IOTLH "Dead Zone" Comments

No spoiler space here - read at your own peril:

"The Outsider" (Feb 2, 2003)

It's great that they don't feel obligated to give all the regulars fairly equal time from show to show - Bruce wasn't even in the last two episodes, and Walt and Sarah were only in this one at the end. It makes more sense story-wise not to have them appearing just for the sake of appearing. Do we see every friend we have every day?

I actually thought that having the old lady at the grocery store be the spy was a reach. Who was she, surveillance-van-boy's mom? Did he have to have her and the van back home by 8 so she could watch Touched By an Angel?

I loved Johnny watching videos of old TV shows to "catch up". I hope Bruce is merciful and "loses" the Dogget/Reyes years of X-Files ;)

Echoing back to the bank hostages episode last season, we see Johnny's interventions actually making things worse at points. One of these days, he's going to really screw something up and someone's going to get hurt. It may be something actually quite innocent, which would be even more tragic.

I love the way references to Stillson and the end-of-the-world vision are sprinkled around. I do have a question about the timeline, though. Johnny's vision of the future court case where he first sees Thomas Berke is in 2009. There he hears reference to "Vice President Stillson". Since Stillson is campaigning for Congress, and we assume he'll win. I don't know what the cycle is for Congressional elections is in Maine, but let's assume he wins in 2004. I guess it would be too soon to be part of a presidential
ticket in 2004, so best guess is he and the president win in 2008. (Of course he could be appointed, but that's not relevent). Anyway, the point being that in 2009 he's still VP, and the world is not yet destroyed (i.e. D.C. is not in ruins). It just seems to be a good bit farther away for Stillson to get to the presidency that I would have thought the producers were aiming for. Assuming the president doesn't die in office (and I wouldn't put it past Stillson to have a hand in it) he couldn't be president until 2012 at the earliest.

That's just a long-reaching timeline...which means the show (which will most likely not run 9+ years) and Johnny will be dealing with Stillson much earlier in his political run. Just an interesting decision to have made.

The tone of the episode changed completely at the Thomas/Claire lunch date scene - I was worried it was going to develop into a romantic comedy as two bumbling MIT grads find love with each other. Ahhh, Nerds in Love :)

Not only has Johnny saved the lives of thousands of unborn babies, had it not been for the closing scene of Thomas and Claire's real baby being born I would have thought he had doomed their relationship anyway. If Johnny hadn't intervened, Thomas would've spent a couple more years in his self-imposed exile until circumstances led him to meet up again with Claire. What personal demons did he have to exorcise within himself in that original timeline to come to the point of pursuing a relationship with her, getting married and having a child in 5 years? Now that Johnny's done all the legwork for him, Thomas doesn't have to mature and you would have thought it would
lend doubts to the relationship working at this point. But, oh well, guess everyone lived happily ever after anyway.

Yeah, I think about these things too much ;)

Very good episode. I give it a 7/10.