Posted on 07/10/2006 6:39:22 PM PDT by ozoneliar
Last night I watched a tv show I haven't watched in a while: The Dead Zone. The Dead Zone is a tv show on the USA network. The basic premise of the show is that a man(Johnny Smith) acquires psychic powers, and uses them to solve crime and help people.
Normally the show is very entertaining, and I enjoy it. But, last night was different. I was treated to a show replete with ugly stereotypes, Pro-Life bashing, and not to mention weak writing.
Warning this will spoil the plot
The episode centers around a murder, where the body of a Pakistani Muslim was painted white, and a white power slogan was painted above the body. Johnny gets a vision of the murder before it happens. He proceeds to warn the Sheriff . The Sheriff tells him that the only extremist group around is Right to life group.
Johnny then investigates a preacher, who is preaching about tolerance between Muslims and Christains, and that the 9/11 hijackers were a few extremists who hijacked the message of Islam "Peace,and Love". It turns out that the preacher used to belong to a white supremacist group. Johnny confronts the preacher and accuses of him of having connections to "right wing groups", equating "right wing" to white supremacist groups. The preacher denies other allegations, by chalking them up to "Liberal media bias".
It turns out that the preacher has a son, who confesses to the crime. Johnny figures out that the son is lying because he feels guilty about beating, and killing a black man at the behest of his father. He proceeds to give a whole televised speech/confession in which he says "My family is a family of immigrants, but we came to build this country, but these other immigrants came to suck the country dry"( not exact qoute).
It turns out that the Pakistani boy was gay, and had a boyfriend. The Pakistani(Rashid) wanted to tell his parents about his relationship. He gives a speech in the car to his friend " I don't care what the Koran says, and you should not care what the Bible says" His friend having strong religeous convictions proceeds to beat Rahsid and kill him, and try to make it look like a white power killing.
So, what have we learned from this episode?
We learned that: 1)Right wing = racist 2)Pro-life= extremist, possible murderer 3)Stereotypes by using term liberal media bias out context as a blanket dismissal 4)That 9/11 terrorists(I don't think the show even used that word) were a few extremists who hijacked a whole religeon 5)Religeon is evil, especially Christianity, and it will cause you kill people. 6)Being anti-immigration means you are racist.
All in all, I was disgusted by this episode, of show I usally enjoy. I don't know if writing in will do anything, but at the very least it will let the execs know, that not everybody buys into their philosophy. All in all, I found the show to be disgusting.
The episode is entitled: Article of faith, and will air again Sunday at 9 a.m. You can email USA at feedback@usanetwork.com. USA is owned by NBC Universal.
I gave up on DZ after the 3rd season
I saw it, I changed the channel after thirty minutes.
I saw it.
I thought it was full of scorn and ridicule for social conservatives.
Conservatives are racists, homphophobes, etc. Same old same old. You would think that the writers would try some new lines every once in a while.
Last week, the token Southerner in the show was cast as a racist driving a pickup truck.
The show has been pretty interesting in the past, but I think they're running out of ideas, and are falling back on leftist stereotypes to pump up poor scriptwriting. Kind of sad, really, because I don't watch a lot of TV. This show, and The 4400 were my favorites.
"I gave up on DZ after the 3rd season."
Before you give up on USA, try "Monk." It's pretty funny. (Besides, it might be a bit less down beat than a show about someone who constantly has visions of dead people.)
No wonder it's called "The Dead Zone"
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