FlashForward Producers Really Thought They Would Get a Second Season

You've got to hand it to the producers of the now-canceled FlashForward: Despite mounting evidence to the contrary -- dwindling viewership, actors accepting other pilots, etc. -- they were clearly really confident in their series getting a second season. And maybe even a third, fourth and fifth. What other way to explain the series finale last night, an affair that could have been easily retrofit to wrap the show up, but instead chose to end on multiple cliffhangers?

This would be a SPOILER ALERT, but really who cares: So FlashForward ended its season with -- wait for it -- another flash forward. Only this one seemed to jump ahead to at least 2015. Because, hey, why not? Optimism among television writers is like finding a unicorn. Furthermore, the series apparently killed off its lead character, Mark Benford (played by the whispering wind known as Joseph Fiennes); he was likely still inside the FBI building that was blown to smithereens using equal parts bombs and bad CGI.

Some other stuff happened too, but since I stopped watching FlashForward in December, it didn't mean a whole lot. Though all of these loose ends led to one major question about the show and its creative team: What were they thinking? Clearly FlashForward was on the bubble for most of its run, so couldn't the producers have scripted another finale that hastily tied things off? Maybe it wouldn't have completely satisfied the few remaining fans, but it would have certainly done more to ease their pain than an episode like this. Even Life on Mars had a denouement, albeit a stupid one.

Of course the writers would probably argue that they didn't know this was going to happen and didn't want to anticipate the worst. But considering they had previously stated an outline for multiple seasons, planning ahead seemed to be one of FlashForward's strongest traits. Well, that along with British actors doing bad American accents and admittedly awesome final sequences set to Band of Horses' "Funeral" -- the latter of which you can watch below.

Farewell FlashForward. See you in another life...