Last night's episode of Medium, written by Bernadette McNamara and directed by Ronald L. Schwary, was a welcome improvement over the last segment, and as a result an enjoyable hour. Of course, I was still reeling from the conclusion of 24 on Fox, which was highly disturbing and saw the release of nerve gas in CTU and the death of a beloved character. But eventually I got over it, my heart rate settled, and I focused on the show before me. Probably took me a good fifteen minutes...
"Allison Wonderland" is an interesting installment of this Patricia Arquette series on NBC, one involving a delusional mathematician who is killed when tossed off the roof of a hotel in Los Angeles. Well - of course - everybody's favorite psychic, Allison DuBois is on the case, but as is typical for Medium, the show comes at this murder mystery totally sideways; from an unexpected angle. To wit, the mathematician is a bit of crackpot, on meds for paranoia, and he envisions himself as a man of movie-star looks. Hence, in her psychic phantasms, Allison envisions the man as he sees himself: as David Carradine. Yep, David Carradine is the guest star in "Allison Wonderland." That alone elevates this installment above the norm.
Cracking this mystery involves learning more about Carradine's work on a "pass code" device and his belief that he is defending the nation from terrorists by cracking a difficult algorithm. Turns out, that's not quite the case. Instead, he's a patsy for a thief who knows just how to manipulate his madness.
Meanwhile, on the home front, little Bridget is obsessed with a book series about a character named Danielle, who "stars" in three books. She wants more Danielle adventures, but the author died a year ago and there are no more books to enjoy. Strangely, Danielle begins typing away on Daddy's computer, writing a totally new Danielle adventure, replete with grown-up vocabulary (like the word 'wan.') So, is she receiving communications from the dead writer, or just experiencing the spark of creativity? That's the conflict for Joe this week...
My big thought about this week's episode is that Medium - when you take out all the psychic bells and whistles - is really a program about a very simple, relatable idea. To wit, it's a show about concerned parents accepting the fact that their child isn't perfect; that he or she may have some heritage (some genetic baggage...) that troubles them. In real life, this "baggage" might be a a physical handicap, even a precocious intelligence, but Medium uses the rubric of psychic powers to discuss this side of family life. I think that's incredibly cool, because the best genre TV programming is always that show which is artistically constructed; that features an overarching metaphor that is applied and grants it a deeper meaning.
For Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was the adolescence + high school = horror & monsters equation. For The X-Files, it was that notion of seeing the world through the competing lenses of skepticism and belief. On Millennium, the symbol of the yellow house as sanctuary - then paradise lost - informed many episodes. So it's terrific that Medium is also attempting to work on this higher level too. Because it isn't easy by any means. The trick in navigating this path is that the show in question must create two tracks. First, it must also be what it appears to be about (a psychic woman and her job as a detective) and at the same time it can be interpreted in more general, didactic terms (a show about family). From what I've seen, Medium really succeeds at this balancing act.
"Allison Wonderland" is an interesting installment of this Patricia Arquette series on NBC, one involving a delusional mathematician who is killed when tossed off the roof of a hotel in Los Angeles. Well - of course - everybody's favorite psychic, Allison DuBois is on the case, but as is typical for Medium, the show comes at this murder mystery totally sideways; from an unexpected angle. To wit, the mathematician is a bit of crackpot, on meds for paranoia, and he envisions himself as a man of movie-star looks. Hence, in her psychic phantasms, Allison envisions the man as he sees himself: as David Carradine. Yep, David Carradine is the guest star in "Allison Wonderland." That alone elevates this installment above the norm.
Cracking this mystery involves learning more about Carradine's work on a "pass code" device and his belief that he is defending the nation from terrorists by cracking a difficult algorithm. Turns out, that's not quite the case. Instead, he's a patsy for a thief who knows just how to manipulate his madness.
Meanwhile, on the home front, little Bridget is obsessed with a book series about a character named Danielle, who "stars" in three books. She wants more Danielle adventures, but the author died a year ago and there are no more books to enjoy. Strangely, Danielle begins typing away on Daddy's computer, writing a totally new Danielle adventure, replete with grown-up vocabulary (like the word 'wan.') So, is she receiving communications from the dead writer, or just experiencing the spark of creativity? That's the conflict for Joe this week...
My big thought about this week's episode is that Medium - when you take out all the psychic bells and whistles - is really a program about a very simple, relatable idea. To wit, it's a show about concerned parents accepting the fact that their child isn't perfect; that he or she may have some heritage (some genetic baggage...) that troubles them. In real life, this "baggage" might be a a physical handicap, even a precocious intelligence, but Medium uses the rubric of psychic powers to discuss this side of family life. I think that's incredibly cool, because the best genre TV programming is always that show which is artistically constructed; that features an overarching metaphor that is applied and grants it a deeper meaning.
For Buffy the Vampire Slayer, it was the adolescence + high school = horror & monsters equation. For The X-Files, it was that notion of seeing the world through the competing lenses of skepticism and belief. On Millennium, the symbol of the yellow house as sanctuary - then paradise lost - informed many episodes. So it's terrific that Medium is also attempting to work on this higher level too. Because it isn't easy by any means. The trick in navigating this path is that the show in question must create two tracks. First, it must also be what it appears to be about (a psychic woman and her job as a detective) and at the same time it can be interpreted in more general, didactic terms (a show about family). From what I've seen, Medium really succeeds at this balancing act.
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