Meet Alison Dubois (Patricia Arquette, True Romance, Ed Wood), Phoenix law student, wife, mother and psychic.
A real Alison exists, as Medium’s opening titles insist, but she doesn’t begin as a crusader for justice, or if she does, it’s in a firmly earthbound manner, as a legal intern and general dogsbody for the District Attorney (Miguel Sandoval). The opening titles also undo some of the quiet, unflashy tone of the pilot, and the emphasis on Alison’s normality, with their sub X-Files music and kaleidoscopic primary colours that swirl into Rorschach ink blots, a crude effort to marry scientific study and new-agey stuff on auras and such, which does Medium no favours.
Alcohol dulls the voices of the dead but won’t quieten them; in a playful sequence, Alison sees the ghost of her father in law, who wonders what her husband sees in her. He’s an engineer and a rationalist, believes that Alison’s dreams are a reaction to stress, and as an experiment of sorts, he sends transcripts of Alison’s dreams to local law enforcement.
The show really begins when it turns out the dreams resemble actual crimes, in a way that piques the interest, and suspicion of investigators like the laconic Captain Push (an understated Arliss Howard), who becomes an ally. It’s a nifty set up, which establishes Alison and the central premise immediately.
Whether Alison is real, whether she really does possess psychic powers is irrelevant. Medium works because it maintains just the right amount of intrigue and scepticism, by making her visions oblique and imprecise. There needs to be a certain amount of interpretation, which opens Alison and her methods up to scrutiny.
Also engaging is the contrast between the warm, chaotic domesticity of home life with her daughters, and the grim details of her work – I took an instant shine to Joe (Jake Weber), Alison’s dry, long-suffering husband, and Medium’s voice of calm common sense. He accepts her, even if he doesn’t quite accept her abilities. Here’s hoping that by keeping him supportive and in the background, he doesn’t remain a saintly spouse, as Weber manages to invest him with a personality, but needs a chance to flex some dramatic muscle.
Medium isn’t above the odd daft or unrealistically neat storyline, and a formula emerges very quickly. Allison senses something related to a crime, her husband responds with reassurance or a quip, she must contend with the disbelief and outright hostility of law enforcement, it comes good in the end and the bad guys are caught.
But Arquette makes Alison believable and sympathetic, her relationships feel real. She’s not a maverick, a genius, an expert or even a cop. She’s often as baffled by her visions as everyone else, and experiences self doubt¸ unlike unrepentant fraudster Patrick Jane of The Mentalist, a onetime psychic who also consults for the law. Also unlike any TV psychics you could name, who trade on claiming certainty. Alison’s leap into the belief her dreams are a force for good feels too pat, even a touch narcissistic, but Medium is not quite as fantastic, nor as glossy as the likes of Supernatural and Ghost Whisperer, Alison speaks, looks and dresses like someone you might know. Arquette’s imperfect prettiness and scream-queen wide eyes mean she can register the disgust, shock and fear of the layman in doing what she does.
The source of Alison’s ability is never satisfactorily explained, it’s as misty and shrouded as her visions, which vary in their point of view; murderer, victim, observer. I can’t help but feel a nagging irritation with this, and with Medium’s brand of instant, magic-wand TV policing; it diminishes the painstaking, puzzle-solving element and psychological insight of good crime fiction that appeals to nerds like me.
But, Medium makes a valid point about the importance of doubt. While hysterical religious folk will maintain, in tiresome fashion, that the inability of science to explain everything invalidates it, and vice versa, Medium makes the sly suggestion that there’s room for spirituality, science, hokum and everything in between.
