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ShadowDog's

30 Hour Dead Zone Marathon!




Marathon Hour:
17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27

Hours 1-5

Hours 6-9

Hours 10-13

Hours 14-17

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!


2.7 "Misbegotten"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 120
Visions: I woke up duct taped to my office chair, but then I woke up again and my stuffed dog was leaving the room with the duct tape. Hmmmmm.
Moron of the EP award: Penny. You're very sweet, and you gotta love women who cook shrimp. But if you ever thought you had a chance with Johnny you're more delusional than a Lakers fan.

General Remarks: A pretty tense ep with lots of scary aspects. The overall premise is farfetched but maybe Penny and the camerawoman are really this dumb. Entire documentaries are devoted to delusional and/or stupid criminals, so I guess it could happen.
But what was Purdy thinking?
This ep was a big hit with (and possible tweak on the nose of) the drool squad. If I remember right though, a lot of the people on the board guessed the plot twists way in advance.

Offscreen Activity: So Bruce knows about Johnny and Sarah's fling? Dana knows, Stillson knows, Walt might know since Johnny told him. Does Li'l Johnny know??
So Johnny has stood Dana up before? Thanks for showing us that.

Timeline Notes: No clues here.

Funny line of the ep: Sarah and Dana dishing on Johnny. A very fugly scene.


2.8 "Cabin Pressure"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 128
Visions: I had a vision of the inside of my eyelids for about five seconds.
Moron of the EP award: Captain Snippy. Oh, you just know everything, don't you? Enjoy being a crispy canjun critter!

General Remarks: The dressing down Johnny gives the Air Marshall is from the book, what the book Johnny did to a reporter (David Bright?). This was a brilliantly acted scene, and just as brilliantly written. I just LOVE it when Johnny breaks down a nonbeliever and makes them cry. They shoulda believed him!
Another great thing about the script was how many times Johnny had to try and figure out what the problem was. No one said predicting the future would always be easy.
Love the real time aspect of this ep.

Offscreen Activity: I still find it hard to believe Purdy convinced publicity loathing Johnny to travel and speak for him.

Timeline Notes: Nothing to tell us how much time has passed or what month/year it is.

Funny line of the ep: "Or what, you're going to remove me by force?" - Captain "I'd rather not alarm the passengers." - Air Marshall "By all means, let's not do anything RASH like that!" - Captain


2.9 "The Man Who Never Was"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 136
Visions: Zimbu the Spider Monkey God peeked through the window but wouldn't come in.
Moron of the EP award: The "Guvment". What is their game? Why not just kill isolate Jeffrey in a secure old folks home? The worst he can do is tell a couple old people stuff. That's no problem, they'll die soon enough and because they're old no one will believe them. Why have Jeffrey within any reach of the public?

General Remarks: I love that Johnny asked for a Diet Pepsi! WOO HOO!! The little girl agent was brilliant! She might be the best agent we have. Her in character lines were perfectly timed to do the maximum harm to Johnny, twice causing his friends to remove him from the house.
The parallels between Jeffrey and Johnny are intentional and well done. One annoyance is how quick Johnny's friends are (AGAIN) ready to dismiss him as insane. When will they learn to trust him? He's never let them down yet.

Offscreen Activity: None that I noticed, but then I'm tireder than a one armed golfer at the moment, so who knows what I'm missing?

Timeline Notes: Walt has a reelection brochure on his desk, only the second mention of his election this season. What year is this again? Very confusing.

Funny line of the ep: There are a lot of funny moments in a mostly serious ep. Among them: "Is that a medical question or do you have tickets to the symphony?" - Johnny, when asked by his female doctor how his sex life was.
"If it will help, I can tell you what happened to Amelia Earhardt." - Jeffrey, commenting on Johnny's journalistic ruse. "Mommy, that man's touching the house!" and "The mean man is scaring me!" - Teeny tiny little girl agent.


2.10 "Dead Men Tell Tales"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 142
Visions: A parade of bunny rabbits are dancing around my chair. I try to pet them but my hand passes through them. This might indicate they're not real.
Moron of the EP award: Nina, if only for her idiotic cigarette company crack. But also for letting Stillson touch her.

General Remarks: Stillson has to be the biggest HO to have EVER been elected into politics. Considering Jefferson and Clinton were politicians, this is saying a LOT.
Hair Face's behavior in this ep lends credence to theories that Sonny killed Rachel in Season 3. I had forgotten that he'd attacked a woman before. Hmmmm.
A lot of the rest of this ep doesn't work for me. I don't buy the mob in Maine, I don't buy Walt helping them, I don't understand why Walt is so hateful towards Johnny in this ep (obviously Johnny isn't going to help the mob of his own free will). Still, it had some entertaining moments, and no Stillson ep can possibly be completely without merit.
Remember the Titanic mention by one of the characters? The music in this ep is reminiscent of the music in that movie.
It takes a lot of guts to have Johnny be responsible for someone dying, so that redeems this ep a lot.
By the way, go to hell Walt!

Offscreen Activity: Apparently Walt is involved on mob stakeouts. Put aside how much the mob would really be involved in rural Maine, especially having a plumbing business front there, but the job of Sheriff of any size county is a bureaucratic and administrative nightmare. There are countless decisions to be made on a daily basis, the sheriff must coordinate with city hall and help set policy, do hours of paperwork, etc. I accept that Walt patrols Cleaves Mills because its so small, but would he really pick himself to work with the feds against the mob on funeral stakeouts? Just seems sketchy to me.

Timeline Notes: Stillson is still campaigning. What year is it again?

Funny line of the ep: The funniest part of this ep was Johnny's vision of falling face down into a ditch for refusing to help the mob. I don't know why, but this always strikes me as funny.


2.11 "Playing God"
Ounces of Diet Pepsi: 144
Visions: There was something about a mermaid but I didn't remember it long enough to write it down.
Moron of the EP award: Jason, this is another no brainer. Dude, if you're mean to people, they won't stick around and watch you die! Duh!

General Remarks: Not much to say about this episode other than the fact that the writers and producers have the biggest guts on series TV. It was very courageous of them to do a story like this. The series evolved the day this ep aired.

Offscreen Activity: In 23 prior episodes, there has been no mention of Jason or Kate.

Timeline Notes: Johnny tells Kate that it's been over a year since he woke from his coma. So the date of this ep is after September 1st, 2002. Probably a minimum of a couple weeks past that date, more likely a month or two since Johnny said "over a year."
The date on Kate's tombstone is "March 3rd, 2003." I just report the facts, I don't try and make any sense out of them. I guess you could consider 19 months "over a year" but I'd call it closer to a year and a half or almost two years myself.

Funny line of the ep: "You know, Johnny. When I told you that I wanted to go out with women and drugs, I didn't mean nurses and morphine." - Jason


Previous Marathons: 24

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