Johnny Smith was leading an idyllic small-town life: working as a high school science teacher, engaged to the love of his life, Sarah, and being a devoted son to his widowed mother, Vera, who lives nearby. But after a near-fatal car accident puts him in a deep coma, Johnny awakens six years later to find everything has changed: Sarah is now is married to someone else, local sheriff Walt Bannerman; the child they are raising is actually Johnny's son and knows nothing about his real father; and Johnny's mother Vera has passed away, leaving Johnny's finances under the thumb of Reverend Purdy, an influential religious leader who is also his mother's former lover. But, most importantly, Johnny himself has changed: he now finds himself with the gift (or curse) of second sight. Through visions he sees with a simple touch, he becomes responsible for saving a nurse's little girl from a fire, helping his Vietnamese doctor reunite with the mother he thought was killed during the fall of Saigon, and now must prevent a local serial killer from striking again. Now Johnny is faced with the daunting task of coming to grips with his new powers - and navigating his way through his new life.
Johnny returns to his old school as a substitute teacher and as a hockey coach. During practice, Johnny has a vision inside a player's heart that indicates he may have a serious heart condition. However, there is no medical evidence to support him. Johnny's vision of Todd, and his previous publicity, cause an outcry by the parents who demand that Johnny be fired.
Johnny moves into his new house and starts having visions of a tub filled with blood. He also sees visions of his dead mother, and comes to believe that Rev. Purdy killed his mother. The facts seem to suggest that Purdy did indeed engage in a cover-up concerning the death of Johnny's mother. In a final confrontation Johnny touches Purdy and gains a vision of Purdy finding Johnny's mother dead by suicide. Realizing what the death of a child can drive a parent to do, he goes to the aid of a local neighbor girl whose brother died on a military mission and whose mother is preparing to kill herself.
While helping to track down a runaway, Jill, who is involved with drugs, Johnny is exposed to a drug that causes him to start getting weird (weirder than usual) visions. He insists on trying to find Jill, despite the concerns of Bruce and Sarah. Confusing matters further is that Jill's boyfriend is in trouble with his supplier. The boyfriend gets killed and Jill and Johnny go on the run. In the final showdown, Johnny manages to fight past his hallucinations and knock the drug dealer off a high ledge, while Jill is reunited with her mother.
Conrad Hurley, a disgruntled electrician fired by the town council, goes into the bank with a shotgun and a revolver, tries to rob it, and takes everyone present (including Sara) hostage. Waiting outside for Sara, Johnny gets a vision of a future massacre and goes in to try to alter the future he perceives. Guided by his visions and scrambling wildly to adapt to the altering futures he keeps seeing in which he dies, Sara dies, Conrad dies, and/or everyone dies each time he changes something, Johnny soon becomes Conrad's unlikely ally. Finally Johnny manages to earn Conrad's trust and manage to talk him into releasing the hostages and giving himself up.
While travelling out in the wilderness Johnny is plagued by visions of a meteor hitting a mountain and people vanishing. To find out which mountain it is he goes out into the wilderness and injures his leg. Taking refuge in a cave, Johnny picks up a fragment and has a vision of an Indian shaman in the past...who can see Johnny as well.
In the past Johnny Smith as a child and Greg Stilson, the son of a Bible salesman, briefly meet and Johnny has a future vision of danger. In the present Johnny has a vision of a restaurant graduation party tragedy and warns his employer, the father of a student. Stilson, now a Senatorial candidate being backed by Rev. Purdy, comes to town after the tragedy and Johnny gets visions of catastrophe in Stilson's wake. Johnny and Sara get together while in flashback we see how Stilson has been a total bastard all of his life, and that Johnny came out of his coma just as Stilson was sworn in as state representative. When they meet at a rally Johnny shakes Stilson's hand and sees him as the source of catastrophe - Washington D.C. devastated by a nuclear holocaust.
The season premiere finds Johnny still shaken by his Armageddon visions and growing increasingly obsessed with Stillson, whom he's secretly investigating. But another mystery draws him back into the public eye: a test of Johnny's powers by an adversary who is as obsessed with him as Johnny is with Stillson.
As Walt begins to wonder what's between Johnny and his wife Sara, a group of teenagers disappear into an abandoned copper mine that was owned by Johnny's grandfather. Walt brings Johnny in to help with the rescue and Smith soon begins to get visions not only of the teens but of the miners who died in an incident in 1949 brought on by his grandfather's actions. The ghost miners seem to be striking back at Johnny and Walt is seriously injured. The teens are rescued but Johnny gets a vision of Walt's funeral as he is taken away in the ambulance. (To be continued)
Johnny is kidnapped by three women who take him to a haunted house - each has their own reasons. Penny is romantically obsessed with Johnny and wants to have his baby, Maddy plans on making a "Blair Witch" style Internet event and sell it to Rev. Purdy, and Anita is seemingly obsessed with the mystery of the family who was killed there. While Dana and Sara reluctantly go through the piles of "fan mail" that Johnny receives, Johnny himself unravels the mystery through his visions, and discovers that the young son Nicholas who survived is responsible...and that Anita is that boy, dressed as a woman. With the women's help the police arrive just in time as Anita/Nicholas goes berserk. Johnny manages to restrain her long enough to save his life and Anita is taken away.
Johnny and Rev. Purdy are traveling on a plane when Johnny gets a vision of the plane crashing and eventually determines that the pilot will put the plane into a dive as the engine explodes. He manages to convince the air marshal he's telling the truth but he sees the same vision of destruction compliments of the co-pilot and realizes both men are trying to save the plane. Using his gift Johnny determines the wings are covered with ice due to an instrument malfunction. When the co-pilot is injured Johnny is forced to take his seat and direct the pilot with his visions to take the proper steps to save the plane.
Isolating himself from a demanding public, Johnny gets visions of himself disappearing after making contact with something belonging to a shut-in, Jeffrey Grissom, brought in by his delivery man. Johnny briefly visits him and Grissom talks about wondering where his old home was, then Johnny returns the next day with information to find out Grissom and any trace of him have completely disappeared. Johnny is determined to follow up when he gets a vision of people removing Grissom and the new family moving in. Johnny gets visions of people going through his own home as well and gets close enough to the people following him to get a vision of Grissom in a new home and visits him there. Grissom reveals he is a retired spy kept buried by the U.S. government due to valuable knowledge in his head. The government show up to threaten Johnny and make him "vanish" as well but Johnny trumps them by calling in Dana and the media and having them all follow him and Grissom to his old home . . . where he disappears, escaping his government keepers.
A wild old high school friend, Jason, comes to see Johnny seeking a vision of the future as he will be dying of a heart condition. Johnny sees him receiving a successful heart transplant and gives him the good news, but later gets a vision of Jason's sister Kate being killed in a driving accident and becoming the donor. Johnny later gets a vision of the other driver's license plate while Jason takes a turn for the worse, then sees a vision of him and Kate arguing which leads to her going out and getting in the accident. Johnny soon realizes even if he saves Kate and gets Jason a heart through Purdy's connections, someone else who would have received the heart will die. Johnny tracks down the drunk driver, Patrick Hanchin, and confronts him, but sees that even if Johnny stops him from killing Kate, he'll hit a school bus. Trapped in a web of fate where anything he does will make things worse, Johnny ends up provoking a fight with Kate and she dies and Jason lives, as he foresaw . . . but Jason learns from the experience.
While following a missing person's case of an eleven year old named Katie Mercer, Johnny's visions of the girl intercede with visions of the night of his crash 9 years ago. He struggles with the help of Rebecca to relive and endure the night of his accident so that he could figure out where Katie is located as the intensity of the physical and emotional pain of his visions start to wear him down. As Johnny sorts out this strange intertwining of the past and present, he is led to the mysterious person that saved his life.
When shock jock Jack Jericho who spews venomous attacks on the airwaves gets a concussion from being beaten by a group of bikers he offended, the most unlikely person comes to his aid. Johnny who is the target of Jack's many radio bashings becomes concerned that the radio host's self-destructive behavior is leading him down a path that would end in his death. In the midst of all this, Johnny attempts to help Walt and Sarah with J.J. who is having problems at school and at home.
Deleted Scenes Series 1