Flash Forward

Always a sucker for both science fiction and anything vaguely related to time travel, this season I've started watching ABC's new series, Flash Forward. The premise of the show is that everyone on Earth simultaneously loses consciousness for approximately two minutes and sees visions of a few minutes of their lives six months in the future. The show follows Mark Benford, the FBI agent leading the investigation into the cause of the "blackout," as well as the lives of several intersecting characters, and then examines how their visions of the future affect their actions in the present.

The interesting thing about the show from a recovery perspective is that Mark Benford is a recovering alcoholic, sober for seven years and active in AA.  And the show actually gives a better perspective on what 12 Step recovery is like than most.  Mark has a sponsor, goes to meetings regularly and makes phone calls (well, to his sponsor at least).  And he isn't fixed.  He hasn't had a drink in seven years, but he's still working his recovery and still sees, quite literally, the possibility of a slip: he sees himself drinking in his flash forward.

However, his wife, Olivia, is not working an Al-Anon program.  She doesn't go to meetings or have a sponsor, but she does keep tabs on Mark's sobriety, including anxiously questioning his sponsor for details.  In one of my favorite scenes so far, Mark's sponsor, Aaron, is at the Benford's home helping with a repair while Mark is out of town.  Olivia overhears part of the conversation and then stays to listen in as Aaron encourages Mark to make time to find and attend a meeting during his trip.  Mark is stressed out about his work and he's away from home (both triggers for drinking), so a healthy check-in with his sponsor and a reminder to go to a meeting are just perfect; it's one of the most realistic moments in TV recovery I've seen.  But Olivia, like a lot of people outside of 12 Step recovery, sees meeting attendance as something that happens to fix what has already happened, not as positive preventative maintenance, and is scared that this means Mark is drinking again.

For the most part, it seems that she's counting on him not to drink, and as long as he doesn't, everything is fine.  She has sworn she will leave him if he ever drinks again, and the twist is that, while he's drinking in his flash forward, in hers, she's living with another man.  (I suppose we can assume she held to her boundaries.)

What's missing from the show, and is not something I'd expect to see on TV because it's not charged with drama, are the changes that come to all areas of our lives in recovery.  The people I know who have worked a 12 Step program for as long as Mark and his sponsor have become steeped in program language and ideas.  The longer recovery goes on, the more (for the most part, for most people) there seems to be talk of things like God, gratitude and faith, and the less there seems to be of blame and anger.  But serenity is not nearly as much fun to watch as addict drama like throwing chairs or storming out of rooms (which the show has aplenty).  So while Flash Forward may show an accurate picture of some parts of recovery, it still fails to show its heart and soul.

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This post was originally published at The Second Road.