Dead at 21

Episode 1

Pilot

Wed, Jun 15, 1994

It's Ed's 20th birthday and it starts with a disturbing nightmare. When Ed finally wakes up and goes to the kitchen to grab some breakfast, he teases his brother Hal that he couldn't sleep from his and his female companion's late night action. Hal has no idea what Ed's talking about and teases him for acing the school test again. Their sister Katie shows up and denies any knowledge of anyone having sex in the house last night. That's when their mom shows up to introduce them to their new potential stepfather, a seemingly nice guy called Ken, who stayed up with their mom last night. Meanwhile, ominous agent Winston is relentlessly pursuing another twenty-year-old, Dan Bird, through an empty alleyway and then a skate park. Winston fails to catch and kill Dan, who gets to a car and drives away. Winston carjacks a woman and goes after him. In the evening, Ed's holding a birthday party at a grunge nightclub. He starts having disturbing hallucinations and decides to go home early. At home, he finds Maria, a girl from the party who somehow broke in, went through his stuff and is now sitting on his bed reading his diary. They banter and flirt a bit, but just as they start to get to know each other, paranoid Dan breaks into Ed's room through a glass door and tries to kill him. Ed calms him down and Dan explains that Ed needs to find out what happened to him as a child. He gives Ed his bag. That's when agent Winston arrives and tries to convince Ed that Dan is insane. Maria tries to leave but Winston won't let her. That's when Ed pushes Wilson and runs away with Maria on his motorcycle while Dan holds Winston off. Winston kills Dan. Ed finds a VHS tape in Dan's bag and breaks into an electronics store to play it. It's a video message from Dan, who explains that as babies they were both subjects of a secret government experiment. Doctor Victor Eisenberg has implanted a microchip in their young brains to try to expand their brain capacity and turn them into geniuses, who could be useful to the government. However, it turned out that while their brains indeed function faster and make the subjects smarter through time, by the age of 20 the microchips start to break down and by the age of 21 the microchips will kill their hosts. The government is trying to cover up this disastrous experiment. The only hope Ed has to live past 21 is to find other test subjects, who might help him locate Doctor Eisenberg who went into hiding. Maria decides to help Ed with his quest. Agent Winston arrives at the store and tries to kill Ed. Meanwhile, the police has found Dan dead and suspects Ed for the shooting. The editing in the episode is heavily influenced by MTV videos of the era. The episode also features grunge and rock soundtrack consisting of numerous songs that were highly popular at the time.