Patricia Arquette, I love you

So I just had a little Medium marathon tonight, watching the three new episodes from this season. All I have to say is if I didn't love this show before, I definitely do now.

One of the things I loved about Medium when it debuted midseason last season was that Arquette's character, Allison Dubois, and her family were so believable. Allison didn't try to look sexy and anorexic; she looked like any mother of three would. And the fact that her and her husband Joe (played by the incredibly delicious Jake Weber) were so into each other, well, that's sexy. And the stories were so good.

And this season is already surpassing the leaps the series made in its premiere season.

Episode 2.1 saw the conclusion of the season finale, with the fate of Capt. Push being revealed, and how he and his father helped solve the mystery that was the center of the season finale. The episode also dealt with how Allison felt about being headblind for three months. (Headblind is a term that was originated in Uncanny X-Men. It deals with a person that has telepathic powers and then loses said powers. In the case of Medium, Allison was used to having dreams and visions of things to come the majority of her life. She lost this power for three months, and it put her on edge a bit. It's one of those things I wish had ben commented on more in the X-Men titles when Psylocke lost her telepathic powers several years back. But oh well.)

Episode 2.2 took kind of an original approach, with Allison's psychic powers being overwhelmed by Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive." The way this is portrayed is so excellent and spot-on; it's exactly how you think it should sound. But it leads to a deeper plot, somehow connected to an iPod (of course) and the misinterpretation of a dream that inevitably leads to an answer right in the neck of time. This episode is also a prime example of how Joe deals with being in a family of female psychics. When Joe tells Allison a tidbit from the dream she's been having (which he learned from their daughter, Bridget, who had been having the same dreams), you sympathize with Joe, knowing he's just trying to understand and do what's best for his family, even though it goes against his very scientific background (he's a physicist).

This week's episode, 2.3, goes a little abstract, but in a very, very good way. The episode centers around this woman from the 1950s that claims to be Allison. It's time travel without the travel. And then there's the subplot of this guy faking multiple personality disoder (I'll never get used to calling it DID, no matter what the DSM-IV or One Life To Live say). But the main plot ... wow.

I know the season is only a few episodes in, but my love for Medium has been renewed and reaffirmed. There's a reason I was rooting for Arquette to win the best actress in a drama Emmy (which she won, much to many people's disbelief). I love (and I know it was probably unintentional) that in the opening scene from 2.2 that Arquette is in this very surreal dream, where she's wearing a striped shirt, and the whole scene is in red, so her shirt looks like red and black stripes and very Freddy Krueger-ish. And the fact that she'll be sleepwalking in next week's episode seems to me that the producers and writers are trying to play on her past experience with all-too-real dreams.

Either way, I'm glad Medium is back, glad that Arquette won the Emmy, and I know that I'll be watching faithfully for the rest of the season (and waiting for the first season to come out on DVD). And hoping for more scenes of Joe very scantily clad. Hey, a guy can hope, right?