The second episode of The Dead Zone, Independence Day, is a very strong episode. Like in the season premier neither Sheriff Bannerman or Sarah is present in the episode. Of the regular cast only Johnny (would be interesting to see how an episode would turn out if he wasn’t) and Bruce are present this time. Don’t ask me what has happened to Sarah and Walt though…maybe they are on a second honeymoon?

This time Johnny and Bruce are stranded in a traffic jam that takes place on a hot summer day. The cops has stopped traffic in both direction and people are getting out of their cars, playing football, getting some sun or just hanging around, waiting for the traffic to start rolling again. As they walk through the lines of cars Johnny gets vision after vision of a big disaster about to happen…

Naturally Johnny tries to prevent it but this time there are a lot of factors to take in consideration. There is a woman giving birth, an escaped convict (which it later turns out is the reason for the traffic jam in the first place) and a big disaster…that ends with Bruce’s death. It’s safe to say that Johnny got his plate full this time.

The biggest difference with this episode compared to earlier is that this one is totally stand-alone. There are no loose ends, no connections to other characters and nothing that happens has any input to the rest of The Dead Zone universe. This is not a bad thing though. It’s nice to have an episode that is totally disconnected to the rest but for the sake of the series there can’t be to many stand-alone episodes…

Season 5 of The Dead Zone is continuing in the same good way that it started with the season premier a week ago. If they keep it up, I can’t see why we wouldn’t get a season 6!

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