My girlfriend Eunice and I seem to fight all the time. It doesn't matter what we're talking about, what movie to go see, where to eat dinner or whose psychic ability would solve a murder faster, Johnny Smith's from The Dead Zone or Louis Ciccone's from Seeing Things, we always ending up in a bitter argument usually with her coming at me with a sharp object. I want to make this work but I'm not sure how many gushing head wounds I can take before I die from blood loss.
Signed, Bleeding Heart
A guy who engages in heated arguments with his girlfriend over TV shows asks Dr. Newt for a lesson in conflict resolution.
Johnny Smith: The main character in Stephen King's novel, The Dead Zone. The book was made into a movie in 1983 by Canadian horror director David Cronenberg and starred the scariest man alive, Christopher Walken (join his U.S. Presidential campaign here), where he delivers his most emotional line to date: “THE ICE IS GONNA BREAK!" And in 2002, USA Network adapted it into a television series, starring Brat Pack survivor Anthony Michael Hall. Recent rumours indicate the TV show has been axed.
In the story, Smith gets into a car accident and falls into a coma for five years (six in the TV series) and when he awakes he discovers he sometimes gets visions of the past and future when he comes into contact with people or certain objects. This freakish realization, and the fact, he now needs to walk around with a cane because his body atrophied while lying in the bed for the past half-decade, has forced him into a life of relative solitude. That is, until someone needs his help, then he hobbles into action! (The cane is why Dr. Newt callously refers to him Smith as a cripple. However, the Doctor has obviously not seen past season three. In the first episode of the fourth season, Smith tosses the cane into the water, partially because he doesn't need it anymore, but mainly to get rid of creepy, joint visions he's been having with a burnt psychic in a post-Armageddon future, played by Frank Whaley.)
Louis Ciccone: The main character in the CBC television series Seeing Things (1981-1987), created and starring Louis Del Grande. Although American by birth, Del Grande was heavily involved in the Canadian film and television industry, having also written for King of Kensington, had his head blown up in Cronenberg's Scanners and played one half of a bickering middle aged couple alongside Mary Walsh in an episode of the sexually-obsessed scifi series Lexx.
Ciccone was a crime reporter for the fictitious newspaper The Toronto Gazette. Generally half-assed at getting facts in traditional ways, he largely relied on visions he got from crime scenes to find out what happened. Then, with the help of the younger, cute Assistant Crown Attorney Heather Redfern and/or his formerly estranged wife, Marge (it mentions in the theme song she gave the boot once but it really doesn't have much to do with anything) he saves the day. Unlike Smith, Ciccone can only see into the past, not the future as well, and the visions usually revolve around murders. But there are cheezy mystery musical stings and extreme close-ups of his eyes when he gets one.
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