As an absolute skeptic about the supernatural, I would never have guessed that I would become a fan of Medium, an NBC drama about a psychic who helps solve crimes. But a fan I have become.
First of all, I like the characters and their relationships. Patricia Arquette, who plays Alison, the psychic, is one of the few women on TV who look real. Her teeth are a little crooked, her face is often too shiny and a bit reddish and while I think she has a great body, she is a few pounds heavier than your typical TV waif. She looks like a mom.
I love Alison’s husband, Joe. He’s is an engineer, a pragmatic guy but one who has had to face the reality of her abilities, and who isn’t quite sure what to think about it. He is both supportive and skeptical, grounded and unnerven. He is also a genuinely nice guy, but one who is still human. The relationship between Alison and Joe seems very real, their fights are fights that you can imagine having yourself. On one episode, Joe harps on Alison for spending too much time on her “work”, and leaving him to deal with their 3 children – only to hear her reply how she took care of the kids for years while he pursued his career. On another, he complains about his spending their money to go pursue a case in LA, she still goes and he’s OK with it. The three little girls (or rather, the older two, you rarely see the baby) are also very “real”, I can recognize my little girls on them all the time. In yesterday’s episode the older girl tells the younger that they’re considering exchanging her for a dog. She younger one asks her dad about it, who is too sleepy to understand what she’s talking about, so she says she’ll go ask mommy, mommy will know. Mommy is not home, and she comes to tell daddy this amazing fact, and when he explains that she’s at work, she asks with her worried face how she’s going to get ready for school without mommy. I know that this whole episode doesn’t sound very exiting, but it grounds the show on the realities of family life with which I, and I’m sure many others, can identify. My one complain is that the youngest baby is completely ignored. We pretty much only see her when the mom drops her off at daycare, but beyond that she’s a complete non-entity. As a mother of two young children, that seems very unrealistic to me. But who knows, maybe by the time you have 3, the last one falls off your radar.
The show itself is well done, her “visions” and her interpretation of them (often not literal) are always interesting, as is her ability to read or not read people. In the show, you do believe in her gifts, they are presented as reality, but if I can accept Buffy fighting vampires and demons, I can accept Alison’s psychic gifts. It’s a show after all. The show tries to go beyond formula on its storylines, refreshingly I can’t usually predict what the plot will be or who the guilty party is.
In all, it’s one of my favorite shows, though I see we’ll have to deal with reruns for the next couple of weeks.