Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Medium Well Done
For those of you who, like me, watch "Medium" for it's unintentionally hilarious depiction of Arizona "psychic" Alison DuBois by actress Patricia Arquette, MadTV has produced a brilliant and very funny parody of the show.
"I, I don't understand. Dreams?"
"Yes, dreams. I have a dream every week that helps you solve a murder. Every week."
Hehehe...
Bookmark/Search this post with:
Too serious
Yeah, I suppose I'm taking this show too seriously. Usually, my suspension of disbelief works just fine. I guess I at least prefer a minimal foundation of plausibility on which to layer in even extra-duty fantasy. I'm with you on the Buffy and Angel thing. It all occurs in a self-contained comic-book type environment, so I just sit back and enjoy it with no reservations. But Medium struck me as a kind of real-world drama. After all, isn't the show based on an actual crime-busting spiritualist? I can just imagine the unrelenting skeptical grief that Lenny would give a medium had one been attached to a Law & Order episode.
Seething
My wife watches this show, so occasionally, I'll sit through an episode. But I seethe silently. Why does the medium take the supernatural in such stride? Why does she not go screaming into the streets at the revelation of an actual numinous dimension? Am I making sense here? Even the simple fact that her ghostly dream visitations impact hard reality should be cause for breathless, frenzied, and unending conversation about What This Means About Reality...as opposed to simply absorbing it into mundane everydayness. I just don't see any riveting psychological change occurring from pre- to post-mediumship.
Also, Arquette's voice -- that cooing, sighing head voice of hers drives me to distraction.
Fantasy And Fairy Tales
Like Prup says below, it's a fantasy. A fairy tale. And I really enjoy watching the show for some weird reason. Patricia Arquette's voice is something that I've become acclimated to (kind of like getting used to the car noises if you happen to live near a freeway I guess, heh,) but seeing it caricatured so well in that MadTV clip really cracked me up! :)
I know that the premise is silly, and if these things happened in "the real world", people would go completely and utterly batshit insane. I mean, can you imagine it? But I treat these questions the same as I would treat it if someone were asking why the Battlestar Galactica crew happen to treat faster-than-light interplanetary space travel as something mundane. (Why, that's unbelievable! If I knew that FTL travel were possible, I would be trumpeting it to all the news media! :))
It's a silly fantasy. A fantasy story can be creative, engaging, dramatic, scary, suspenseful, funny, etc. - and still be entirely made-up with absolutely no real relationship to the real world or to the truth.
For the same reason...
Buffy didn't spend ten minutes of every episode going "My God, there REALLY ARE VAMPIRES!!" Or discussing the metaphysical implications of Angel's having a soul, or the religious implications of the various gods and demigods she encountered. The key to a fantasy (particularly -- using an old-fashioned term -- a 'science fantasy' (readers of Heinlein's MAGIC INC. or Boucher's "The Compleat Werewolf" will know what I mean by it)) is to establish the fantasy premise and to, thereafter, treat it as part of the natural world.
In fact, one thing I like about the show is just that, that Alison's powers are NOT portrayed as 'supernatural,' are not omniscient or 'god-guided' but just are. And, in fact, in the first episode, it was established that she had rejected her visions, did not understand them, and had kept herself mildly drunk to block them out.
As for her voice, I'm used to it, and actually like it, but can see how it would drive people up walls. (As someone with a voice that would make Lynne Samuels sound like Marg Helgenbrenner in comparison, I can't be too picky about such things.)
As for the parody
Not great, but does get some of the bits right. The waking up of Joe -- poor guy -- and Davalos' somewhat overdone skepticism, but the thing it gets WRONG is that she NEVER dreams that specifically. That's the fun of the show.
(Hmm, better write some good skepticism comments to keep the blast from these being too loud.)
I'm gonna get in trouble for saying this...
but MEDIUM is one of my favorite shows. I like the acting by all the main characters, the relationships, and the stories -- which are the closest thing I get towards the classically 'fair' puzzle stories on tv today. The clues are different, they are her 'dreams,' but the solutions are not obvious, and the watcher has the opportunity to solve the puzzles.
I might join in the condemnation if NBC were making a big thing about the 'real' Alison DuBois, but they don't. They did include one line in the credits of the first season -- where it got squnched by the upcoming promos -- but they've even dropped this.
Sure, the premise is 'contrary to fact.' So are vampires (bye-bye Buffy), time travel (no more TARDIS), radioactive spiders (here's your camera, Pete, go back to your day job), and ftl travel (there goes 80% of all Science Fiction and Sci-Fi -- two different things.)
And if you want to argue that 'encouraging credulity' is wrong, I'll agree with you. But so is encouraging paranoia -- and even though we have the worst and most dangerous President in history, the comments on a lot of blogs whose position I agree with come more from the X-FILES than from reality, so if you throw Alison over the cliff, let me toss Scully and Mulder with them.
(Again, I repeat that the problems are symbolically represented in Alison's 'dreams,' but the solutions involve evidence and logical deduction.)
That show's still on?
Quick someone tell the Two Percent Company.
--
Ponies are atheists, you know, technically.