Product Description
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Patricia Arquette, Miguel Sandoval. This unique mystery series
was inspired by actual events about a young wife and mother whose
ability to communicate with the dead served as a valuable,
crime-solving tool for the Phoenix District Attorney's office.
Includes the Song Remains the Same" (9/26/05), Too Close to Call"
(10/24/05), Allison Wonderland" (3/6/06) and 19 more for a total
of 22 episodes on 6 DVDs. 2005-06/color/16 hrs/NR/widescreen.
.com
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Season Two of NBC-TV's hit series Medium finds the show
gradually evolving, and while the changes aren't all for the
better, the combination of star Patricia Arquette,
creator-executive producer Glen Gordon Caron, and the other
contributors still makes for entertaining viewing. As Allison
DuBois, whose skills as both a medium and psychic make her
indispensable to Phoenix district attorney Manuel Devalos (Miguel
Sandoval), Arquette, a 2005 Emmy winner, is still at center
stage. It is her visions of murderers, serial killers, child
abductors, and such that help solve the show's various crimes;
the fact that these visions (which usually arrive via some very
unsettling nightmares) can be ambiguous and open to
misinterpretation, resulting in bizarre, embarrassing behavior on
Allison's part, remains an integral part of the show's appeal.
The 22 Season Two episodes (on six discs) contain plenty of
genuinely gripping, even shocking moments, but Caron (who also
wrote and directed some episodes) clearly wants to focus
increasingly on Allison's personal and home life. That's a mixed
blessing. Although Medium still has its share of violence and
shocking moments, it has become a little more tame, as frequent
scenes between squabbling daughters Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva) and
Bridgette (Maria Lark), while mostly credible, tend to undermine
its dramatic effect. On the other hand, the struggles of Joe
DuBois (Jake Weber), Allison's husband, to hold it together when
the demands of her gig or the sheer weirdness of what's in her
head threaten to take over are very well done; he's become an
increasingly important character, there to ground her when her
emotions and her visions intertwine and conflict. Best of all are
episodes in which Allison's family and work are both in play,
like "Judge, Jury & Executioner," in which Joe serves as a juror
on a case in which Allison is involved, or "Doctor's Orders,"
which finds Ariel pursued by the ghost of a serial killer from
the previous season.
Of course, any TV show helmed by Caron (who created both the
popular Moonlighting and the underrated Now and Again) will have
its share of inspired ideas and eccentric touches (not to mention
guest stars like David Carradine and co-executive producer Kelsey
Grammer). Thus we have an "origin" episode ("Sweet Dreams"), a
story in which Allison's dream sequence lasts for the entire
first act ("Time Out of Mind"), and another ("Knowing Her")
offering in into Det. Scanlon's (David Cubitt) past. In "The
Song Remains the Same" Allison is bedeviled by Gloria Gaynor's "I
Will Survive," which she literally can't get out of head; after
five or six non-stop, high volume minutes, you'll never want to
hear it again. And while "Still Life 3-D" is a pretty cool idea,
let's face it: those cardboard 3-D glasses (two pairs come in the
box set) are still hokey as all get out. Generous bonus features
include commentary on select episodes, a mini-doc about the
making of Season Two, and considerably more. --Sam Graham