"Dead Stop" is yet another social issue story--one with no crime per se to investigate and lots of preachy stuff from Quincy to bore the audience. What I mean by this is that the show was at its best when Quincy was solving murders and here there is no ***--making it a rather weak episode.
The show begins with a couple idiot truckers doing some illegal dumping. What they don't realize is that the substances they are just dumping in the wilderness are VERY, VERY toxic--so toxic that one of the dumpers dies en route to their next run. Quincy is shocked to find traces of some VERY dangerous chemicals--chemicals that will *** a lot of folks when rain interacts with this stuff. So, Quincy and the man's widow (who, by the way, seems to have gotten over her husband's death VERY quickly) go on a statewide search in her 18 wheeler--and "Quincy" apparently has gotten into the very brief trucker craze of the early 80s (with films like "Convoy" and TV shows like "BJ and the Bear" filling the airwaves for some inexplicable reason). During most of the show, Dr. Quincy preaches and rants about illegal dumping...and my brain pretty much shut off during these interludes. The bottom line is that like many of the social issue shows on "Quincy", entertaining the audience seemed, at best, secondary. As a result, I really didn't care very much for this one and found it a bit dull.
