I CAN SEE CLEARLY NOW, THE RAIN HAS COME: A late FlashForward thread.

One of the problems with apocalyptic science fiction is, of course, that everything is broken. Sometimes, the producers dodge this by having people already in the badlands (Road Warrior) or things having trimmed the population down so badly that there is a reliable supply of canned food for the conceivable future (28 Days Later, the Stand). It's hard to look at what happens to society itself in the wake of something very big and very bad. Whitley Striber's WarDay was close - a limited nuclear exchange that destroyed a few American cities, but put America back to about 1930.

FlashForward seems to have found a terrific conceit here: everyone goes blank for 2 minutes and change and that causes a lot of problems. The bones of society ought to largely continue to operate since most big stuff (power plants, water systems, and the like) operates on automatic. So they have the canvas to look at a non-fatal apocalypse and, on the first one, seem to be taking the premise seriously. The question I have, of course, is whether they will follow their own rules. India and China ought to be in the catbird seat, given that they were largely asleep when this happened and if this thing plays out political angles, I'll be mighty disappointed if they don't see that.

I have a few plot quibbles, of course - no doctor is going to go home from the hospital for days after an event like this given the body count, the information flow of what happened was way too smooth, most airplanes are operating on autopilot so 800+ airline crashes seems high. Still, I hope it stays with the thriller/science fiction angels and doesn't spend the entire show staring into its own navel about the emotional fallout of it all.

The cliffhanger itself was a dilly. I was not expecting that. Wow.

But, for now, I'm in. Until it sucks.

N.B.: Notice the advert for Oceanic Airlines on the billboard behind the FBI partners right ahead of the chase scene? I hope that's merely a shoutout and not a suggestion that this has any tie-in with Lost.

IF A SHOW AIRS AND ASHTON KUTCHER TWITTERS ABOUT IT, DOES IT MATTER? I suppose it's possible (albeit highly unlikely) that one of the shows debuting in the next few weeks (Hank, The Middle, Three Rivers, Shark Tank, Trauma, or tonight's debut of Brothers) will be gone after one airing, but we do have a winner in the "first show cancelled by calendar date" portion of the cancellation pool--the CW has yanked The Beautiful Life: TBL effective immediately, replacing it with Melrose Place repeats. I can't say I feel bad, if just because an actress friend of mine who went in for a role reported that the experience was awful, and borderline casting couch-y in a way she hadn't seen before.

SAY WHAT YOU WILL ABOUT THE TENETS OF SOCIAL DEMOCRATS; AT LEAST SHE HAS AN ETHOS: ObamaGirl, Deutschland style.

TIVOVERDOSE: Apparently, we here at this blog watched so much TV last night that we didn't have time to blog about it. I've apparently given up on Survivor, and just in time. A two-hour NBC comedy block (of which I appreciated the Dwight-Darryl scenes, the Abid-Troy friendship, and the blurry loopiness of P&R, which is new to me), a two-hour Grey's that is only half-watched so far (re the nice touch of showing the extras and minor characters, not just the main characters, grieving for George, I'm both hyper-aware of when my buttons are being pushed but also, sadly, kind of a sucker for getting my buttons pushed; and I think Eric Danes is excellent in comic relief), and the Flash Forward that's waiting on the DVR (about which I think TPE will have something to say later) is a lot of TV.

I write, though, just to enjoy the fact that Grey's, the kind of hour-long drama that NBC wants to die, more than tripled Leno's viewers. I imagine that the key demos were even better. I realize Leno's cost structure may still make him more profitable, but I'm glad that there seem to be fewer people footing that bill.

AM I BUGGIN' YOU? I DON'T MEAN TO BUG YA... OKAY, EDGE, PLAY THE BLUES: The WaPo's Chris Climek ranks U2's studio albums from bottom to top in two parts, from 12 to 7 and 6 to 1. I can't accept Zooropa (no one really wanted U2 sounding "like Beck imitating Prince covering the Talking Heads") or Rattle and Hum being anywhere near the top half (the transcendent "All I Want Is You" does not outweigh the suck), and would replace them with War and All That You Can't Leave Behind (which I might rank as high as #3), but it's a smart, provocative list.

REMEMBER, REMEMBER, REMEMBER: The critics take a good look at the remake of Fame and tell us what they see (and largely, it ain't good) -- Tasha Robinson is pleased ("Hogwarts has nothing on New York’s High School Of Performing Arts. ... largely a raw, uplifting love letter to creativity in every possible form"); but Ebert is sad ("Why take a touching experience and make it into a shallow exercise? Why begin with a R-rated look at plausible kids with real problems and tame it into a PG-rated after-school special?"), and so is Carrie Rickey ("As a demo reel showcasing seven promising young talents from their freshman through senior years, it's pleasant enough. As a movie dramatizing the talent and dedication required to make it, the Fame reboot has fleet feet but lacks heart.")

Meanwhile, my friend Pam Spaulding explores the de-gaying of Fame, and I just wonder if they at least comped Harlemm Lee a ticket.

THE GLASS, THE ANGLE, THE POUR, THE SETTLE AND THE TOP-OFF: Two hundred fifty years ago, Arthur Guinness signed a 9,000-year lease to open a brewery near St. James's Gate on the edge of Dublin to produce a dry stout bear. Today, we say thank you, and happy birthday for a quarter-millennium's worth of awesome.