Eli Stone: Praying for Time

In "Praying for Time," Eli's day started with a vision of a terrible earthquake. This had the potential to be the most interesting vision so far in the series. After all, Eli does reside in San Francisco, a city known for its temblors, and an earthquake is a far more realistic threat than, say, a fire-breathing dragon. Unfortunately, the episode did little with the realism of the hallucination, instead inserting a silly song and dance with the crumbling walls. Eventually, with the help of some needle time with Dr. Chen, Eli was able to revisit his initial vision and discovered that Silver Terrace, a run-down section of San Francisco, was going to be completely destroyed by an earthquake registering 6.5 on the Richter scale.

At the same time, Eli was representing a wealthy real estate developer who had legally gained the rights to evict the residents of Silver Terrace and erect skyscraper condominiums and shopping areas. The Silver Terrace residents, however, were taking the real estate developer to court in an attempt to keep their homes. Here's where things got ridiculous. Eli interpreted his vision as a sign from God to win his case as quickly as possible so the Silver Terrace residents would be removed from their homes and be elsewhere when the earthquake hit. He came to this conclusion with no knowledge of when said earthquake was actually going to take place. This bothered me for the remainder of the episode because all I could think about was the fact that more people would be in danger if the earthquake hit after the high-rises were built and occupied and the streets of Silver Terrace were filled with shoppers. But this was never acknowledged as a possibility.

Continuing down a path of the convenient coincidences this show is famous for, turns out Eli's former assistant Patti grew up in Silver Terrace. This was supposed to give the situation some added drama, but since Patti hadn't even visited Silver Terrace in quite some time, it only stuck out as a silly attempt at drama.

Meanwhile, in what seemed like an entirely separate television series, the case of baseball player Jason Turk came to an end. The case had finally reached the courtroom, and after several scenes of examinations and cross examinations, Turk's wife lied about being coached into revealing confidential information which led to a mistrial assigned with double jeopardy. It was all generic courtroom stuff that's been done to death (and better) in the hundred or so lawyer shows that came before it.

By episode's end, convinced he needed to kick these poor people out of their homes to save their lives, Eli made an unethical arrangement with his client and the judge's son. If not for the mish-mash of ideas that came before it -- including the poorly conceived plotline with Maggie -- this was an interesting twist. After committing his breach of ethics, and after no immediate earthquake occurred to convince him he did the right thing, Eli became fed up with his visions and declared he would find a surgeon who could remove his inoperable aneurysm. I'll see how that goes.