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The Dead Zone: The Outsider

Johnny: "If you take anything that's inevitable, and you move it back a couple of years, it becomes a coincidence. The stars just haven't aligned yet."

Come on. Johnny can touch a television screen and get something from a commercial now? That was like bad televangelism. Plus, can a skin cream have that strong an effect on the reproductive system? Well, okay, I don't have any medical knowledge, but it just seemed strange to me.

Except for the weak main premise, this episode wasn't too bad. I liked Berke a lot. I liked his cats and his bonsai business and his love for Claire. He bought into Johnny's abilities a little too quickly, perhaps, although that might have just been his feelings for Claire talking.

I thought we were going to go for an entire episode without Sarah and Walt, but they were brought in very believably. (And it was interesting that Sarah immediately thought Walt had a detective on her and Johnny!)

Johnny has enough credibility now to get a prediction in a real newspaper – even if it was only on page four. This was the first time we saw Dana's boss... and it was very much in character that Dana has slept with him, too. And Dana still had a thing for Johnny, obviously. Was she trying to get personal information from John on the pretext of it being about work? Of course she was.

Bits and pieces:

— The title was most likely a tribute to The Insider, the movie about the tobacco whistle-blower. Which would make it rather clever.

— The Culp & Belling logo was very similar to the Lion's Gate logo. The Revivatin package looked like it was copied from Olay.

— I thought the part at the beginning where Johnny was catching up on Seinfeld and The X-Files using Bruce's tapes was cute. If I had been in a coma for six years, what show tapes would I be borrowing from my friends?

— Johnny went to Vancouver in the show. They tape the show in Vancouver. More cuteness.

— They kept the Stillson thing going; in one of the future glimpses, there was a reference to "vice president Stillson," and I believe it was in 2008.

— I loved the fact that Johnny has psychic references: Walt, Markoff from "Valley of the Shadow," and Roger Chatsworth from the episode "Destiny" were specifically mentioned.

— Johnny: "Gene, there's one thing I've learned about you. If you don't know the people, then you know the people that know the people."

Three out of four stars,

Billie
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Billie Doux loves good television and spends way too much time writing about it.

1 comment:

  1. As I watched this episode, I kept expecting Johnny to run into Clark from "Smallville," in which Vancouver proper doubled for Metropolis.

    There was even a shot of The Daily Planet Building. ...without the planet, natch.

    ReplyDelete

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