Daniel's TV Blog

There is a common new device used this year on two shows, it's the I-saw-something-important-at-season-ending-cliffhanger-but-now-I-forgot-it thing. It happened with Olivia on Fringe and also with Lois Lane on Smallville. Yes I still watch Smallville, deal with it. Olivia went to Spock's universe and didn't remember her conversation until the fourth episode. Lois went into the future and saw some shocking important but she is only now starting to remember flashes of it. Whatever she saw the future seems to be bright yellow like it is on fire or something.

I've been trying to think of other cliffhanger amnesia. With two this season there have to be other instances. In the first season of Babylon 5, the security guy figured out the plot to kill the president but was shot and in a coma for the first few episodes of the next season. It's not quite the same but it did take a few episodes for the information to disseminate. Daniel Jackson died and ascended at the end of Season 5 of Stargate: SG1. He returned in Season 7 with no memory or the place he had gone in the intervening season or the advanced information he learned while there. It's sort of the same thing but not really since we weren't given the expectation of new information at the end of the previous season.

But this is such an easy device for drawing out a cliffhanger over several episodes I'm sure it has been used before.

Labels: Fringe, Smallville