NBC’s Medium–you want plot with that?
Folks are all atwitter over NBC’s new bend on the pervasive CSI-esque crime drama, Medium staring Patricia Arquette. And I suppose I can understand; even the slightest breeze of fresh air for viewers stifling under the reality glutted television schedule, is cause for rejoicing. But come on! The writing is trite, the acting (overall) is forced, and the plot (at least the first episode) was…well it wasn’t—it didn’t exist—it was a non-plot.
I went into the show with a fervent desire to enjoy the show. The premise was intriguing, the teasers looked good, and well, Patricia Arquette has a nice rack. But she lost me, I mean she left me slack-jawed, flat on my ass in the dust, when she gave the "I’m just a girl who wants to be a lawyer…" speech. I could just picture a breathy Marilyn Monroe giving a similar speech. In fact, the entire scene in which she gives her personal ad speech is wrong…just plain wrong. The mentor character was clumsily introduced, and I was left with more questions as to how Arquette got the part than answers about the motivation of her character.
Alice Dubois (Arquette), and husband Joe (Jake Weber) seem oddly at ease with her affiliation with the dead. I was confused about exactly where in the history of the couple her power was discovered. At times she seems an old hand at the prognosticator game, and at others she seems like a fish out of water. The coup de grâce came in the scene when he explains to the Texas Ranger that she had pulled the winning clue out of her ass. If I was that Ranger I would have shot her right there–shot her with something big and loud.
The utterly incongruous temper tantrum pitched by the utterly incongruous Alice, telling her seemingly long-suffering husband to shut up, left me wondering what the hell he did to deserve such treatment, and who the hell you have to blow to get a descent television series on NBC.
