2 min read
Spoiler Alert – FlashForward fans who haven’t watched last night’s episode yet should look away now…
So, it’s all the Jews’ fault is it?
The third episode of this fascinating (albeit quite stupid) sci-fi series saw FBI Agent Benford fly to Munich to interview Nazi war criminal Rudolf Geyer, who claimed he held the key to the blackouts (bit implausible given this was only episode three of 22, but anyway, stick with me).
While helping to murder Jews at Treblinka, Geyer said he had learnt about Jewish traditions, including picking up some knowledge of gematria (the system of assigning numerical values to words or phrases) and Kabbalah.
Hence, he quickly spelt out Kabbalah in Hebrew and after a quick calculation showed Benford and his colleague that the value added up to 137 seconds – the exact amount of time the blackouts lasted. Cue gasps not only from Benford and his mates, but no doubt from sofas all over north west London and beyond as it dawned on viewers that the Jews might cop the flak for this one as well.
"I should have known it was all our bloody fault," was my own interpretation.
Geyer's explanation was a bizarre one, but given the rest of the storyline not that unbelievable.
Benford, his colleague, and the frankly laughably stereotyped German prison governor just seemed to look at each other. There was no real indication of what Geyer’s revelation was really meant to mean. Perhaps given that Benford’s general response to any grain of evidence he comes across is “let’s not worry now what it means, we’ll probably find out in six months”, we shouldn’t have worried too much either.
But worry I did. The writers had obviously decided that there was no point having the conspiracy theorists stop at blaming the Jews for 9/11, why not lump fictional paranormal blackouts on us as well?
Should we organise a boycott of the show in response, I pondered?
After much arm-flapping and panic on my part my flatmate thankfully came to the rescue and after some quick Googling discovered that FlashForward’s co-creator David S Goyer (who has written a number of sci-fi films and series) is Jewish (yes, even with a name like that).
Ah, panic over. I forgot, this is Hollywood. The Jews are running things, not taking the blame (what was that I was saying about theories?).
Presumably the gematria/kabbalah evidence will reoccur in some future episode. By the end of this week's hour Benford had moved on to worrying about crows falling out of the sky (if you ask me he should be more concerned with whether his young daughter’s head is going to start spinning like the kid in The Exorcist) after realising the Nazi had pulled a fast one to get himself released.
I gave up on Lost after about six episodes of its first series. Patience is not a virtue I am blessed with. Spending six months (or six years) waiting to find out what the hell happened is not high on my agenda.
But as much as I’d like to write off FlashForward as a complete load of made-up rubbish, I am desperate to find out whether Demetri lives or dies, whether Benford’s missus runs off with that bloke from This Life, and whether Aaron ends up having another drink.
If he was watching the series instead of acting in it he’d definitely need one.