It's January again, a new year. It's that time of year when the network start to put their midseason replacement series. One of those new arrivals is the supernatural drama Medium starring Patricia Arquette.
I've been looking forward to this for awhile now. This season there has been a dearth of good supernatural television, and hopefully this will fit the bill. Well, this past Monday came and went, I taped the show, but it was only today that I finally got the opportunity to sit down and watch it. My father watched it when it was first on, and his reaction was one in the middle of the road, saying that it was OK, maybe a bit dull, and Arquette was rather unemotional. But the potential was there. Now it is my turn to take a stab at it.
The first episode has Alison (Arquette) struggling with her psychic abilities, trying to ignore them and be normal. Unfortunately the visions will not let her be, so she begins to accept them and make an effort to use them to help people. This episode has her helping the Texas Rangers who are attempting to put away a teen that is accused of murdering a young boy.
The pilot does a good job of setting up the series. Alison is portrayed as a conflicted woman who does not know how to balance the various sides of her life, wife, mother, law firm intern, psychic. Arquette does a pretty good job, playing Alison with a detached emotional state, someone who has been struggling with the visiting dead for such a long time, that she is unable to open up. The only time that she is able to express herself is when she is talking with the dead or experiencing a vision. By the end of the show she has resolved herself to using her ability, by doing this, it appears that she will finally find some joy in life.
The show has some promise of good television. I look forward to seeing how it develops. One thing that it will need to work on, though, is the supporting cast, they seemed a little bland. Her husband is played by Jake Weber, he was rather flat, hopefully he will have some life breathed into him later on. The one person I did like, although he had little screen time, was Miguel Sandoval as Arquette's boss.
Overall, I liked the show, and hope it grows into something special. This initial offering was a touch to the slow side, but did an adequate job of setting up the future.
On a side note, I couldn't help but see this series as a potential sequel, in a strange way, to A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors. In that movie she played a psychic who battled the evil of Freddy Krueger. This could be the same character played later on in life, still scarred by that encounter. That could explain her aloofness, and her perpetual state of non-emotion. An incident like that would definitely put a damper on someone's life, also explaining her late start into trying to become a lawyer.
Anyway, we will have to wait and see how this one is received and the development that it goes through.
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