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'FlashForward'

Step 1: We need a hero. In their fascination with the existential crises the flashes have provoked in the individual characters, the writers seem to have lost sight of the big picture. So here it is: Some bad guys did something that killed 20 million people, and they're apparently planning to do it again. And yet instead of focusing on catching them, our nominal hero -Joseph Fiennes' FBI agent Mark Benford - can't get past his vision of his marriage crumbling in drink and infidelity. And what's worse, the writers actually seem to think we care.

We can forgive Mark for failing to put his personal problems completely aside, though to be honest, they hardly seem insurmountable. (Resolve not to drink and assume your suddenly brain-free wife won't cheat. There, problem solved.) But we can ask him to put his job first and to do it with something that resembles competence.

Pull yourself together. And for heaven's sake, stop moping and whining around. You're beginning to make us think the wrong FBI agent has been flashed for death.

Step 2:We need a weekly story and interesting characters. Like so many series that have followed in Lost's mythology-laden footsteps, FlashForward h as failed to heed Lost's most important lesson and its primary achievement. The long-term health of a sci-fi mystery series may depend on concocting a great final puzzle with a satisfying solution. But we don't live in the long term. We live week to week, and each week, we need something to keep us involved.

At the beginning of November, Flash ran a supposedly game-changing episode in which a character went to great lengths to show his friends their fates were not set by their flash. (That outing, "The Gift," repeats Thursday.) And then for the next and last three episodes, almost nothing else happened - and what did happen was more annoying than satisfying.

The fatal mistake, however, may have been the last one: departing for an extended hiatus with a cliffhanger so weak it hardly hung at all. Flash ended its fall finale with the painfully predictable kidnapping of the weakest leg of the show's romantic triangle, Lloyd Simcoe, a man who (no doubt mistakenly) took the blame for the fatal flash.

That's supposed to hold our interest until March? Please. Most people probably forgot about it by Nightline.

Step 3:We may need a new cast. No one wants to see anyone lose a job in this economy, but as much as anything, Flash's problems seem tied to a failure in casting.

You can start with two fine actors from Lost who are being badly misused. Sonya Walger has become mired in a story that makes no sense. (She spurns Simcoe until she learns he may be a mass murderer, then she flirts with him?) As for Flash's highly promoted selling point, Dominic Monaghan, he may enjoy playing a dangerous playboy physicist, but so far he has failed to convey any aspect of that trio.

Still, for many viewers, the real barrier seems to be Fiennes. He was excellent in the pilot, where his shell-shocked response to the flash-caused disasters made perfect sense. But weeks have gone on, and his monotone whispers and minimalist expressions have worn thin.

If he's struggling with his American accent - and he often seems to be - then get him a new tutor. If, instead, this seriously understated performance is a conscious decision, then the time has come to reconsider it. No matter how valid "comatose" may seem as an actor's artistic choice, it simply isn't viable for an action hero or a weekly series.