About 10 years ago there was ...

Question: About 10 years ago there was a show on MTV called Dead at 21. Can you enlighten me about the plot of the program and what each main character's stake was in the grander scheme?

Answer: No problem, except for the part about the "grander scheme," since I can't necessarily bless any scheme in the show with that description.

Nevertheless, in the show, which ran for 13 episodes beginning in 1994, notably bright 20-year-old Ed Bellamy (Jack Noseworthy) discovered the disturbing reason for his intelligence and the wacky dreams he'd been having: government tomfoolery. It seems that those meddling feds in a bid to increase child intelligence put chips in the heads of Ed and his fellow guinea pigs shortly after they were born. Of course, like so many shady government experiments, this one was a dud and all "neurocybernauts" (couldn't they settle on one cool prefix?) died when they reached the legal drinking age due to complications arising from, well... their brains exploding.

Ed's only shot at keeping his wits about him lay in finding the guy who invented the chip. The problem was that evil government agent Winston (Whip Hubley) couldn't wait for Ed's birth/deathday he wanted the kid among the dearly departed tout de suite, before Ed could blab about the highly secret program. Ed's pal Maria (Lisa Dean Ryan) came along for the ride, providing eye-candy to all the guys in the audience, and found herself embroiled in Ed's mess after Winston framed them both for murder to prevent them from going to the authorities.

See what just trying to help gets you?