Natasha Bedingfield's Soulmate
If you didn’t catch the last Medium, you need to. Check it out here (look at the episode list and click on “Bring Me the Head of Oswaldo Castillo.) Not only was it an awesome episode; it also had a really dark song as the backdrop, Soulmate by Natasha Bedingfield. Medium itself has always been dark, and it was a great finale for NBC before Medium moves from NBC to CBS. I’ll talk about it below.
Before I do, I was wondering what NBC has going for them these days. CBS will now have Medium, the greatest show ever. CBS also has Survivor, Ghost Whisperer (which isn’t a great show cinematically, but it’s hard to be unpopular with Jennifer Love Hewitt), Two and a Half Men, NCIS, and the Amazing Race. With Medium, CBS will have all the shows that I normally watch (Medium, Amazing Race, Survivor).
NBC, on the other hand, has…Heroes? Five nights of Leno at 10 pm? Celebrity Apprentice? It’s not looking good for NBC in terms of TV shows. They do have a good backlist–if you go to NBC.com, you can watch old episodes of Knight Rider and Quantum Leap for free. In terms of current new offerings, however, their menu is a bit thin.
I wanted to talk about the last Medium. I wanted to type a bit about the music, the creation of suspense, and the absolutely phenomenal acting. To discuss this, however, would require a bit of spoiler action on my part. So if you haven’t already, watch the Oswaldo Castillo episode here, listen to the awesome song, and click show to read my gushing, I mean, observations: show
(pic from here)
Check out the Oswaldo Castillo episode above, or read a synopsis here.
The absolute genius of the writers and actors was on full display in the “finale” of Medium. The sequence opens, as always, with a dream. Allison is living in an apartment building, with a picture of her family on the wall. A man knocks on the door. He brings her takeout, and says that she shouldn’t be alone on the one year anniversary of the day her family was slaughtered. Allison wakes up.
There were a number of things that I absolutely loved about this episode.
First, Patricia Arquette’s acting in the dream sequences was phenomenal. She becomes the family woman who has had her family taken away. She becomes the crusading superhero who no longer has her powers. You can feel the anger and the change that comes from her circumstances. Everything she has done up until this point in the series has been for her family, and when the most important people in her life are killed, she changes. I also loved how the writers created the post-murder Allison. She lives in an apartment complex, doesn’t work, lives off of microwave dinners, and has devoted her entire life to catching Castillo. There’s a realism that less capable writers would have missed.
Second, I thought it was absolute genius how they built up the relationship between Allison and Munoz. By pairing a good looking guy who has lost his own spouse to Castillo, and by playing the lonely angst song by Bedingfield, the writers created a non-sexual tension of possibilities (if this makes sense) that posed interesting questions about the future. These questions eventually become moot when it is revealed that Munoz is a snitch who has been protecting the murderer, but before they do, the storyline poses an interesting possibility. After all, most people do move on when losing their family. How do they do it? The opening scene where Munoz brings her dinner raises the possibility of Allison moving on with Munoz, thereby creating a wicked element of suspense.
Third, I was fascinated by the way the writers showed Allison losing her powers. Every superhero–and that’s what she is–needs to deal with the possibility of losing his or her powers. We have seen Allison have her powers thwarted by evil dead people, but this was the first time Medium viewers were faced with the possibility that she might live as a normal yet defeated person who no longer has a family. I loved the sacrifice she made, thereby showing the full extent of her powerful character.
This “finale” ranked with the the Angelica Huston and the Blythe Danner episodes as my favorites of all time. Perfect suspense, great portrayal of relationships, and a stunning display of character in the middle of multiple moral quandaries. I continue to be impressed by the way in which the Medium writers are able to squeeze so much detail and art into a one hour TV episode. I can’t wait for the show to come back on CBS.
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