nbc_medium | A Interesting Review for 6x22: "It's a Wonderful Death"

It's funny. What I like best about The Mentalist – the absolute denial of psychic powers – is the opposite of the premise of Medium, which absolutely depends on the audience suspending disbelief enough to accept the heroine, Allison Dubois, as a psychic who, through the help of dreams and conversations with the dead, is able to help the Phoenix police and district attorney solve cases and save lives....

...Back to Medium, however. You see, I really don't believe in psychics. I think they are all, without exception, frauds. I have never heard of any who don't use their alleged "powers" for personal gain, whether financial or social, and I just don't think that God or the universe work that way.

However, I am perfectly happy to be in the audience for fantasy books, films and TV shows that have characters with powers that I don't believe in the real world. So while I have nothing but disdain for the real person on whom the series is based – a self-promoting fraud, in my opinion – that does not stop me from loving the fantasy series and the truly inventive writing that keeps finding new ways to use the supernatural premise to mess with the lives of the characters.

Medium has obeyed some of the rules of series television – every episode, for instance, is still centered around at least one criminal who is going to get away with it unless Allison can figure out the cryptic messages from beyond. But the miracle of Medium is the very real family life – the best I've ever seen on television.

Usually, TV families are pathetically unreal. The best of them are usually tongue-in-cheek – and at the worst, they're like Roseanne after the first year. The character of Roseanne became a monster of ego (rather like the actress playing her) and not one episode could ever show John Goodman's husband character as being anything other than a fool who needs to apologize to his wife for everything from having a thought of his own to breathing.

Medium ran that same risk in spades. While husband Joe (played with reality and warmth by Jake Weber) is given a real life, Allison (Patricia Arquette in the role of a lifetime) is constantly proven right – that's the premise of the show, that she knows things.

This can be death on a relationship, and there were times when I worried that Medium might be going the way of Roseanne (and so many other stories centered around a wife; and more than one supposedly centered around the husband!) – turning the husband into a puppet that the wife controls.

Apparently the writers have seen that same dreaded possibility, and in the season finale episode of Medium they addressed it directly.

Daughter Ariel (played by the astonishingly accomplished Sofia Vassilieva), who also has her mother's ability to see dead people, is about to graduate from high school and wants to go to Dartmouth; the episode begins with her getting the scholarship that makes it possible.

Father Joe thinks it's great that she's going to college on the other side of the country, but mother Allison says no – with the trademark finality that usually means she's going to get her way.

So – and skip this paragraph if you don't want a spoiler – Allison dies. That's right, her brain tumor has apparently grown back and this time she simply never wakes up. The family grieves very realistically. But as a dead person, Allison goes on solving crimes ... because she can talk to Ariel and pass along information to her! The trouble is that in doing so, she steals Ariel's life from her. Joe sees it and hates what she's doing, and Ariel finally gets to the end of her rope and starts drinking so that she can block her ability to see the dead. She's going to leave home and try to go where her mother will never find her. Then Allison wakes up, having been taught by this dream that her talent is not more important than her family, and that her own desires are not the only thing that matters when important decisions are to be made.

Not only is this an intensely emotional episode – and there's a fascinating murder mystery plot that I haven't even mentioned – but it also faces head-on the issue of power within a family. How many series have managed to even admit that such an issue exists?

I don't watch Medium because I believe in psychics. I watch it because I believe in families. So do the makers of this series. Nobody's perfect in the Dubois household – but everybody is trying to be good, and they learn more about how to do that with every week that passes.

If you have never watched Medium, I urge you to rent or buy a season of it on DVD. Get to know these people. It might make you love your own family more – and may perhaps help you become better at fulfilling your family role.

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