The House (Dead Zone)
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| “The House” | |
|---|---|
| The Dead Zone episode | |
 Rev. Purdy |
|
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 6 |
| Guest stars | Kristen Dalton Stephanie Wyder Anita Adams Noah Beggs Jodie Graham Patric Coulter Wes Wain Wendy Morrow Donaldson Fulvio Cecere Susan Bain Casey Dubois Ty Hill |
| Written by | Michael Piller |
| Directed by | James Contner |
| Production no. | 1006 |
| Original airdate | 21 July 2002 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "Unreasonable Doubt" | "Enemy Mind" |
| List of The Dead Zone episodes | |
"The House" is the sixth episode of the USA Network original series the Dead Zone, based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King.
[edit] Plot Synposis
Three neighborhood children — Eric, Jim and Lindsay — stake-out Johnny as he and Bruce restore a vintage Jeep Wrangler before Bruce leaves for the hospital. As Johnny retrieves his mail, he sneaks up on the kids and startles them out of watching him. In his house, Johnny sorts through his mail and finds a package from his mother's lawyer, including her will. When he touches the will, he is struck with a vision of a child running through the shadows of his house; he follows the shadows upstairs into his mother's bedroom and into the connected bathroom, where he is horrified to see the bathtub back up with a wave of blood that floods around him. He snaps back in the bedroom to find everything clean.
At Faith Heritage University, Dana Bright (Kristen Dalton) meets with Reverend Eugene Purdy (David Ogden Stiers) to discuss Johnny Smith; Dana informs Purdy that Johnny has been on one date, and Purdy posits that Johnny gives people something to believe in. At a soccer game, Sarah and Johnny discuss Johnny's vision and what Sarah knows about his mother's death while watching J.J. play for the Mighty Clams. Back at his house, Johnny hears a woman crying and returns to his mother's bedroom, which he finds empty; the bathtub backs up with blood again as Mrs. Runyon, Vera's housekeeper (who died of cancer "a few years ago") walks by the room.
Johnny's vision is broken when he hears a window break downstairs and finds the three kids running from the house; Lindsay trips, and Johnny catches her, seeing a vision of two Naval officers at the door to her house. Johnny walks Lindsay back to her house to talk to her parents, learning that her last name is Davis; when they reach her house, Lindsay's parents are more concerned with keeping their daughter away from Johnny than with the fact that she threw rocks through a neighbor's window.
Johnny returns to his house, spotting what looks like a woman's form in the second-floor window of his mother's bedroom. As he rushes into the house, he also sees two people — dressed as Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe — crossing through the living room before hearing a boy singing "This Little Light of Mine" upstairs. Johnny dashes to the second floor to find his mother brushing the hair of his own five-year-old self while they both sing. As he tries to touch them, they disappear, and the bathtub backs up with blood again.
At Faith Heritage University, Johnny meets with Purdy to discuss his visions and the day that Vera Smith died; Purdy assures Johnny that his mother died of a heart attack in her sleep, even though Johnny sees a vision of Purdy in Vera's bathroom with blood on his hands. Johnny then visits Walt at the Sheriff's Department, and Roscoe calls Dana Bright. Walt scoffs at Johnny's implication that Purdy murdered Vera on the basis of Johnny's visions, but offers to track down Art Paulson, the man who was sheriff when Vera died. As Johnny heads for the coroner's office, he runs across Dana, who offers to help him find whatever he's looking for.
In the coroner's office, Johnny and Dana go through the paperwork on Vera's death. Johnny asks Dana if she sees anything "not quite right" with the medical examiner's report, but she doesn't. Dana gives Johnny some personal advice — "don't talk to a reporter" without "the words: off the record" — then asks him, "off the record," why he's looking for errors in Vera's paperwork. Johnny says he's just got a feeling, and Dana offers to go through the file more carefully for him; he tells her he owes her one, and she give him another piece of personal advice — "never say I owe you one to a reporter because...now you owe me one." Dana gets a call telling her that a local navy flier has been reported missing in action.
Dana and Johnny visit the Davis' house, and Johnny realizes that the navy flier is Lindsay Davis' older brother. He sees a vision off Lindsay of her brother's fighter jet crashing in Afghanistan, but lies and tells her that he didn't get a vision; disappointed and angry, Lindsay accuses Johnny of being a fake before Johnny sees what looks like a woman's form in the second-floor window of the Davis' house. Back at his own house, Johnny and Bruce work on the Jeep while Johnny vents his frustration about being seen as the crazy-guy in the neighborhood; Bruce reassures him that he should never apologize for being different.
While they work, Johnny hears music from inside the house that Bruce can't hear, and rushes inside to see a vision of a costume party in the parlor in 1967. He finds "Elvis" and "Marilyn" among the guests (along with Mary Poppins, Zorro, Lawrence of Arabia, and James Bond), and realizes that they are actually his parents, Herbert and Vera Smith; they announce that they are "going to have a baby," and Johnny realizes that the man dressed as Zorro is a young Gene Purdy. Purdy is disappointed by the announcement, but gives a toast to hide his dejection before Johnny snaps out of the vision and back to the parlor in the present with Bruce.
Johnny gets a call from Walt telling him that he contacted Art Paulson, and the former sheriff noted nothing suspicious about Vera's death. The only minor detail he has to report is that Mrs. Runyon hadn't been the one to call the police: Purdy had.
At Faith Heritage University, Dana meets with Purdy to question him about Vera's death, particularly why Vera had been cremated before a medical examiner arrived at the Smith house and why the Faith Heritage Alliance hired Mrs. Runyon after Vera's death. Purdy suggests that Dana drop her questioning, but Dana refuses. Purdy visits Johnny at his home, giving Johnny a vision of the costume party guests and his five-year-old self; Johnny muses on the nature of his ability in a house that has been in his family for over fifty years.
They move to Vera's bedroom, where Johnny sees his young mother again and tells Purdy of his vision of the reverend with blood on his hands. Johnny finally demands to know if Purdy killed Vera; Purdy denies it, and Johnny grabs him to see a vision of Purdy and Mrs. Runyon finding Vera dead in the bathtub, having slit her own wrists. In the vision, Purdy calls the sheriff to have a hearse pick up Vera's body and take it to the Faith Heritage mortuary for immediate cremation, then instructs Mrs. Runyon to clean up the body in order to hide the suicide.
Johnny learns from Purdy that Vera killed herself in 1996, a year after Johnny went into his coma, and Johnny sees a vision of Vera in her rocking chair near the window, tortured by the loss of her only son. Purdy explains that he covered up the suicide in order to protect Vera and Johnny's legacy; as Purdy leaves, Johnny assures him that he'll call Dana and tell her top stop digging into Vera's death.
Later that night, Johnny is visited by Lindsay while he works on his Jeep; she informs him that her brother was found dead, his plane crashed, and realizes that Johnny had seen it. She apologizes for calling him a fraud and starts to cry, and as Johnny comforts her, he sees a vision of Lindsay's mother in the second-story window of the Davis house. He suddenly realizes the correlation between Lindsay's mother and his own mother — two women who both lost a son — and hurries to the Davis' house where he finds Dana interviewing Lindsay's father.
Lindsay and Dana persuade Mr. Davis to let Johnny see Mrs. Davis, and they find her in the master bedroom; Johnny sees a vision of Mrs. Davis with a handful of sleeping pills, then sees a vision of Lindsay's brother telling his mother that she is "loved and needed in this house." Johnny repeats the line, and Mrs. Davis breaks down crying; Mr. Davis hurries her to a hospital while Johnny looks after Lindsay. Outside, as Lindsay's parents leave, Johnny tells Lindsay that her mother is going to be alright in time, and Dana makes it clear that she will keep this story out of the newspaper.
[edit] Trivia
- Johnny makes reference to the 1960 Harper Lee novel To Kill a Mockingbird when he compares himself to Boo Radley.
- Johnny calls his Jeep "Nellie Belle"; on the Roy Rogers Show, Pat Brady called his Jeep the same name.
- Lindsay mentions the Psychic Friends Network.
- Dana mentions the first-generation Nintendo videogame Mario Bros.
