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ShadowDog's

30 Hour Dead Zone Marathon!




Hours 10-13

Hours 1-5

Hours 6-9

Current Hours

Ground Rules 1) Start marathon at 7pm EST, end it when all of Season One and Two have been played. (Probably around 1am Thursday morning)
2) Watch at least one episode per hour, meaning I can take no longer a break than 15 minutes per hour.
3) I have to post at least one episode commentary at the top of each hour.
4) Diet Pepsi amounts are marathon totals, not per hour.

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Episode Commentary Key:

Visions: Prolonged marathons tend to cause hallucinations - er - visions.

Moron of the EP award: Who was the dumbest bastard in this ep?

General Remarks: What I thought of the ep, in general.

Offscreen Activity: The writers have a tendency to have things happen offscreen. Let's track it!

Timeline Notes: The Dead Zone time/space continuity is all jacked up. Let's see if watching everything in order in a row gives a new perspective!

Funny line of the ep: TEE HEE!


1.11 "Dinner With Dana"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 66
Visions: I'm too tired to have visions.
Moron of the EP award: Max. Women beaters/stalkers SUCK. Buy a clue, mendicant, she doesn't want you!

General Remarks: A lot of great Dana characterization in this ep. We finally get to see into her life and her heart. She's an interesting and complex character, and I think we all knew that she was never going to last long term in a relationship with Johnny but that doesn't mean they can't have fun together.
When demanding Johnny dance with her, Dana says "Resistance is futile." This was a catchphrase of the Borg from Star Trek, a saying coined by Michael Pillar.

Offscreen Activity: This date was set up offscreen.

Timeline Notes: When did Dana and Purdy have a relationship? When did it end? This ep is fuzzy on that. Also, 1995 is established for the first time on screen as the year Johnny has his accident, which means he woke in 2001.

Funny line of the ep: "Make room for Daddy." - Purdy announcing his presence in bed with Johnny, Dana, and Sarah.


1.12 "Shaman"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 70
Visions: I'm too tired to be tired.
Moron of the EP award: Me, for putting myself through this again.

General Remarks: An interesting ep. There's little doubt that this inspired the Darth Scar plotline of the latter part of Season 2 and the opening of Season 3. Since that has thus far been very interesting, I'm grateful. I find it a little hard to believe that bone thingy survived thousands of years in an open cave like that, but it's all good. Nothing everything has to be laws of physics perfect.
How cool is it to go from one type of introspective ep like the last one to an action/puzzle solving ep like this one to an all out epic story like the next one. Awesome. Especially considering that the "there's still time" (before armageddon) is a message that resonates in the Stillson arc.

Offscreen Activity: Not a lot, but does the fact that Li'l Johnny can't sleep indicate he's worried about Johnny, and thus has grown attached to him? If so, there's been little on screen indication of this fact.

Timeline Notes: They didn't give us a lot, though it was interesting to see the flashbacks of earlier this season through the Shaman's eyes.

Funny line of the ep: Johnny and Bruce's exchange about birds and mother Africa and 8 feet wingspans was about the only light hearted moments in a drama heavy ep.


1.13 "Destiny"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 76
Visions: When I went in to brush my teeth, I looked into the mirror and saw this black rectangle swell up to cover my face ... then I realized I'd collapsed from exhaustion and the black rectangle was my toothbrush lying across my face.
Moron of the EP award: Stillson! WOO HOO!!!

General Remarks: What a brilliant season ender. The montages referencing the season past were well picked and very moving. I can't shake the feeling that Sarah put the blast on Johnny because she was jealous of Dana. How shallow. Johnny is understandably feeling sorry for himself, sometimes his gift is too much.
I wonder what Stillson meant by the dreams that come to him at night? That hasn't come up again. Nor has his father been as vocal in any future ep. Purdy's comment about lessons preparing Johnny for his destiny could be looked at as the first 12 eps of this season providing him with lessons about his powers and how to use them and the fact that he can use them to change the future.
Maybe Purdy has an awesome poker face, but he didn't seem too bothered by Johnny saying he wanted to drain the trust fund. Of course Purdy talks him out of it, but Purdy didn't seem all too worried nevertheless.

Offscreen Activity: So Johnny and Dana are dating regularly and looking very chummy about it, huh? First we hear or see of it

Timeline Notes: So, if it wasn't established before, Johnny fell down and knocked his head on the ice in 1976 (two months ago, according to Vera), which is 19 years before his car accident and 25 years before he wakes from his coma.
So what is this race Stillson is running right now? Is this the one that finally got resolved last weekend after three years? Doesn't seem likely, does it?
I see a 2002 banner at the graduation party. So Johnny woke in mid to late 2001 but now it's May of 2002, accounting for graduation time. Which means that Stillson's election is that fall, so it is NOT the election he just won. So this was the mid term election to which Purdy referred. Still, that means Purdy was talking about it a year ahead of time.
Purdy says he's been Johnny's legal guardian "the past five years." Does this mean Vera didn't commit suicide until Johnny had been in a coma for a year????
The date of Johnny's accident is listed as June 6th, 1995. June 6th??? But we just saw Johnny teaching a class in a tree right before his accident. And not a final exaim lesson either, as run of the mill lesson not of the type you would have during the last couple weeks of school. You could say there was just a time jump and the accident wasn't the next day, but that wasn't the way the Pilot was presented.
The date Johnny woke up seems to be September 1st, 2001. The date Stillson was sworn in as state representative.

Funny line of the ep: "Put him on." - Sarah, to Bruce after he has said Johnny isn't "there" even though she had called Johnny's cell phone.


2.1 "Valley of the Shadow of Death"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 80
Visions: Is the sun coming up? My time of darkness if finally over! Until tonight! MWA-HA-HA-HA!!
Moron of the EP award: Snippy FBI Woman. Some people just never learn. Her question about the GD wall was not only uncouth for a FBI agent but proven inaccurate when Johnny guessed the truth.

General Remarks: Not a very strong opener, but there are a lot of interesting moments and crisp dialogue. Stillson's cameo was interesting. I guess my main problem is that we've all seen the kidnapper thing before so many times in movies and TV shows. Or maybe I just don't like people having the upper hand over Johnny.

Offscreen Activity: Apparently Johnny and Dana's relationship, barely observed on screen, has also cooled down off screen.

Timeline Notes: The kidnapper says that Johnny hooked up with Purdy "recently." That could me a couple months, probably, on the outside. You wouldn't consider six months or longer "recently" right? Well, we know that the events of "Destiny" happened in May/June of 2002. Apparently, this ep takes place not long after because of the kidnapper comment and the way Johnny and Sarah are acting towards each other. So all this Walt and Stillson campaining is going on for the fall 2002 mid term elections, right? Not according to what we saw in ep 3.1 and 3.2. Very confusing.
Does Bruce's "A month ago he was their hero..." comment mean Johnny saved the kids from burning to death a mere month ago?

Funny line of the ep: "Go ahead, let him touch it. If it's in his system, he'll have an answer in two seconds." - Walt, to snippy FBI officer after she says if the kidnapper is in their system, she'll have an answer in two hours.


2.2 "Descent"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 90
Visions: Four idiotic teenagers just traipsed through my living room, looking for somewhere to have an accident.
Moron of the EP award: Evenly divided between all four kids. Hyuck! There haven't been enough people dying in old abandoned mines all over the news yet to convince some idiots.

General Remarks: A two parter at or near the beginning of a new season has become a Dead Zone staple. Of the three we've seen so far (counting season 3) this two parter is the weakest, but only because one of the three had to be. There are plenty of great moments, visions, and lines to make any DZ fan happy. Smart allecky Collier wasn't much of a loss in my opinion.
One thing I really like about this ep is the "ghosts of the past" metaphor mixed with trying to rescue the kids. Tough choices made by tough heroes.
One thing that always bothered me about this ep was Walt using the P word but we're not allowed to use it on the board. Same with the GD word in the last ep. You shouldn't censor a message board more harshly than you do the TV show it's devoted to.

Offscreen Activity: Walt lists a whole host of things Sarah has done or not done with he and Li'l Johnny.

Timeline Notes: Nothing concrete, but Walt wouldn't have waited too long to have "the talk" with Sarah about her changed behavior, which we know started after they made love. Figure two months, tops. Probably not even that long for someone as direct as Walt.

Funny line of the ep: "And I'm still talking to myself." -Johnny, cataloging how insane he's becoming. Runnerup: "It's going to be okay." "You have another vision?" "No, just your basic empty promise."


Previous Marathons: 24

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