Wheel of Fortune (Dead Zone)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| “Wheel of Fortune (Part 1)” | |
|---|---|
| The Dead Zone episode | |
 Johnny Smith |
|
| Episode no. | Season 1 Episode 1 |
| Guest stars | Anna Hagan Rick Tae Michael St. John Smith Gina Chiarelli Emily Holmes Alvin Sanders Michael Rogers |
| Written by | Michael Piller |
| Directed by | Robert Lieberman |
| Production no. | 1001 |
| Original airdate | 16 June 2002 |
| Episode chronology | |
| ← Previous | Next → |
| "none" | "What It Seems" |
| List of The Dead Zone episodes | |
"Wheel of Fortune (Part 1)" is the pilot episode of the USA Network original series The Dead Zone, based on the novel of the same name by Stephen King.
Contents |
[edit] Plot Synopsis
In 1976, six-year-old Johnny Smith hits his head in an accident on a frozen pond in his home town of Cleaves Mills, Maine. After mumbling a vague warning to "leave it there" he regains consciousness and everyone starts to go home. When the player crosses the pond to retrieve his hockey stick, the ice cracks and he crashes into the water, he is saved but no one connects the accident with Johnny's vague warning.
In 1995, Johnny (Anthony Michael Hall) teaches at a high school along with his fiancee Sarah Bracknell (Nicole de Boer) Johnny visits his mother Vera Smith (Anna Hagan) and encounters televangelistic reverend Eugene Purdy (David Ogden Stiers) at her house; Johnny helps Vera find her glasses and invites her and Purdy to join he and Sarah at the carnival, but Vera declines. Johnny does little to hide his opinion that Purdy is playing Vera for the vast amount of money she's donated to his Faith Heritage Alliance.
On the night of June 6, Johnny discusses his misgivings about Purdy with Sarah at the carnival before they wander across the Wheel of Fortune. Johnny declares that he's "feeling lucky," and stakes a quarter on a bankrupt teenager and takes the Wheel on an unprecedented run of fortune, cleaning out the game and shutting it down; finally Johnny retrieves his quarter, leaving the rest of the winnings with the teenager. Johnny and Sarah make love in his car, and when they get back to her apartment he decides to go and rent a "some old movies." As he drives along a rainslicked highway, a tractor-trailer loses control and collides horrifically with Johnny's Cadillac.
In 2001, Johnny jolts awake in a hospital bed on September 1 and learns from Dr. Tran Chi Duc (Rick Tae) that he's been in a coma for six years; Johnny's condition had been complicated by scar tissue from his childhood trauma. As Johnny's nurse Elaine MacGowan begins his bath, Johnny is struck with a vision of Elaine's daughter Maggie trapped in their burning house. Elaine calls the fire department, and her daughter and babysitter are rescued.
Tran tries to rationalize the vision as "a startlingly real hallucination" and explains that, while Johnny was in his coma, his brain compensated for loss of some functioning by rewiring itself through a typically "dead zone" that may be causing his sensory perception to function differently. As Tran examines Johnny's face, however, Johnny is rocked by another vision in which he sees the six-year-old Tran separated from his mother during the fall of Saigon in April 1975. Johnny snaps back and tells Tran that his mother is still alive, though Tran insists she died during the Fall.
Johnny asks for Sarah and his mother. Vera had died while he was in the coma and Sarah is currently at her home with her six-year-old son J.J. and her husband, Sheriff Walt Bannerman (Chris Bruno). When she hears of Johnny's recovery she drives to the hospital, made-up and nervous, but in the end can't face her lost love and leaves. At the Faith Heritage Alliance, Purdy sets up a meeting to introduce Greg Stillson, who is running for Congress in the second district, and learns from his lawyer Mike Kennedy that Johnny has regained consciousness.
During his physical therapy with trainer Bruce Lewis (John L. Adams), Johnny learns of the vast changes in the world between 1995 and 2001, and accidentally demonstrates his ability in front of Bruce. After therapy, nurse Allison Connover (Emily Holmes) transfers Johnny to an exam room and meets with Tran's uncle, who saw Tran's mother die in Saigon; when Johnny touches the elder man's hand, however, he has a vision of the explosion in 1975 and realizes that the woman who died was not Tran's mother and that she is still alive.
As Bruce transfers Johnny for physical therapy, Johnny is visited by Sarah and has a vision of the new life that Sarah has built with Walt. Johnny learns that J.J. is his own son, but that Sarah and Walt decided to raise the child as their own; Johnny insists that Sarah not tell J.J. about his complicated paternity. Wracked with guilt, Sarah leaves the hospital, and Johnny returns to his physical therapy.
Over the next few weeks, Johnny pours himself into his training, recovering limited use of his legs; Elaine Macgowan has her house rebuilt following the fire; Dr. Tran investigates the possibility that his mother may still be alive and finds her in the rebuilt Ho Chi Minh City; Sarah wars with herself over the decisions she's made; and Purdy continues his ministry at the Vera Smith Chapel.
After Johnny is released from the hospital, Bruce drives him home to find Sarah and J.J. in front of the house; Sarah insists that she wants J.J. to know Johnny, details not withstanding, and introduces father and son. After Sarah and J.J. leave, Johnny begins unpacking, picking up a cake given to him by nurse Allison; he is struck by a vision of Allison, dead, being buried during a rainstorm by a man in a distinctive pair of boots.
Snapping back, Johnny screams for Bruce to warn Allison as thunder rolls in the distance. Arriving home at her own house, Allison is about to get something from the trunk of her car when she hears the phone ringing. She dashes up the walk and into the house, but misses the call on the last ring, and as the first drops of rain begin to fall outside, the man in the distinctive boots from Johnny's vision stands on the sidewalk...
[edit] Trivia
Bruce brings Johnny up to speed by rattling off a list of current events, including:
- Jesse Ventura's governorship in Minnesota
- George W. Bush's presidentship
- the O.J. Simpson murder case
- Mark McGwire's chase of Roger Maris' homerun record
- Tiger Woods' golf prowess
- the landing of the Mars Pathfinder
- the cloning of Dolly the sheep
- the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal
- Regis Philbin's popularity as the host of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire
- Sarah mentions Shania Twain's country music stardom
Greg Stillson, still just running for Congress, is first mentioned in the pilot, though he will not appear until the first season finale; Stillson is Smith's primary antagonist in the novel.
[edit] Series vs. Novel
- The make of Johnny's car is changed to a classic Cadillac
- The length of Johnny's coma is extended from four-and-a-half to six years.
- The character of Sheriff Walt Bannerman is a combination of two characters from the novel — Sheriff George Bannerman, and Sarah's husband Walt Hazlett.
- Sarah's son in the novel was named Danny and fathered by Walt.
- The means by which Johnny's parents die are altered; Vera Smith had a stroke in the novel, and Herb Smith outlived Johnny (and was the recipient of Johnny's final letter explaining his extreme course of action in the novel's culmination).
- The series introduced several characters not included in the novel — physical therapist Bruce Lewis, Faith Heritage founder Eugene Purdy, and newspaper reporter Dana Bright.
