to Simon.
• Although the logo is not fully displayed, Janis was looking at sperm donor information on a web site that looked a lot like Wikipedia or Citizendium.

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

• What is the (approximate) date span of the events in this episode?
• Other names in Lloyd's inbox included Jake, Lucas, Vern Evans, Sam Dumas, and Liz Coulder, who mentioned Lloyd's boss wanted to see him. How do these people relate to the experiment?

External links

• Episode's article on IMDB