Zona muerta

Bless you who(M?)ever had the idea for this program and an extra special thanks to Stephen King for writing the original book and giving them the idea....what took them so long!? I sure hope this program is going to stick around for awhile and I am sick thinking about the fact that it's first season will be over so soon! This is terrible....what are we supposed to do with ourselves now? (smile) I will be waiting for that email coming to tell me when the new season will be starting and if anyone from USA is reading these, can't you do something about all those commercials? They make it a bit hard to concentrate on the program....of course, I'd **** at my own beer party. Seems I should just be grateful the program is on at all! Oh by the way, I do realize there are unrequited feelings between Johnny and Sarah, especially with the child but....that's getting a bit old. She seems like a lost puppy following him around everywhere.

I am an enormous Stephen King fan, and it is always with great anxiety that i watch a movie/tv series based on his work. The dead Zone was a great book - a great concept, but tough to translate to screen. The movie made in the 80s with christopher walken was half decent but nothing to write home about.

thankfully - the show is wonderful. Four episodes old and i am completely engrossed. This will be the first time I ever watch a show religiously in the summer. It is wonderfully put together, and though there are bad spots in the dialogue, its is translated well, and they have done a great job with showing the viewer the visions johnny smith finds himself having. they are wonderfully done.

I like how they arent sinking into just having johnny smith solve a murder each week, as evidenced by the latest episodes when he uses his powers to re-unite two long lost lovers (not to mention have an out of body sexual experience). the biggest worry i had was that the show would become very formulaic - and it still might, but hopefully they keep things going the way they are.

the real revelation in this series so far has been anthony michael hall. when i was young i loved this guy - and still love him when i watch "the breakfast club" or "weird science" - but since he has tried to revive his career I have had a tough time accepting him as an adult actor. I kept seeing the kid from the 80s movies. until now. I think he is doing a marvelous job with this part, playing it with a great combination of wide eyed wonder and fear of his new abilities. All of a sudden with this role he seems so believably adult, its kind of amazing. every now and the you can see the kid fro the 80s but for the most part its like watching a new actor. he plays the tortured role excellently - i can't say enough about how impressed I am

so far - this is fantastic and i hope they keep it up and release a dvd.

i thought i might add a review as well. i have seen 5 episodes so far and have to say i'm not really impressed. in fact i am amazed that the series made it into 5 seasons, so i certainly hope it gets much better.

i hoped so as well before i saw episode 4 in season 1 called "enigma". it would be a fair so-so episode much later after a few years of the show, where the writers ran out of ideas - but to see something like that in the first season, where you want to hook up people on it (and not bore them to death), is really weird. OK, maybe the episode looked better on paper - lets go for the next one "unreasonable doubt". better than the last one (but OK, that wasn't hard to manage) but still not even good.

the scheme is always the same: psychic guy touches someone/something, has a vision (some of them are technically very nice!) and is always right about it. after that he has to convince the others that he's right. where is the suspense in that? his visions are too clear - and i wonder how he can get always the "important" information (that can carry on the plot) out of a person/object and not one other from the millions of possibilities. strangely enough, neither the main character nor anyone else gets thoughts about that fact.

i'll give this series another try when i'm really really bored and there are no other series to watch - otherwise i might end up being grumpy about the wasted time. but it might be that i rather start watching the x-files on DVD again, even though i know all of them, they don't bore me when i'm seeing it a second or third time - in contrary to "the dead zone", which bored me the first time i watched it and i definitely won't see it a second time...

In a word of cardboard characters and poor writing, The Dead Zone is a joy to watch. I have enjoyed every episode and some episodes have been excellent.

The only tragedy with this series is not with the series itself but with the way USA handles the scheduling and marketing. Most of the time I don't know when the season is going to begin or when the new episodes will air. Scheduling is erratic and promotion is often non existent. Someone in the USA main office must not want this show to succeed. Frankly, it's an amazing testament to the show's appeal that it still is in production despite this utter mismanagement.

USA, please recognize the gem you have in both Monk and The Dead Zone and, at the very least, air them on a regular schedule on which we can rely.

This is one of those shows where the main characters are driven to put aside the problems they have with each other because they know that there are more important things. Those are the kind of characters I can enjoy watching. In this case they all know that Johnny (Anthony Michael Hall) has real visions not crazy visions or psychic hotline visions, but real visions. And that they can help him thwart the events that would otherwise lead to deaths or disaster if they trust each other and work together. This leads to the compelling stories that aren't about his visions. Sarah (Nicole de Boer) and Johnny were engaged before his car accident turned 6 year coma. However, during that coma she married the local sheriff (Chris Bruno). So watching as Johnny and the sheriff become friends is very interesting. Rev. Gene Purdy (David Ogden Stiers) as the man in charge of Johnny's inheritance is also an interesting study in suspense because the viewer can't tell if he is an imperfect man trying to do good, or someone with malicious intent. Johnny's best friend Bruce (John L. Adams) is someone he can share all his secrets with and their conversation is also where some of the quality humor of the show comes through. This show is definitely one to watch.