'FlashForward' recap: Setting Things in Motion

While Campos ran to the FBI, Simcoe just tried to run away. He wanted to transfer his autistic son Dylan to an off-the-grid medical facility, and he wanted the world to just leave him alone, never mind that he had just confessed to being at least indirectly responsible for — to borrow Campos' oh-so modest assessment — ''the greatest global catastrophe in human history.'' (In a week that saw Tiger Woods learn the hard way what public scrutiny really looks like, I found Simcoe's ''Leave Us Alone!'' hopes laughable, especially since he all but invited the world to hound and persecute him by volunteering his GBO culpability.)

In bidding adieu to the man of her please-don't-come-true dreams, Olivia gushed over his ''brave'' decision to step forward and take responsibility for the GBO. Also, having learned from the TV that Simcoe had attended Harvard, she told Simcoe she had been planning to go to Harvard, but didn't because of Mark's FBI job, and as she revealed more of her what-could-have-been past, Simcoe realized that had Olivia gone to Harvard, she would had lived in the apartment that was taken by his now-dead wife. He then laid the Many Worlds Interpretation on her. ''Basically the idea is that anything that could have happened in our past actually did happen in some other universe, so all those alternate choices and decisions you made are still playing themselves out.'' Your point, Dr. Simcoe? ''In some other universe, you did go to Harvard, and we did meet.'' Olivia listened and literally giggled and blushed at what Simcoe was describing. For the first time, I felt some romantic heat between these two characters — and I also for the first time found myself almost rooting for them. (The episode certainly didn't make it hard to want to see Olivia with anyone different, not after watching Mark grow ethically shady in Hong Kong — a far cry from super-responsible Simcoe.) Then the Fake Paramedic Bad Guys came and kidnapped Simcoe and left Dylan with Olivia. Is that why Dylan saw himself living the Benford home in his flash-forward? Is Olivia about to take Dylan into her home — and drive away Mark in the process?

Lots of questions — and I'd love to hear your answers. I'd also like to hear your thoughts on the 3-minute preview of the rest of the season. Did you think it looked promising? And did you catch the flash-forward embedded in the opening title? It was an ad for ''CHINATOWN CHESE STEAK,'' with the words ''HELP US'' scrawled on it. Unless I just missed it, I didn't see it in the episode last night, so it could be example of how FF plans to begin teasing future episodes with its title flash. I hope you all have a happy holiday season — and we'll continue the FlashForward journey in the new year.

UPDATE: Sorry friends for missing this, but ABC did announce last night that FlashForward would return in March, not January. So I look forward to reconvening with you then.