Main cast: Fred Ward (Luthor Redmond), Denise Galik (Arielle), Scott McGinnis (Cal), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Kees Van Oostrum

While Scott McGinnis is clearly cast to be the hot dude here, Fred Ward gets my vote as the hottest daddy of them all. Even better, he plays a deranged sculptor, Luthor Redmond, and hot and sexy always make the world go round.

Arielle should have known to trust her instincts and not to accept a lift from Luthor, as the man acts like a complete creep while trying to pick her up, but oops. She is forced to live with him subsequently.

Luthor also ropes in a drifter, Cal, that is trying to steal his car, by offering to pay the drifter to model for his next work.

Here’s the thing: he wants to recreate what seems to be a murder-suicide scene involving two teenagers, and he wants Arielle and Cal to be the models for his work.

Deducing that it may not be a good idea to get too involved in a project about death, by a deranged fellow to boot, Arielle soon tries to get Cal to escape Luthor by working together. Ah, is Luthor on to them, will one of them betray the other, or will they both succeed in running away into the sunset?

Dead Heat has some solid build-up, and there is a mounting sense of suspense and tension as Luthor brings on the charm as well as the crazy like any well-versed psychopath would. Watching him is the most entertaining part of the whole experience.

The rest of the cast members are rather limited, with Scott McGinnis playing an idiot and Denise Galik being on the stiff and robotic side. The latter takes off her top, though, so maybe some folks will be happy to overlook the rest of her performance because if that.

However, the denouement has me scratching my head, though. What is the episode trying to say? Intentional or not, the take home message seems to be never trust a person that appears deranged. While I can’t argue with that, this denouement feels a lot like a gotcha for the sake of gotcha-ing everyone, and it’s not the best payoff I’d have liked to get after watching the whole episode up to that point.

No matter, Fred Ward is hot, and he makes this episode a pretty pleasant viewing experience because of that. Oh, and his performance too, that ain’t bad either.