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 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.

With the help of his new friend Bruce, Johnny attempts to stop the Bangor Strangler from claiming another victim.

Johnny becomes involved in helping an elderly patient find a long-lost love.

Johnny is summoned to jury duty on a murder trial. Johnny starts to get visions which lead him to believe the accused is innocent. He is the only not-guilty vote

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.

Johnny ends up in a fantasy world (or vision?) when he wakes up one day to find himself married to Sarah and the father of her two children.

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.

Johnny and Bruce drive into the small town of Hobb's Landing where Johnny gets a vision of himself being burned at the stake. He goes to the police and has a vision of the murder of a local girl. The police hold him on charges of witchcraft and he is sent to trial.

A jealous ex-lover stalks Dana as her affair with Johnny heats 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.