Medium Season 3 DVD Review
Posted by Ryan Byers on 11.12.2007
It's Bones meets Twin Peaks in this psychic-themed crime drama.
Medium focuses on the life of Allison DuBois (Patricia Arquette), who has the bizarre ability to communicate with dead people through her dreams. Surprisingly, the ghosts who have the most to say wind up being murder victims, which has allowed Allison to secure employment with Manuel Devalos (Miguel Sandoval), the district attorney in Phoenix, Arizona. However, we're not just dealing with another television crime drama. The show also regularly delves in to how DuBois' abilities impact her home life, as her relationships with her children and her husband Joe (Jake Weber) are also key pieces of the show. The series received some early critical acclaim, with Arquette winning an Emmy for her work and being nominated for a second. Let's take a look at whether the series' third season can keep up with its impressive reputation.
Episodes
Four Dreams (Parts 1 & 2): Though I imagine that it will be split in to two parts for syndication and other purposes, this hour and a half long episode aired in its entirety on the first broadcast and is included as one giant feature here on the DVD. As is explained by the show's producers on commentary, this was their attempt to expand the scope of the show headed in to season three, giving more of the ancillary characters backstories after heavily focusing on Allison in seasons one and two. They do it fairly well, hitting on the district attorney's health problems, setting up an on-again/off-again romance with the detective and the deputy mayor, and getting a closer look at the development of the middle DuBois daughter's psychic powers. However, Allison fans should not despair, as she is still heavily featured in two story arcs. In the first, her now-deceased high school sweetheart begins haunting her house, causing some marital friction in the home. However, he's not just there for his own benefit. He also helps her in unraveling a series of deadly home invasions occurring in the area, though the crimes ultimately tie in to a conspiracy that nobody would have expected. (In part because, as criminal plots go, it's pretty convoluted.) Perhaps most memorable about this episode is the use of animation, which depicts young Bridgette's psychic dreams.
Be Kind, Rewind: It's Groundhog Day, Medium-style. Allison gets the opportunity to relive the same day several times until she finally gets things right and thwarts a major crime. I'd imagine that episodes like this are rather fun for writers to put together, as you get to put characters you've worked with for quite some time in to situations that you couldn't otherwise. That's definitely the case with this particular show, as we get a chance to see Detective Scanlon die and Ms. DuBois involved in an accident that costs her both of her legs. Though I went in to the episode knowing the gimmick and had a feeling those sorts of things were coming, they were pulled off so well that they didn't lose any of their shock value.
Blood Relations: Recurring villain Doctor Charles Walker makes his appearance for the season here, and this time around we finally get his origin story. Walker, who lived in the 1800's, still roams the earth possessing individuals and forcing them to carve up teenage girls, a nod to the fact that he had to witness his own wife being butchered as part of an antiquated medical procedure. This time around, he's apparently attempting to manipulate an ancestor of his to get at a sixteen year old, with the youngster ultimately winding up dead. However, messages from the girl unveil the truth to Allison, which reveals that Walker is far more intelligent than anybody would have given him credit for. (I suppose two hundred years of experience will do that for you.) This was by far my favorite of the first four episodes, and it was entirely due to the acting of one Mark Sheppard, who played Dr. Walker very well, as a menacing psychopath for whom the audience felt just the right amount of sympathy.
Ghost in the Machine: It's her husband Joe's birthday, so Allison buys him one of those fancy new camcorders that records straight to DVD. Of course, since nothing in this woman's life can proceed normally, it turns out that the camcorder used to belong to an individual who was involved in a murder. More specifically, it belonged to a complete idiot who was involved in a murder and taped far too many discussions about the crime. Allison is able to view the scenes recorded in the past and slowly patches together enough information to put the bad guys away. I can't say that this installment of the show was particularly interesting.
Profiles in Terror: An FBI profiler who Allison idolizes makes his way to Phoenix to investigate a string of grizzly murders. DuBois' visions lead her to believe that the crimes may be the work of a long-dormant serial killer, though she clashes with the profiler, whose standard operating procedure completely eliminates the suspect. Ultimately he comes around to Allison's way of thinking, and we've got ourselves another apprehension . . . this time by rather, um, unconventional means. Elsewhere on the show, Joe worriers that the DuBois' three year old daughter may be autistic when she develops the habit of watching static on the television, though it turns out to be nothing more than an early manifestation of psychic powers. The Allison/profiler plot was a little dull since Ms. DuBois not being believed by the people around her is a bit of a cliche for the show, thought he payoff to the autism storyline was some fine, fine comic relief.
Mother's Little Helper: Here we explore the relationship between Allison and her oldest daughter Ariel, as the two both have dreams about the double murder of a mother and her daughter. Ariel gets dreams from the daughter's perspective, whereas Allison gets them from the mother's. This is one of the better jobs that the series has done in terms of setting up multiple suspects for the crime du jour and creating doubt as to who exactly did the deed, as opposed to leaving one suspect shrouded in mystery until the finish. It was also nice to see the eldest child being fleshed out as a character, particularly because the actress handling the role seems to have some decent acting chops for somebody her age.
The Whole Truth: Here's another bizarre one. Allison's psychic powers have an unusual misfire, as what she thinks is a young boy trapped in a cave is actually a skeleton of a young boy who was trapped in a cave well over a decade ago. Meanwhile, the body of a state assemblyman is found hanging from a beam in his study, apparently the act of an individual who was engaging in a form of autoerotic asphyxiation. Seemingly the two stories are unconnected, though Allison's abilities ultimately redeem themselves by being able to find that connection, as well as implicating the assemblyman's young protege in a web of lies that lead to both the boy and the politician dying. There was more fine writing here in terms of developing the plot, as the season really seems to have been hitting its stride over the course of the last several episodes.
Better Off Dead: Here's an odd twist on the conventional Medium setup as Allison runs across the ghost of a murder victim who doesn't want to assist in the investigation of his death. For reasons that I'm still not fully able to grasp, she pushes the issue, realizing that the specter has something to hide as it relates to his death. This episode seemed to be a little bit more lighthearted than the series' standard fare, which was appreciated after numerous grizzly deaths. Of course, there was still a murder here, so the fact that I can refer to the show as lighthearted probably says something about how twisted I am.
Very Merry Maggie: Okay, forget lighthearted. For some reason, stories involving dolls with murderous intent are always particularly creepy, and that's exactly what we have here. An abused child hears voices coming out of the doll that he plays with, and those voices convince him that it's a good idea to knock off his father, who has a habit of disciplining the kid by soaking him in ice water baths. Through some odd twist of fate, Allison can hear the doll speaking as well, and that ability allows her to not only connect this child to his father's murder but also allows her get a glimpse in to acts committed by prior owners of the toy.
Apocalypse, Push: Kenneth Push, a captain with the Texas Rangers, returns to the series, and he appears to have developed psychic powers similar to Allison's. Of course, this leads to the captain seeking out Ms. DuBois for a bit of a primer on how to deal with his newfound abilities. As this goes on, Push slowly discovers pieces of a nefarious plot to blow up a hospital, though, at the end of the day, his "premonitions" wind up being caused by something completely unrelated to the paranormal. Elsewhere, Joe deals with one of the consequences of having psychic children, as Bridgette manages to look in to his past and condemn him for experimenting with drugs in college. The Push character is entertaining in small doses, and his inclusion here helped to break up the monotony that could have developed if the viewers had to deal with twenty-one episodes focusing on the same two or three major characters.
The One Behind the Wheel: Here's another wacky side effect of being able to communicate with the dead: Apparently they're capable of periodically taking over your body. At least that's what happens to Allison in this particular episode, as a dead woman takes up residence in her head and is woefully unaware of the fact that she's passed on. This leads to our heroine being picked up for breaking and entering as she attempts to go back to "her" house, and from there she's committed. The highlight of the episode, though, is Jake Weber's performance as Joe, a man whose wife has mentally (but not physically) vanished, attempting to hide this fact from his children while simultaneously attempting to regain the woman that he loves. He's unable to do that, but, fortunately for him, Allison's visions seem to be tied more to her body than to her mind, allowing the woman inhabiting her to see her own death and realize she's somewhere that she does not belong.
Second Opinion: We don't have any murders this time around, but we do have some problems on the homefront, as Allison begins to have dreams about her youngest daughter, Marie, dying of leukemia in her teenage years. She has the reaction that many parents would have in the same situation, namely completely freaking out. She suddenly has every medical test possible run on her child, and she attempts to convince Joe to move the family in to a new house when a second dream leads her to believe that there was a connection between their home and the kid's future illness. The dream came complete with a new residence for the DuBois clan, though, in a twist that anybody with half a brain sees coming a mile away, the new home winds up being the cause of the disease as opposed to the solution. Fortunately Allison catches on to this before the move takes place, and she uses the information to bring down the developers, who are aware that they are plugging the homes in to an unsafe water supply. There's also a subplot here with Scanlon investigating the death of a medical student who he was sponsoring through substance abuse recovery, and the only thing that it did was convince me just how one-dimensional of a character the detective is.
We Had a Dream: Ladies and gentlemen, it's time for a guest appearance from the EVIL MEDIUM~! Yes, we're talking about Sonny Troyer, a character from seasons past who has dreams similar to Allison's but uses them to hunt down and murder women who are in danger. He and Ms. DuBois wind up having the same series of dreams, leading Troyer to create an ingenious series of plots to make sure that the two are sleeping and thus dreaming at different times. However, when he tires of that routine, he goes after Allison in her own home, though Scanlon comes out of nowhere to save the day. Maybe I'm just too heavily pro-villain, but Troyer, like Walker, was a pretty entertaining little character, and he made the episode quite entertaining. (Though it was more due to the plot and less due to the actor, the opposite of the case with Walker.) The finish with Scanlon seemed a little too much like dues ex machina given that he had barely been featured elsewhere in the episode, though at least the plot that he hatched was sound in its reasoning.
The Boy Next Door: Here's an interesting twist, as the episode focuses on a teenage Allison having premonitions about her present day life. It's a nice way to examine the character's past while simultaneously advancing a plot in modern times, and of course the two tie together. The title references a high school neighbor of Allison's, who coincidentally returns to her current life. Teenage Allison dreams that the boy who lives next to her will become a murderous pedophile, which results in her hesitating when he makes an attempt on his own life. Watching this episode was almost like watching something out of an entirely different series, as the focus was on an entirely new cast of actors. Those actors were actually the highlight, as the youngsters that they rounded up were all quite good, and you can't go wrong with Peri Gilipin (of Frasier fame) as Allison's overworked single mother.
Whatever Possessed You: We get a few homages to The Exorcist as this episode's murder involves a woman who, from her appearances in Allison's dreams, appears to be possessed by Satan. Of course, that's not actually the case. The show dabbles in the supernatural, but it doesn't get that supernatural. The demon girl winds up killing a priest, who just happened to be a childhood friend of District Attorney Devalos, resulting in his meatiest role of the season. In this week's sub-plot, we explore Joe's professional life a little bit more, as he struggles to be placed at the helm of a new project at his engineering firm but is plagued by the possibility that his family's psychic powers may compromise confidential information. The slice of life scenes with Joe actually wound up being far more entertaining than the murder mystery, in large part due to the fact that the unfolding to the criminal plot got fairly predictable about halfway through.
Joe Day Afternoon: Here's our most Joe-centric episode, which also puts in to motion a story arc that will continue throughout the rest of the season. In a meeting at work, a recently fired coworker takes Joe and three of his coworkers hostage in a misguided effort to regain his employment. The tension in that particular situation played very well, which was a credit to all of the actors involved. Of course, we also got to see Allison and Ariel dealing with the situation, both having visions about the situation. This was perhaps my favorite episode of the entire set, most likely because I find the Joe character much more sympathetic and likeable than his wife. Even sweeter was the fact that this incident was not completely forgotten about as would happen on many television shows. Instead, it continues to play out over the next several episodes and will probably even be a part of season four.
1-900-LUCKY: This more lighthearted episode is a nice follow-up to the somber "Joe Day Afternoon." Allison's brother Michael (accompanied by Deep Purple's "Smoke on the Water") makes a guest appearance. He has psychic powers of his own and is contacted by a woman in Phoenix who wants help solving the murder of her husband. Michael initially has no intention of actually figuring out the mystery, though he does want to bleed the rich old broad for as much money as he can. However, plans change when he is contacted by the husband's ghost, who initially appears to point him in the direction of the killer. Unfortunately, we quickly learn that individuals who were jerks in life can be jerks in death, as our ghost is actually attempting to deflect blame from the actual killer. This leaves Michael with a moral dilemma to solve, particularly given the fact that the spirit has several thousand dollars waiting for him in a secret bank account.
No One to Watch Over Me: This episode seemed like it was nothing more than filler. There's a vaguely interesting murder involving a girl who is chilled to death in a freezer. In addition to that Allison has to deal with an increasingly moody and distant husband, as Joe is feeling the after effects of the hostage situation. That portion of the episode helped to set up some of Joe's actions heading in to the final story arc, though the rest of the forty-two minutes was forgettable.
Head Games/Heads Will Role/Everything Comes to a Head: These are three different episodes, though it's easier to discuss them together due to the fact that they cover two continuous plots. The marital problems between Allison and Joe continue for a bit, though things are beginning to heal by the time that the season wraps up. Additionally, Joe is contacted by an attorney who wants to put together a civil suit against the engineer's employers. In Allison's world, the D.A.'s office is dealing with a serial killer dubbed the "Recapitator" who kills a woman, beheads her, kills a second woman, beheads her, and then leaves the head of the first woman with the body of the second. Yes, the special effects department makes it look just as gruesome as it sounds. The killings receive national media attention, as does Allison's accidental leak of her position within the district attorney's office. That results in the jobs of Allison, Devalos, and Scanlon all being put in jeopardy heading in to season four. These episodes definitely allowed season three to head out on a high note, with the levels of excitement and drama building excellently throughout, with every major character being affected in some way and having an opportunity to grow. Prior to watching this story arc, I would've been content if I never saw another episode of Medium again, though now I'm very tempted to catch the beginning of season four to see how things play out.
Special Features
Audio Commentary: Two episodes receive the commentary treatment, the first being "Four Dreams" and the second being "Whatever Possessed You." "Four Dreams" includes comments from creators, writers, and producers of the show, and the track does a good job of not just discussing the episode but also getting across their vision for the entire season. "Possessed" receives commentary from Miguel Sandoval, who, in addition to having a major acting role in the episode, was making his directorial debut. It was interesting to hear insights from a first-time director after listening to numerous commentaries by individuals who have years of experience.
Deleted Scenes: Deleted scenes are featured for several episodes, although there's nothing presented that's of any substance. A couple were just laughable, as they were nothing more than thirty seconds of dialogue.
The Story of Medium, Season 3: This is a twenty-five minute featurette focusing on the major plot twists and character development that took place during the season. A lot of it was duplicative of the comments previously made during the two commentary tracks, but there was also a handful decent insights from the actors themselves.
The Making of Medium, Season 3: Here's another twenty-five minutes of footage, although this time around we're talking to the folks who worked on the special effects in specific episodes of Medium. While watching the series, I didn't think of it as a particularly effects-heavy show, which I suppose makes the behind the scenes work of these folks all the more impressive. Highlights here were a breakdown of the ingenious rig used to set up the car crash in "Be Kind, Rewind" and the insane detail that went in to creating the dollhouse seen for just a few minutes at the beginning of "Very Merry Maggie".
Directing with David Arquette: Star Patricia Arquette's brother David popped in to direct "1-900-LUCKY," and this is a brief conversation with him and others about the experience. As a long-time wrestling fan, I'm conditioned to have a visceral reaction of hatred to anything involving David Arquette, but here he came off as a sweet, humble man.
Acting is My "Racquet": Ping pong and tennis are both apparently very popular backstage at Medium, and here we get some footage of games between the cast. It doesn't sound very exciting on paper, but it was interesting to see these actors as real people for once, not as their characters and not as individuals doing promotional interviews.
Drawing on Dreams: This is a five minute featurette focusing on the animation used in "Four Dreams," which was produced by Van Partible, the creator of Johnny Bravo. There's not much here that you haven't seen in hundreds of other behind the scenes looks at animation, though there are a couple of interesting bits about making sure that the animated premonitions paralleled the crimes that were ultimately shot in live action.
Gag Reel: Standard bloopers here, with the highlight being Patricia Arquette improvising for a solid minute as she attempts to come up with different ways to say that an individual is dead.
The 411: As with most shows on television, Medium has its positives and negatives. The biggest positive is the acting, which is always top notch. It's clear that the entire cast takes a good deal of pride in their work, and all of them (even the youngest members of the troupe) are exceptionally well-cast and capable of making their roles believable. The biggest negative of the show is that the writing sometimes doesn't keep up with the actors' talents. This is reflected in a format used in every other episode which becomes so cliched that even Medium itself makes fun of it in an episode late in the season. ("I know how your day went: You had a dream, somebody didn't believe you, but it turned out alright in the end.") However, that's not to say that the writing is always bad. The crew is capable of putting together some intriguing murder mysteries and compelling personalities, but the sheer volume of episodes seemingly prevents their work from being as good as it could be.
