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truepennyTIME: 42 min.
DISTANCE: 5.5 mi.
TOTAL DISTANCE: 253.1 mi.
DISTRACTION: The Dead Zone, "The Siege"
SHIRE RECKONING: We've crossed the Great East Road. Go us!
I liked the beginning of this episode, with the undercutting of the bank robbery clichés: it's hard to rob a bank in a small town where you've lived all your life. And big props to Stephen E. Miller as the bank robber. Otherwise . . . meh. Predictable every step of the way, and although I can understand why they didn't show the cause-and-effect path from Choice A in the present to Outcome B in the future (especially as choices and outcomes started mounting up), it felt a little bit like cheating--like a hand-wave.
The inclusion of the kid in this episode bugged me because it had a Chekhov's gun feel to it: Sarah hands kid off to Johnny, Johnny hands kid off to Dana (and, really, is Dana Bright anyone to be trusted with a small child?). Kid subsequently disappears from episode, and I swear, the whole time I was waiting for someone to say, "Dana, where's Johnny?" and Dana to be all, "I left him over there," and the kid to have run into the bank to find his mother. But, no, he just got invisibly handed over to somebody else whom the sheriff apparently conjured out of his stetson or something. This is not, of course, an important detail, but it's sloppy storytelling, and thus it bugs me.
DISTANCE: 5.5 mi.
TOTAL DISTANCE: 253.1 mi.
DISTRACTION: The Dead Zone, "The Siege"
SHIRE RECKONING: We've crossed the Great East Road. Go us!
I liked the beginning of this episode, with the undercutting of the bank robbery clichés: it's hard to rob a bank in a small town where you've lived all your life. And big props to Stephen E. Miller as the bank robber. Otherwise . . . meh. Predictable every step of the way, and although I can understand why they didn't show the cause-and-effect path from Choice A in the present to Outcome B in the future (especially as choices and outcomes started mounting up), it felt a little bit like cheating--like a hand-wave.
The inclusion of the kid in this episode bugged me because it had a Chekhov's gun feel to it: Sarah hands kid off to Johnny, Johnny hands kid off to Dana (and, really, is Dana Bright anyone to be trusted with a small child?). Kid subsequently disappears from episode, and I swear, the whole time I was waiting for someone to say, "Dana, where's Johnny?" and Dana to be all, "I left him over there," and the kid to have run into the bank to find his mother. But, no, he just got invisibly handed over to somebody else whom the sheriff apparently conjured out of his stetson or something. This is not, of course, an important detail, but it's sloppy storytelling, and thus it bugs me.
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Date: 2009-08-01 03:23 am (UTC)Then there was the bank robber, a man who, like Johnny, has lost his purpose in life and the woman he shared his life with. The bank robber was a dark mirror image of Johnny; both of them feel they have nothing left. And through understanding that, Johnny is able to show compassion and empathy for a man holding a gun on him, and the key to reasoning with the man is to make him feel he isn't alone.
I feel that's really the strength of "The Dead Zone"; to take admittedly standard television crime and mystery plots and infuse with them a character who sees in strangers the same grief and pain he himself is racked with. Because of those layers, I'm untroubled by any predictable plotting.
I suppose Little Johnny's abrupt disappearance is a hole; I never noticed until reading your post. Every time I thought of the kid's appearance, I thought of Johnny looking at his son on the coin-operated car-ride and asking, "Is that thing turbo-charged?" It's not in the shooting script, and I think Michael Hall improvised it.