Better Angels (FlashForward)
"Better Angels" is the fourteenth episode of the American television series, FlashForward. The episode's teleplay was written by Scott M. Gimple & Ian Goldberg and was directed by Constantine Makris. This episode marks Constantine Makris to be the first director to direct more than two episodes of the series. This episode originally aired in the United States on ABC on April 1, 2010.
Plot
Ganwar Region, Somalia: 1991
The young Somali boy with a cut across his face from 137 Sekunden walks back into his village to find every civilian on the ground, not moving, possibly because of the five towers surrounding the perimeter of the village. The boy runs to his mother who is lying on the ground, wearing a necklace with two red stones and one yellow stone, but she doesn't wake up. The boy sees a black camel kneeling down at him. "The Black Camel" is considered as an omen for death in Somalia. The boy runs away, and when the war comes to Somalia, the boy goes to join an army camp. When he returns to his village, he finds the bodies of his people gone, and only one of the towers remains standing. The boy is led to believe that his people driven off by the war.Ganwar Region, Somalia: Present Day
Demetri, Simon, Janis and Vogel are traveling to Somalia via helicopter dressed as Red Panda representatives to investigate the remaining tower standing because they thought it was a design made by Simon when he was thirteen years old, and was then stolen by whoever created the tower. As they're about to enter the village, they are shot at by a couple of Somali men, one of them being the adult version of the small Somali boy in 1991, whose name is revealed to Abdi. They are taken captive by Abdi's men and their cover is ruined when Abdi recognizes Simon as the scientist who claims to have caused the global blackout. Abdi knows that they're really there to search the tower, claiming they're just like "the others". Abdi explains that back in 1991, Americans came to Somalia, claiming to be creating the towers to provide them with electricity.One day, when he went out to herd the goats, he came back to find his people dead. Later, Demetri and Vogel stage a breakout by causing a brawl to get the guards to join in and knock them out. They see two people near the helicopter, and shoot them. But one of the guys had an RPG on him, and it accidentally goes off, blowing up one of the buildings and alerting Abdi. They are caught once again, and Abdi tells them that they are being held captive for a reason. He claims in his flashforward, he was speaking in front of thousands of what he believed was about starting a war against America, and his army would be called The Better Angels. After a while of listening to what Abdi is saying, Janis realizes what Abdi's flashforward really meant, and offers to show him what it really means and they'll tell him who they really are.
Janis shows him, through the mosaic website, that he was reading an excerpt from Lincoln's first inaugural address: "The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature." Abdi now realizes that he's not supposed to start a war, he's supposed to stop it from happening. Demetri explains that they're there because they believe that the tower is the cause of a small blackout that occurred in 1991 and is somehow related to the global blackout. Abdi takes them inside the tower, where they find a video that reveals that his people were questioned for what they saw, and they see that D. Gibbons was the one behind the operation.
Vogel finds a secret door in the tower, and they find the skeletons of the villagers, who, according to Vogel's autopsy, were shot to death. Abdi finds his mother's body via identifying her necklace, and he blames Simon for what happened since the tower was based on his designs. Right before he pulls the trigger, Vogel shoots Abdi from behind, fatally wounding him and saving Simon's life, but also preventing his flashforward from happening. That night, Abdi's people thank them for killing Abdi since he was a hard man to work for, and to show their gratitude to them, give them some food and a place to stay for the night. Vogel and Simon share their flashforwards with each other, and Vogel's flashforward reveals him walking up to a man in a suit, and saying: "Mark Benford is dead". Meanwhile, Demetri is rewatching the video, and after a few minutes of watching the static, D. Gibbons reappears and says "Hello Demetri. My name is Dyson Frost, and I'm recording this message in 1991. Got your attention, didn't I?"