Year: 2009, 2010
Genre: TV series, drama, supernatural
Country: United States
Language: English
Starring: Patricia Arquette, Jake Weber, Miguel Sandoval, Sofia Vassilieva, Maria Lark, Madison Carabello, Miranda Carabello, David Cubitt, Tina DiJoseph, Holliston Coleman, Bruce Gray
Guest stars: Diedrich Bader
Creator: Glenn Gordon Caron
Run time: 13 hours, 29 minutes
DVD distributor: Paramount Home Entertainment
The fifth season of Medium ended with a cliffhanger – Allison (Patricia Arquette) had a brain tumor, and an operation, and may have lost her psychic gifts forever! What was going to happen when the sixth season began? My stars! But then you think about it for a second. This is, after all, a TV show. One whose central premise IS that Allison has psychic gifts. So, you think she’ll get those powers back? In the very first episode of Season Six? Of course she will!
This is a good thing though – at least that wasn’t dragged out too much. One of the things I really like about Medium is that Allison’s psychic gifts ARE the show, and not just an excuse to have another cop show on TV. (Like I recently wrote about The Goodwife, where the cheating-politician-husband story line is just a setup, but after that it’s just another lawyer show.)
So Season Six rolls on, with the day-to-day life of the DuBois family moving along as an irritating sidebar to otherwise excellent episodes. And then…the season finale. Which HAS to be a cliffhanger, just like every other season, right? Otherwise, how would anyone, ever, want to come back and watch a seventh season? Who cares that the show is good, and that people just plain like it, you MUST give them another, more contrived reason!
And so the final episode of the season sees Allison die. And then she’s a ghost, and she wanders around and meets other ghosts and talks to her daughter and ruins her life and so forth. Really? She’s dead? But I KNOW there’s a seventh season coming up! How is this possible? It’s tough to muster tears, even when they try SO HARD to jerk them out of my face, when I am totally, absolutely aware that this isn’t really happening. How could it? It’s clearly just a dream.
Now, this presents some questions for Season Seven. If Allison dreamed about her own death (and the death of another major character), and her dreams always come true, then isn’t she supposed to die at the very beginning of Season Seven? Isn’t that the logical conclusion here? But…I bet that doesn’t happen! The first and last episodes of each season of Medium are always by far the worst. If you skip them, though, the rest of Season Six is as good as ever.