Medium

One TV show I really enjoy is Medium. The premise is Allison (Patricia Arquette) can communicate with the dead and occasionally see glimpses of the future. This may sound cheesy but the show is very well written. CBS liked it enough to imitate for their own show Ghost Whisperer.

I couldn't put my finger on why I like this show so much, until I realized that unlike many sci-fi shows, where "not changing events that are to happen" is often a millstone worn around the neck of the plot, this show is all about doing that. In an episode a few weeks ago, Allison had a vision of a young woman threatened and knifepoint and then killed, and also one of the ex-con who was arrested for it.

Sounds good right? Well there are a few twists. In order to head off this crime, Allison and Detective Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt) go visit the ex-con, to ask him some questions. He sees them and runs off, straight into a car and is hospitalized with major injuries. At the hospital, the young woman visits and Allison and Lee realize these two are dating. It also comes out that the young woman's ex-husband is a psycho, very jealous, and he's the true killer - the ex-con boyfriend was to be wrongfully convicted. So the killer Allison saw in her vision was the ex-husband, and Detective Scanlon arrives just in time to save her from murder.

Most of the shows are similar - Allison will have a mysterious vision and then spend the rest of the episode trying to make sense of it. Detective Scanlon was originally an extreme skeptic, completely unconvinced about the psychic abilities of Allison. He prefers the usual detective work, but has seen how she has helped so many times, he now is more than willing to follow up hunches she has, even though not all pan out. The Assistant D.A. Devalos (Miguel Sandoval) is similar - he wants any advantage he can get so he asks her to help out with a variety of cases.

Now, an item of concern. Last week's episode was a very gimmicky 3D episode. I think the show is good but when they resort to stunts like that it makes me hope it is a stumble and not a sign the show has turned for the worse.