Axiom’s Edge Science Fiction and Fantasy

By Sam Christopher

Rating (after four episodes): 5 out of 5 Stars (Highest Rating)

I began watching this season of Medium with trepidation. I had watched the show from the beginning, held on for a couple seasons, and just kind of drifted off. It’s only on for half a season every year and I don’t watch very much television anyway so it was easy to let it go. But something still nagged at me whenever I saw that it was on. There something about it that tugged at me, pulled me to it. Whenever I saw the seasons on sale on DVD there was something about them that called to me. There’s nothing really groundbreaking about the show, nothing “edgy”. It’s just a show about a suburban family with a good father who works hard for the money to support his wife and three daughters, a mother who works for the District Attorney’s Office, and three beautiful children who argue and laugh and fight and cry like all children do. The fact that the mother has psychic abilities sometimes seems almost secondary. And that’s the key to the show.

Lost in all the glitz and press of cool characters like Buffy and Angel—just to use a couple of names—is the fact that the true essence of their shows, the people that give the heroes their moral center, is the “normal” characters (Xander and Gunn, respectively, in the above case). Good sf (speculative fiction) is never really about the “Oh my God! Lookit the cool ray gun!” or “Lookit that cool dragon that scantily-clad, large-breasted woman is riding!” No—good sf is always about the way a paranormal or futuristic situation impacts normal people. It’s about the way regular folk react to inexplicable or just irregular situations. Think about it: The first half-dozen or so episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation were awful but then the show got better. Why? Were the situations suddenly that much better later on? No, the characters were made to be more human, more like us. Rod Serling was a master at taking everyday situations and giving them a little twist, then showing the reactions of everyday people. It’s this sensibility that made the original Twilight Zone one of the hallmarks of all sf on tv.

But back to the show at hand. Medium has this self-same sensibility. Yes, Allison Dubois (played by the marvelous Patricia Arquette) has psychic abilities far beyond those of a mortal woman. And, yes, her two oldest daughters, Ariel and Bridgette (Sofia Vassileiva and Maria Lark, respectively), are also exhibiting the same powers; not sure yet about the youngest, Marie (Miranda Carabello). And, yes, these abilities help them solve crimes, find lost keys, and heal disease. But what they do mostly is impact the lives of these girls and the husband/father on the show, normal everyday Joe Dubois (Jake Weber). Poor Joe is forever being awakened by Allison in the middle of the night because she had a dream of someone being murdered, or having to deal with Bridgette’s having drawn a naked picture of one of her teachers for reasons unknown, or Ariel reading his mind while he’s trying to teach her how to drive. Joe is the heart of this show, the one indispensable character. He is all of us, staring into the face of the unknown and trying to make it fit into a logical worldview.

Allison and the girls are also realistic characters despite their apparent “talents”. Allison has visions that usually come to her in dreams, and are virtually always filtered through her own subconscious. She frequently sees murders and other crimes in the first person, either as victim or killer, then has to backtrack and piece together what really happened from clues she saw in her dream. And sometimes it turns out that she really did personally have something to do with the crime, that she was possessed or lead by a spirit. Watching her struggle with these dilemmas in the realistic way she does is very endearing to the character. The girls are secondary characters and their problems are usually shown as subplot. Ariel’s “life partner” in Wellness class is a stoner so every time she takes custody of their “baby” doll she suddenly acts wasted (at least she’ll never fail a urinalysis); Bridgette draws picture after picture of her art teacher in the nude, crying as she does so because she’s been told not to but can’t stop herself, only to find that the strange mole she keeps drawing on his chest is skin cancer. These stories add flavor to the show and the realistic way in which they are portrayed adds substance.

DA Manuel Devalos (Miguel Sandoval) and Police Detective Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt) were more important characters on the show in seasons past than they seem to be for this season thus far. At one time they were more of the “regular Joe” characters but now seem to have been scaled back in their involvement—possibly due to Joe’s more prominent role. At times this season, these two seem mere ciphers, almost mechanical aspects of the show, devices to get us where the writers want us to go. This may change later on. From what I’ve seen and read Devalos was a major player last season so we may just be being given a break form the character for a little bit.

As stated above, I think that Medium is a hallmark of all that is right with tv sf at the moment. The plots are tight and generally well thought out and the characters are spot-on and eccentric enough—especially the amazing Bridgette—to always keep things fresh and unpredictable. Just like life itself. I look forward to seeing what happens next each week while at the same time worrying about the friends I feel I have on the show and their children. Just like life itself.

Buy Previous Seasons of Medium on DVD at the Axiom’s Edge Wedstore: