Tuesday, January 11, 2005
Medium, NBC Mondays
Let me get this off my chest right off the bat – I do not like Patricia Arquette. Her voice, tone, hair, teeth, posture, everything bugs me. She is just one of those people that rubs me the wrong way, so it’s going to take either a great show or an excellent supporting cast to make me enjoy this – and we have neither. Besides, it’s on opposite CSI Miami. Even David Caruso at his worst is better than Arquette at her best.
Arquette plays Allison Dubois – she sees dead people. Seriously, that’s a line from the show! We’ve never heard that before, have we? Anyway, she’s constantly making jokes about being a “psychic with a bad memory” if she forgets someone’s name. But she does have visions all the time. Sometimes, when she’s lying in bed, her dead father-in-law is there next to her giving her advice. Creepy!
When the series starts, somehow she’s a lazy law student with nothing to do. After two of her three bratty kids (“she’s flippin’ boogers at me!”) are off to school, she spends her days taking care of the littlest one, staring into the liquor cabinet (does this have anything to do with Kelsey Grammer being an executive producer? “What she needs is a closet drinking problem, right Kelsey?”), and solving the Super Password without looking at the TV. Hell, my wife can tell you an 80’s movie from the toilet after hearing one voice! And I’m now sleeping on the couch. Anyway, Allison has already gone through the motions with the DA looking for work, but he never called…Until TODAY!
After seeing previews for this show, it looked to me like a crime show where the medium solves complex cases by having visions. I was expecting the Dead Zone meets CSI. But when the DA calls Allison, its only to have her look at files of potential jury members and decide which ones will help him get the death penalty for the defendant. Ya gotta love Arizona, but is this it? She looks at files and decides some woman who was raped in her past should be on the jury because the bad guy just got paroled? Really? I’ve been waiting for this?
I’ll give the show the benefit of the doubt for now because scenes from next week showed her at an actual crime scene. Maybe it IS going in the right direction. Plus, some of the scenes of her visualizing things were kind of fun. But so far the writing isn’t great, falling back on the typical comedic side junctures like a friend urging his wife to tell her story about a new therapy she created. But, as soon as she starts to speak, he interrupts her and finishes her sentence. Then he turns to her and says, “Go ahead – tell ‘em!” Yeah, that’s really original. The dialogue is not good, and the tension and excitement simply isn’t there yet.
There are only two reasons why I watched this show:
1) CSI Miami was a repeat. Like I said before, I’ll take David Caruso over Patricia Arquette any day – especially because he has a better supporting cast and a half way decent show.
2) I love you all. I really do appreciate your responses to my posts and newsletters so I figured this would give me more material for the blog here.
Honestly, I need to watch the show again, but it has to improve on many levels and I’d much rather look at Emily Proctor than Patricia Arquette!
2 out of 5 for now…
Arquette plays Allison Dubois – she sees dead people. Seriously, that’s a line from the show! We’ve never heard that before, have we? Anyway, she’s constantly making jokes about being a “psychic with a bad memory” if she forgets someone’s name. But she does have visions all the time. Sometimes, when she’s lying in bed, her dead father-in-law is there next to her giving her advice. Creepy!
When the series starts, somehow she’s a lazy law student with nothing to do. After two of her three bratty kids (“she’s flippin’ boogers at me!”) are off to school, she spends her days taking care of the littlest one, staring into the liquor cabinet (does this have anything to do with Kelsey Grammer being an executive producer? “What she needs is a closet drinking problem, right Kelsey?”), and solving the Super Password without looking at the TV. Hell, my wife can tell you an 80’s movie from the toilet after hearing one voice! And I’m now sleeping on the couch. Anyway, Allison has already gone through the motions with the DA looking for work, but he never called…Until TODAY!
After seeing previews for this show, it looked to me like a crime show where the medium solves complex cases by having visions. I was expecting the Dead Zone meets CSI. But when the DA calls Allison, its only to have her look at files of potential jury members and decide which ones will help him get the death penalty for the defendant. Ya gotta love Arizona, but is this it? She looks at files and decides some woman who was raped in her past should be on the jury because the bad guy just got paroled? Really? I’ve been waiting for this?
I’ll give the show the benefit of the doubt for now because scenes from next week showed her at an actual crime scene. Maybe it IS going in the right direction. Plus, some of the scenes of her visualizing things were kind of fun. But so far the writing isn’t great, falling back on the typical comedic side junctures like a friend urging his wife to tell her story about a new therapy she created. But, as soon as she starts to speak, he interrupts her and finishes her sentence. Then he turns to her and says, “Go ahead – tell ‘em!” Yeah, that’s really original. The dialogue is not good, and the tension and excitement simply isn’t there yet.
There are only two reasons why I watched this show:
1) CSI Miami was a repeat. Like I said before, I’ll take David Caruso over Patricia Arquette any day – especially because he has a better supporting cast and a half way decent show.
2) I love you all. I really do appreciate your responses to my posts and newsletters so I figured this would give me more material for the blog here.
Honestly, I need to watch the show again, but it has to improve on many levels and I’d much rather look at Emily Proctor than Patricia Arquette!
2 out of 5 for now…
posted by Pat Angello, 6:19 PM