By Bob Clark
After the monumental success of J.J. Abrams and Damon Lindelof’s Lost, a program that almost singlehandedly repopularized long-form serial narrative and high-concept sci-fi storytelling on American television, there was a headlong rush between all the major networks and cable-channels to produce the next big prime-time tv-event, the kind of mad scramble towards imitations and pretenders that hadn’t been seen since Twin Peaks and The X-Files inspired their own crop of derivative programming. Some of the shows that were greenlit were real quality, like the post-apocalyptic Norman Rockwell portrait of Jericho on CBS, or the alternate-reality Biblical epic of Kings on NBC. Others, like Tim Kring’s Heroes, had obvious potential and moments of greatness, but nothing more. A few, like the tepid rom-com in space Defying Gravity, were just plain bad. In a landscape of television where the limitations of what audiences would accept as far as imaginative premises and ambitious storytelling went, there were plenty of shows that tried to push those limits further, and paid dearly for it, or didn’t make the most of the new room they were given, and got left behind. Where exactly, then, does the one-season experiment of ABC’s FlashForward, fit in– with the underrated successes, or the overdone failures?
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