SPOILER ALERT: This weekly blog is for those who have been watching FlashForward. Don't read ahead if you haven't seen episode 15 yet.
Anna Pickard's episode 14 blog
"Queen Sacrifice"
The mysterious CIA man Vogel and Agent Benford uncover the dastardly mole that has been leaking important breaks in the case to the forces of evil/sources of blackouts. Locking everyone but themselves in the conference room, they do a sweep for bugs, then interview all the agents. Janis says she suspects another woman in the office of being the mole, and has been investigating her.
By the end of the investigation, Vogel and Benford concur, and a dramatic shootout results in "the mole" killing a raft of FBI agents, and Janis in turn taking her AND her getaway motorcyclist out like the traitors they are – until, in the last few seconds, we are hit by a twist. Janis, she reveals openly to Simon Campos, is also a mole. She's the more important mole of the two moles (that we know about) planted in the Mosaic investigation. And she knows what he did to Teddy.
In other news, Benford gets closer to finding Dyson Frost, blackout conspirator. And in other other news, Bryce and Nicole kiss, Keiko randomly gets a job as a hydraulics engineer in a scuzzy garage before being arrested by immigration police, and Olivia takes Charlie to the funfair. Yes, really.
Flash review
Is this the structure now? Hang around in the hope of something exciting occurring in the dying seconds? Yes, it was a big twist: Janis is the mole after all. The super-mole. Granted, I wasn't overly interested in her pregnancy story, but as the only professional woman involved in the investigation – and the only woman not just characterised as wife, crush, or future vision of pure and innocent love – it's a little disappointing to find out she's a bad 'un, and will probably end up a dead 'un. And also confusing. Have there been hints of this in her previous flashes, forward or back, that we've missed?
There certainly were today. Watch it again. It's a great example of the unsubtlety of this show. "There's a leak," said Wedeck (camera cuts immediately to Janis). "Yes," he continues "there is a mole ... " (camera cuts immediately to Janis again).
Benford's working out of the chess conundrum is also a triumph of unsubtlety. How does it take them months to work out simple things, but supercomplex puzzles such as this are explained away in a "Yeah, so this is what I've been doing this morning" speech to Noh? Utterly, utterly ridiculous. It just happened to occur to Benford that if he checked all the chess games Dyson Frost had played a particular move in and how long it took him to decide on that move, convert a list of those times into morse code and from there into not a phrase but a telephone number and ring it? REALLY?! I am fast running out of patience.
Flashy ideas and forward thinking
• It's a shame the mini-mole is gone and super-mole Janis Hawk isn't on the side of good. Judging by the dramatic shootout and chase, they were the only people in the FBI vaguely competent with firearms.
• The return of Seth Macfarlane was briefly exciting. Of course it would be perfect if the leak were revealed and he immediately expressed his secret plot for world domination in a Stewie-from-Family-Guy voice. Still, his being shot full-on in the chest by the mini-mole may mean we can stop asking where he disappeared to.
• It seems that exercising free will is becoming more important to characters than aiming for (or avoiding) what they flashed on, kissing and killing whomever they please. Why, though? Mark Benford keeps growling portenteously that there's going to be another blackout. And while this clearly means something to him (that it gives the writers a key to the next series, mainly) it shouldn't affect what everyone feels about the first one. Should it?