ABC’s “Flash Forward”

I have to admit, when a show gets a lot of pre-release hype, I’m a little bit leery. All too often in the past, shows that have gotten a lot of POW!BANG!BOOM! from the networks have turned out to be clunkers in which the network was heavily invested and desperate to see succeed. (Please do not even get me started on Nickelodeon’s campaign with “The Fresh Beat Band.” It won’t be pretty.)

So I approached “Flash Forward” with a hearty amount of skepticism. For weeks, I’d heard “From the people who brought you LOST, a new series that WILL TOTALLY AND COMPLETELY BLOW YOUR ENTIRE MIND APART!!!!” Okay, I’m exaggerating, but this show got a lot of hype, most of it centering around “From the creators of LOST” which are some pretty darn big shoes to fill. (LOSTies, you know what I’m saying here, right?)

Imagine my surprise when I sat down, turned this show on and suddenly, it grabbed my hand, threw me into the passenger seat and said, “Come on! This is going to be one heck of a ride.” AND IT WASN’T LYING. It was fully serious. I was hooked from the moment I saw a battered Joseph Fiennes (Agent Mark Benford) climb out of a flipped over car crying out for “Demetri.”