Medium – Repeat after me

by Brett Love

After a week off for the telethon, Medium returned with a very dark episode that had one surprising twist, and one surprising non-twist. The surprise twist came in what was a very Medium case of the week, complete with murder, conspiracy, and some truly frightening dreams for Allison. The non-twist took advantage of all those things the show has shown us about the Dubois girls’ growing powers to completely set us up, and then leave us holding the bag. It all made for a fun night.

The story of Summer Lowry (Danielle Panabaker, Shark) was scarily dark, and well crafted. The way the story played out, the viewer was yet another in the large group of people Summer was able to fool. The big reveal that Chad (Tobias Segal) had actually killed their parents seemed like a perfect Medium set-up. We had the who, but now it came down to whether or not Allison could put the pieces together to get her man.

When Chad went to visit Summer, I was expecting that he would kill her, much more than the reverse. The stabbing with the spade caught me completely off guard and set up that great final showdown with Allison and Summer. I loved the little change in Summer when she told Allison, “I think she gets away with it.”

The way it was all set in motion, with Keelin (Alexandra Krosney) repeating everything, and the shoddy ethics of Dr. Woodel (Dennis Boutsikaris) was also very good. Keelin’s backstory, having killed her teacher after being rejected, suggested that Woodel might have been up to more than therapy in their sessions. It was a solid red herring. The casting of Boutsikaris as Woodel was interesting as well. He’s made quite a career of guest spots as doctors, with appearances on SVU, Criminal Intent, CSI, Crossing Jordan, Monk, 7th Heaven, The X-Files, ER, and a number of others.

If I had one complaint about the episode, it came from Devalos. He actually came right out and told Allison that they have too much history for him to just dismiss out of hand something that she dreamed. And then, he proceeded to dismiss out of hand something that she dreamed. Certainly, she didn’t have any evidence, but at this point, isn’t some sort of unofficial, cursory investigation warranted?

Elsewhere, the writers completely played us with the Bridgette/Marie story. We’ve seen so many examples of the girls’ powers manifesting themselves in mysterious ways that look innocent at first. I really thought that’s where we were headed here. By the time we learned that Bridgette was supposed to go watch a movie with Finn, I was convinced that Finn wasn’t real. Only Bridgette and Marie were seeing him. Perhaps he was a boy that died, and someone needed to know something?

Of course, that wasn’t the case. Instead, we were just seeing the next step in Bridgette growing up, whether Joe likes it or not. And that’s not a bad thing. At its core, Medium has always been a family drama, and we’re invested in these characters enough that a story like that still plays. It just came as a complete surprise to me. Added all together, it’s another very good episode in the books.