'FlashForward' - 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' Recap

(S01E18) Dyson Frost is a bad man. He's been doing stuff related to the flashforwards for years now. The whole situation is far more complicated than we ever imagined, and yet almost everyone we've met who's a part of whatever was behind the global incident seems to be a reluctant participant.

Certainly Gabriel (James Callis) was reluctant to be as involved as he was. It's not clear what his mental state was before the blackout, though we know he's a savant and was already hospitalized, but he's agitated, nervous and very frustrated right now. Perhaps that comes from knowing too much.

Knowledge can be a dangerous thing, and sometimes the burden of knowing can weigh you down more than any physical objects, like the car that took out "Mr. Clean" and his waiting customers. Olivia was suddenly faced with the knowledge that Gabriel was right. That perhaps this unstable, potentially dangerous man is just the man she needs to be talking to, rather than running from.

As it turns out, Gabriel is as close to Dyson Frost as we've got right now, as far as we can tell. Frost experienced multiple flashforwards, and so has Gabriel. There was a whole ward of patients who also jumped ahead, but we don't know where any of them are. What we do know is that they were doing this long before Olivia didn't go to Harvard, meet and fall in love with Lloyd. But apparently that decision was the wrong one, and the timeline is perhaps trying to correct itself.

Mark and Olivia were never meant to be together, which means Charlie was never meant to be. I wonder if that has any significance.

Many of you will clearly be happy with the revelations about Janis. They certainly saved the best one for last. She took on the role of the mole with reluctance, but ultimately for the good of the country. I'm assuming at this point that our CIA agent is on the side of right, which may be way off. Nothing may be as it seems on the surface. But at least Janis is more or less working on the side of right.

She's just in a very compromised and nearly impossible situation. I wonder if she's reporting to Vogel what she's reporting to the fish lady. Vogel knowing that Janis is a mole adds layers to everything we've seen the past few weeks from both his character and hers. Considering Janis is never allowed to get answers from the fish lady and the organization she represents, the benefit of having Janis as their mole isn't as great as it could be.

It always helps to know what she's being asked to do, and once she can earn their trust (if she can), then she might start to get more information. Now all she has to do is steal the ring from the queen and kill Mark Benford. No big deal, except that Benford is still alive at the time of the flashforward, and once again I don't know what date it is. Shortly after Demetri's "D-Day," because he's presumably still off on his honeymoon with Zoey.

Mark being saved by the lady he sees every day is what lead him to the chess piece on his board in the first place. The ring revealed, does that mean wearing the ring will save him? Perhaps it would keep him awake during the next blackout. That would indicate that future blackout he was talking about in his flashforward, which means he survives the encounter in his office; though we didn't really have any doubt of that.

As this story keeps getting better, I'm starting to obsess and worry about the ratings figures. Last week, the figures rebounded back above 5.5 million, but if it starts sliding again, it's going to take a lot of faith on the part of ABC to bring the show back. And, the show will have to find a way to reinvigorate itself and lure in new viewers with whatever they have planned for the second season.

[Help them out by watching clips and full episodes of 'FlashForward' on SlashControl over and over again.]