Flashforward 5-7 (spoilers)

[ewx]

Episode 5

Stanford blackmailed the president!?! That's not going to end well. The White House seems to have escaped physical damage but the Capitol's dome got broken (a cliché I think?) although the night shot towards the end didn't appear to show this. Could just have been the angle, but.

Bit insensitive to Mark for his colleagues to celebrate the end of the Washington trip in a bar, much as it may conveniently emphasize devil on his back.

Continued excellent visuals.

The gunfight at the end was a little OTT, and thought quite entertaining for it I can't help but feel that the bounding of the episode with a cliffhanger was a little forced. At a stretch the Clemente announcement could have done the job, failing that the hit on Janis Hawk (two attackers on one target) was arguably rather more plausible than the equally matched attack on Stanford Wedeck and his colleagues. (Just how realistic is using a rocket launcher in a confined space anyway?)

Episode 6

“Never go anywhere unless I'm going to get the real thing” seems like a good policy. And the QM/sex superposition is amusing l-)

The Benford/Simcoe revelation was done well enough as such but it was really there to bring out the conflict between the Benfords themselves; on the one hand it's a bit of an artificial push, on the other hand very little substantive has actually happened lately (gathering yet more obscure clues doesn't really pay off until they start to fit together).

Episode 7

Back to some striking visuals, especially around Al's suicide attempt (the pan across his face for instance), after a bit of a hiatus in the last episode.

The Blue Hand meeting has shades of Fight Club although their security protocol is a bit flawed! (But then, so was “You do not talk about Fight Club”) The question is, though: were they there to advance the plot, or just to explain Noh's moment of honesty?

We were promised a revelation: but it looks like the only revelation is that the visions aren't certainties, which we could already infer from the inconsistency between Demetri and Zoey's visions anyway.

Bryce and Nicole's kanji symbol is said to be for belief. It's well represented on tattoo websites l-) but more usefully can be found on Wiktionary 信 which suggests a Romanization of “shin” and a meaning of trust or faith.

Maurice Raynaud was a C19^th doctor who discovered Raynaud's Disease, which affects circulation in extremities, leading to blueness - an obvious connection l-)

Characters

Name	Actor	Description	Notes
Mark Benford	Joseph Fiennes	FBI agent	Husband of Olivia Benford Father of Charlie Benford Colleague of Demetri Noh
Aaron Stark	Brian F. O'Byrne	AA-goer	Confidant of Mark Benford
Nicole Kirby	Peyton List	Student	Babysitter for the Benfords Japanese speaker, helps out Bryce
Olivia Benford	Sonya Walger	Doctor	Wife of Mark Benford Mother of Charlie Benford Apparent future lover of Lloyd Simcoe Colleague of Bryce Varley Operated on Dylan Simcoe
Demetri Noh	John Cho	Junior FBI agent, apparently doomed	Colleague of Mark Benford Fiancé of Zoey ??
Zoey Andata		Gabrielle Union	Fiancée of Demetri Noh
Bryce Varley	Zachary Knighton	Formerly-suicidal doctor	Colleague of Olivia Benford
Lloyd Simcoe	Jack Davenport	(Self-described) annoying parent	Father of Dylan Simcoe Apparent future lover of Olivia Benford ?Unwilling co-conspirator of Simon
Dylan Simcoe	Ryan Wynott	Injured autistic child	Son of Lloyd Simcoe Saved by Olivia Benford
Charlie Benford	Lennon Wynn	Winsome child	Daughter of Mark and Olivia Benford Saw D. Gibbons in vision and didn't like him
Stanford Wedeck	Courtney B. Vance	Assistant Director FBI LA Field Office	Boss of Mark Sanford and Demetri Noh
Joyce Clemente	?	US Senator	Political opponent of Stanford Wedeck
Janis Hawk	Christine Woods	FBI agent	Girlfriend of Maya Pregnant in her flashforward
Al Gough	Lee Thompson Young	FBI agent	Would have killed Celia had he lived
Celia ?	?	Mother	Would have been killed by Al
Maya			Girlfriend of Janis Hawk
Alda Hertzog	Rachel Roberts	Terrorist
D. Gibbons		Obscure hacker/bomber	Telephone interlocutor of suspect 0 Killer of Pigeon local cop
Suspect 0		Awake during the flashforward	Telephone interlocutor of D. Gibbons
Simon	Dominic Monaghan	Sinister guy on phone	Tells Lloyd Simcoe they're responsible for the “greatest disaster in human history” (presumably the flashforward). Uses expertise in QM to pick up women on trains.
“Reynaud”	Jeff Slingerland	Blue Hand organizer

Comments

[pm215]

Bryce and Nicole's kanji symbol is said to be for belief. It's well represented on tattoo websites l-) but more usefully can be found on Wiktionary 信 which suggests a Romanization of “shin” and a meaning of trust or faith.

EDICT gives the word 信 [shin] the meanings (including the usual comedy odd-one-out):

(1) honesty; fidelity; (2) trust; reliance; (3) (religious) faith; (ctr) (4) counter for received messages

but the single-kanji-alone is much rarer than it being either in a compound or as the verb 信じる [shinjiru] (to believe). Ascribing meaning to standalone kanji is often a clue that the ascriber neither knows nor cares how the language works :-)

[ewx.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was hoping you'd be able to add something about the kanji l-)