Television Review: Castle (Seasons 1 & 2)

Castle is like a box of chocolates. Not one of those where you don’t know what you’re going to get – far from it - but rather one filled with that one special kind of bon-bon you can’t stop eating ‘just one more’ of, even though it’s empty calories and it will make you feel bloated afterwards. (Yes, I’m gay.) It’s a very entertaining but very formulaic quirky crime-solving series, closely related to Bones and Psych.

In a rather precarious and unbelievable set-up for a continuing series, famous pulp-thriller writer Richard Castle (Nathan Fillion) starts shadowing NYPD detective Kate Beckett (Stana Katic). He has recently killed off his cash cow of a main character and is basing his new one (‘Nicki Heat’) on her. He is connected to people in politically high places and to keep them happy, the NYPD is allowing him to follow her around apparently indefinitely. It’s stated that he wants to make all the details in his book ‘authentic’ and this would explain why he needs to be around 24-7 for months on end. As time management goes, this is not the most efficient way of going about things, but since Castle helps Beckett unravel the tangled narrative behind each crime – there are no straightforward murders in this precinct - he proves useful and they grow ever closer.

Their cheery witticisms while hovering over a dead body can come across as somewhat insensitive, but playfulness is what this series is about. I doubt the NYPD deals with things like ‘death by gargoyle’, frozen corpses left lying around and naked, handcuffed, dead ladies covered in caramel sauce on a regular basis. If you are expecting hard-boiled and realistic, you will be disappointed. Though during the first couple of episodes Beckett states a few times that most crime shows are removed from reality and that Rick Castle will now experience how an investigation ‘really’ works, the series is soon employing shortcuts for the convenience of the plot and making your eyes roll. Investigations that would take a huge amount of time get magically condensed and after a complicated intrigue has been brought to light, there is always some evidence to support it – as luck would have it - even though it is often circumstantial and a prosecutor would have a tough time getting a conviction. This doesn’t matter much, as generally the killers are all too easily pushed into a confession. These groan-inducing moments that not only stretch believability but sometimes even fold it into an entertaining balloon animal, don’t spoil the fun, but you start to wonder about some convenient narrative crutches: when will murderers learn not to use their perfectly traceable credit-card to buy stuff they will use for their kill or in the vicinity of their prospective victim around the time of the murder?

The average episode follows this predictable structure: body gets found in odd circumstances - cute scene with Castle in his very expensive loft with sweet daughter and/or cohabitating eccentric mother – he gets called to the murder scene - he and Beckett interview a succession of suspects, buoyed by revelations, imagination and ever-present snippets of evidence – until a slightly more well-known tv-actor than the other interviewees/suspects from the first part of the episode turns out to be the killer. Engaging characters and dialogue keep the recipe from growing stale. Castle’s family set-up is on the verge of being too cute, but generally manages to charm you into submission. The ‘will they or won’t they’ romantic vibe between the two leads also keeps things interesting, though the series doesn’t seem to be in a rush to move this plot-point forward. Sensibly, perhaps, as series from the past have proven that there is really nowhere interesting to go once you couple up your leads (*cough* Moonlighting *cough*). Sure, you can have them get together and break them up maybe once and then still keep them circling each other, but the audience will lose patience. Did anyone really still want Ross and Rachel to even be on the same screen towards the end of Friends?

Nathan Fillion steals the show as a charming wise-ass, the kind of role he seems born to play, whether he turns out to be a space cowboy, a supervillain or a pulp fiction writer. However, the rest of the cast is equally game and a pleasure to watch. If you don’t mind the occasional ‘yeah, right’ moment and can appreciate fun shows that aren’t all that intellectually nourishing, the Castle crowd is a good one to hang out with. A warning about the whistled tune at the beginning of each episode: after watching a couple of episodes in quick succession, it might get stuck in your head. Forever.

Review (sort of): Mass Effect 1 & 2 (X-Box 360)

I have always been fascinated by interactive storytelling. I remember being a big fan of the Fighting Fantasy books by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingstone as a wee tyke. These fantasy or scifi-themed books would allow you to choose your own adventure, along the lines of: ‘If you want to check out the spooky hovel on your left, go to page 235. If you would rather head into the ominous cavern on your right, go to page 42.’ Looking back on it, it was pretty much just a paper version of the text adventures you could play on your pc. You’d be running around on a lofty mission with death lurking around every corner: a bad choice, a bad roll of the die, or just plain bad luck could have you flipping back to the last page you remembered going to before you ‘died’ (for this reason, I kept a meticulous cheat sheet with all the pages I’d visited). There were several endings for each adventure, both good and bad. At some point there was even an adventure which featured two books that crossed over and could be played with a friend. That sort of interactive complexity totally blew my mind.

If I had come across Mass Effect at that point in time, I think I might have died of shock. Mass Effect is a computer game trilogy of which the first two parts have come out so far (part one in 2008, part two in 2010). They aim to tell a complete story – a space opera in which you save the galaxy quite a few times - spread out over all three games. Unique is that you can carry over your self-modeled character from one game to the next and that the choices you make in one part of the story affects how the story will unfold in the sequels. Games with multiple endings and meaningful choices are nothing new, but in combination with the sheer size of the universe and the amount of malleable characters in it, it can’t fail to impress: it’s interactive storytelling on a massive scale. Interesting is the amount of optional story spread all around. You can talk to any number of people (or aliens) with interesting things to say, deepening the world around you. Or you can ignore most of that and just shoot things.

Admittedly, I have found that in reality BioWare (the company behind the games) cheated a bit: no matter what choices you made, you will end up ultimately in the same set-pieces with changes (major or minor) to dialogue and cut-scenes. Game 1 (minor spoiler) makes you choose between two team members: one lives, one dies. In game 2 you have a scene with the surviving one, but on a grander scale, it doesn’t matter much which of the two made it there. The attitude and dialogue options you get from certain characters may vary, but not in a very consequential way. And the main set-up for the second game, regardless of what happened in part one, is fixed: get enrolled by a morally dubious organization, gather team for vital mission, gain loyalty of team members (optional), upgrade ship and team (optional) and lead them on said ‘suicide’ mission. You can do all this following the way of the Renegade (a ‘goals justifies the means’ bad-ass) or as a Paragon (a morally upright goody-two-shoes): the difference is mostly in the dialogue, not in the follow-up. However, if you left certain characters – minor or major - alive in the first game, you might come across them in the second one and have a chat. They will ‘remember’ how you handled them during that first encounter.

If you skip the upgrades and loyalty missions, things will end badly, so although this is optional in theory, you sort of have to do both. But then, rushing through the game would be missing the point in any case: the emphasis on story and immersion is what makes Mass Effect special. The game tries to make the main missions have an urgent feel to them – the clock is ticking for the universe after all – but somewhat counter-intuitively, you have to ignore that push in the back and take your time to bounce from one side-quest to the next as much as you can, until the next ‘main story’ mission ends up being the only thing available to you. Given how rich the created universe is, the action parts can come off as filler in-between narration. There’s enough variation to keep you entertained, but the ‘beats’ of a mission tend to be the same: bits of story in between moments when you end up in large spaces with a puzzling amount of stuff lying around for no other apparent reason than to serve as cover for you while you fight off various baddies. End with a slightly larger confrontation and an emotional climax, then on to the next mission. A lot of the fun is actually in the random detail, such as overhearing ridiculous conversations, buying a pointless ‘space hamster’ or giving a ringing celebrity endorsement to every single store on a space station for a little discount until you hear your voice echoing everywhere: ‘I'm Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite store on the Citadel!’

Mass Effect has run-and-gun as well as RPG elements to it. The first game required a lot more inventory and ‘stats’ management than the second one does. As an adult with limited time, I greatly appreciated the boiling down of the concept to just the best bits: characters, action and adventure without too much micromanagement. I also appreciated Mass Effect gaining more of a sense of humor in the sequel, after the slightly too clinical part 1. The third one will apparently follow the same approach as part 2. I hope that the total of decisions you made in the first two games will have a bigger impact this time around. Ideally, not just the cut-scenes and dialogue but also the set-pieces leading up to the big climax(es) will be variable. However, I have a feeling that the tight production schedule of games would preclude the development time needed to make two essentially different second-halves for Mass Effect 3. In any case, it will be at the top of my to-buy list. While I appreciate the slightly geekier, RPG-driven sprawling stories and the atmosphere of a choice-heavy game like Fallout 3, Mass Effect 2’s sleeker, more polished approach to epic storytelling is – for me – the direction more games should be heading in. Should you dive in, make sure you start with the original Mass Effect though: things heat up in the sequel, but it’s just a waste to miss out on the beginning of this continuing story.

From Bored to Board

Games at the ABC, board or otherwise, by Steven

(written for the American Book Center Blog)

Reading is a great way to spend your free time, but can be a bit solitary. Gaming with others makes for a good change of pace, but a lot of digital gaming systems like the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 are focusing on online multiplayer games, so you still end up at home alone. More ‘gezellig’ is definitely inviting people over for some face-to-actual-face time around a table. Instead of cussing each other out over a microphone, you can eat, drink and be merry, while having a game experience together. There are different group dynamics you can go for: in some games you compete or actively try to trip up other players, in others you work together to achieve a common goal. So even if you are not particularly competitive, you can still have a good time with a board game.

Pandemic is a good example of cooperative play: you have to band together to stop a disease from spreading across the globe and dooming humanity. Surely a noble way to spend an evening.

There are a lot of games, with a broad range of themes, to be found at ABC, both in The Hague and on the first floor in Amsterdam. Some of them don’t require a board, just cards you can carry around with you for a game on-the-go. Our selection ranges from games that are easy to pick up and play in a couple of minutes to complex games that can last three hours or more. The last category (containing games like Arkham Horror and Battlestar Galactica – the board game) requires a bit of a time investment when it comes to figuring out the rules, but makes up for that by depth of play and these games can really drag you and your gaming group into a particular world.

If you are a bit daunted by the amount of games on offer, not sure which one to pick, you can of course ask our ABC crew for advice, but there are also sites that can help you find a game to suit you and your particular group of friends.The main site to go to for information is BoardGameGeek. They rate games, feature reviews and game session reports by players, have tons of themed ‘geek’ lists, post alternate rules if the original ones for a game are ‘broken’ and give vital statistics on a game, like: average play time, recommended amount of players, recommended age and so on.

There is also plenty to watch on YouTube: video reviews of games and tutorials for games, for people who find it easier to learn how to play this way than to read a manual. There are also flashy official trailers to be found for some games, if you want to hear the sales pitch. The most ‘present’ of reviewers is Tom Vasel, who has his own site The Dice Tower and a podcast. Seated in front of a wall of games, he gives articulate opinions. Another well-made YouTube feed of note, apart from ‘thedicetower‘, is ‘boardtodeathtv’. Additionally, there are somewhat less polished enthusiasts like ‘Grudunza’, ‘snicholson’, ‘theboardgamefamily’ and ‘Kerbster76’.

Currently in stock at The American Book Center are English versions of classics like Scrabble, Risk,Settlers of Catan, Monopoly and Carcassonne, but we also have games you might never have heard of:

Apples to Apples: A word game matching noun cards (i.e. “Abraham Lincoln”) to cards with adjectives (i.e.”frivolous”)
Fluxx: The card game with the continuously changing rules!
Munchkin: A very funny card game take on role-playing games.
Ticket to Ride: Connect your two train end destinations and try to monopolize as many routes as possible in the mean time.
Battlestar Galactica: Play as one of your favorite Battlestar Galactica characters and help save the last of humanity from the Cylon attacks. But who among you is secretly a Cylon themselves?
Axis & Allies: The World War II strategy game.

The following titles aren’t in our online database but should be in stock or available to order: Taboo,Zombie Dice, Harry Potter Hogwarts, Pandemic, Dungeon Quest, Arkham Horror and many others.

We also sell a lot of different Dungeons & Dragons guides, which help you set up a roleplaying session. And there are card sets for the well-known Magic: The Gathering card battle system.

If you can’t find a game you are interested in at our stores, ask at the register (first floor in Amsterdam or at The Hague), as we might be able to order it for you. If you want to get in touch with other gamers, come visit one of our game nights, visit Ducosim , join the Netherlands Roleplayer’s Guild or have a look atthis list of clubs.

Drop by on December 12th and game on!

Book Review: Under the Dome

Dome Spells Doom for Dum-Dums

Stephen King’s latest, Under the Dome, is a massive literary achievement, at least in actual size. At over a thousand pages, this book can sprain wrists over a prolonged reading session and fracture skulls when wielded with evil intent. It’s not King’s longest work, at least if you count his multi-volume Dark Tower saga as a continuous story, but it’s a long-term commitment for the reader all the same. On the American cover, thriller writer Lee Child blurbs: ‘The Best Yet, From the Best Ever’. While calling King the ‘best ever’ is in the realm of outright silly hyperbole, the question remains: is this King’s crowning glory?

Well, not quite, but at least it comes within a Green Mile of being it. The concept is as follows: an invisible barrier – a ‘dome’, if you will – plonks down over one of those small, typically American towns King loves to write about. From there on, things swiftly proceed to hell in a hand basket. After the first death toll (a plane and multiple cars crash into it, people and animals get sliced in two), unwise behavior of people under pressure soon leads to more fatalities. Then the semi-permeable barrier starts to cloud up because of pollution, the temperature slowly begins to rise under it and the clock is clearly ticking for all those who are trapped.

The major catalyst for most things Bad are selectman/used car salesman ‘Big’ Jim Rennie and his son. The first stops at nothing to gain control over the town as soon as external authorities are cut off, the second is just plain psychotic. The most important players on the side of Good are former military man/cook Dale Barbara and Julia Shumway, owner of the local newspaper. They have to find a way to counter ‘Big’ Jim, while at the same time figuring out what is keeping the dome in place and how to make it go away. Complicating matters, especially in the second half of the book, is a meth lab which also ends up getting locked in.

As almost every review has pointed out – a little gleefully – Stephen King must have been annoyed when this exact concept (‘small American town caught under see-through dome’) played out in The Simpsons Movie for laughs. King has claimed that it doesn’t bother him though, as the execution of the idea was completely unlike his version. King definitely came up with it earlier: 25 years ago he already took a stab at the first chapter for the book – which he actually used this time around, mostly intact – but he gave up because he didn’t know how to make it work.

He does make it work this time around, though it’s not a complete success-story. First, the good. As always, King’s prose should come with racing stripes painted on the side. You are sped along, invested in the characters and interested to see what will happen next. There is always something exciting going on, so you don’t really ‘feel’ the length of the story, except in actual weight in your hands. There is the occasional duff, awkward line or simile but those are quickly passed by and forgotten. All of this is true of most of King’s books, whether he is going for straight-up horror or something more cerebral and literary. The basic set-up of Good versus Evil while under the assault of some overarching bad situation is also typical King. There isn’t a whole lot of moral grey area in the book: people are pretty much bad or good, with only a few stragglers lingering in the middle. Interestingly, there are a lot of Jesus-lovin’, Bible-thumpin’ hypocrites on the bad side.

As a deeper allegory for the True Nature of Humanity or for global warming, Under the Dome doesn’t quite hit the bull’s-eye. King cheats too much with the specifics of the town that is portrayed. When it comes to keeping the action going, he probably was wise in having someone truly, insidiously Evil under the dome to speed up the decline of civilization, but psychologically more interesting might have been a slower slide into decay of a more morally ambiguous crowd. He cheats on the environmental aspect by having a meth lab complicate things, instead of stewing people in a prolonged local simulation of global warming. More grey area and a longer time-frame could have made for a more profound – if slower – story.

A general criticism of King tends to be that the denouements of his books don’t live up to the skilful build-up. Unfortunately, the same goes for this one. Without getting into specifics or spoiling too much: for a large part of the book, things seem to be building up to a direct confrontation between Rennie, Barbie and their respective posse. Though there are some scuffles and casualties, the two main men never really face off. The ultimate explanation for the dome is also a bit vague and silly but ultimately irrelevant to the meat of the story: human behavior under extreme circumstances.

Is it the best of King? Probably not. I prefer him a bit more creepy and my personal favorite is still It, which scared the pants of me, admittedly when I was a lot younger. And he has written books with more depth to them. But it is definitely a very entertaining read and should not be passed up by anyone who fancies sinking his mind into a big chunk of blood-speckled suspense.

Television Review: Death Note

I have seen some great anime movies (Spirited Away, My Neighbor Totoro, Grave of the Fireflies, etc.) but anime series have never really appealed to me. There must have been some I watched as a kid, though none I can actually remember much about. As a grown-up, I think it was mostly stuff like Pokemon and Dragon Ball that made me steer clear of the genre. They seemed too dumb and meaningless for someone who’s past puberty. When I think of those series, I picture a lot of close-ups of distorted faces – disfigured by intense emotion or possibly constipation – with energetic lines around them, meant to convey fast motion while in slow motion. Dragon Ball in particular seems to use the ‘soap’ formula for telling its continuing story: it tells a very intense story at a frustratingly mellow pace. Interior monologue and hysterics get in the way of forward momentum; it’s like someone is trying to tell a story, but the brakes are on.

Out of curiosity and to test my own prejudice, I recently decided to try out an anime series. Thematically there are a lot of anime aimed at ‘mature’ audiences like me, featuring extreme violence and more gratuitous, kinky nudity of the female variety than a gay guy like me could possibly endure. But I was looking for something with a little depth to it, like most of the best anime movies have. Googling around, I found a series that was in the ‘top favorite’ list of a lot of anime fans: Death Note.

Death Note is about a very intelligent but morally misguided student (Light Yagami) who finds the Death Note of the title. This is a notebook in which demons known as Shinigami write down the names of people who are to die. Shinigami’s Western equal would be the figure of Death, minus a scythe, plus a notebook and with an odd fondness for apples. Because Light has found the Death Note, he automatically becomes the owner of it and the Shinigami gets tied to him. The Death Note is governed by all sorts of interesting – though somewhat random – rules for the series to play around with. (For a listing, look here.) The basic rule is this: if you write down someone’s name in the notebook, he or she will die of a heart attack unless you specify a cause and time of death. Light ambitiously sets out to rid the world of Evil with it, offing criminals all over the place from the safety of his bedroom. He makes his intention known publically under the adopted identity ‘Kira’. His intent may seem noble, but pretty soon Light is corrupted by his own power and he starts to dream about having all of mankind cowering at his feet. His morals get trampled even more when he starts killing authorities who are on his trail.

Enter ‘L’. He is the leader of a special task force, formed to hunt down the enigmatic mass murderer Kira. Because L has figured out that Kira needs to see a face and know someone’s name to kill him, he stays hidden until he has put together a posse he can trust, among whom happens to be Light’s father, a police inspector. The plot thickens even further as a second Death Note pops up and a second killer starts imitating Light.

L is actually the most interesting character in the series in both looks and personality. He is lanky, barefoot, a bit awkward socially, has a weird way of sitting on a chair and is always eating something sweet. He can seem cold and uncaring, because reasoning and intellect rule over all else. The series is at its strongest in the beginning, when L and Kira are basically playing a lethal game of mental chess. Both are trying to outmaneuver each other, to get each other to make a fatal mistake and reveal himself.

The close-ups that annoyed me in anime do feature in Death Note and especially in the beginning it’s indeed the initially feared interior monologues that are driving the narrative, more than action. It actually works here though: the story doesn’t get boring, because the stakes are life and death and the cat and mouse game is very engrossing. Bu it does start to get obvious after a while that the chase is being stretched out too much. New factors are thrown in that distract from the basic set-up and dilute it. Some of the mini-arcs within the bigger arc are entertaining seen on their own, but disrupt the overall pacing.

About two thirds of the way into the series, there is a massive, daring twist. Unfortunately, it’s one that doesn’t pay off and one the series never fully recovers from. It loses momentum and for the last few episodes I found my attention wandering too much. I am not entirely sure if the plot became more convoluted towards the end, or if I just missed pieces of exposition here and there because I zoned out. The finale itself is satisfying even though the last part of the route there is a little logistically foggy and unbelievable. The ultimate fate of the main characters seems fitting, but doesn’t surprise, as there was a certain inevitability about it long beforehand. Without spoiling too much, the ending reveals the whole series to be a tragedy, so don’t expect people to end up skipping off into the sunset.

Even though Death Note lingers for too long and the series should have been cut by about ten episodes out of its 37 episode run, it would have been a tragedy squared if I’d missed out on the first two-thirds of the series. It works as pure entertainment, but there are also some interesting musings about morality and the finality of death. ‘Carpe diem’ seems to be what it boils down to: appreciate your life while it lasts. Give it a look, if only for proof that the pen can truly be mightier than the sword!

Television Review: The Vampire Diaries

I blame True Blood for getting me into The Vampire Diaries. My boyfriend needed a vampire fix in between the all too short seasons of True Blood, so we decided to add The Vampire Diaries to our watchlist. Though I carefully sidestepped the Twilight movies and have managed to avoid any amount of novels starring werewolves and vampires, I have ended up following ‘Dawson’s Creek with Fangs’, as some might call it. It is based on a series of books by L.J. Smith, which I will never read, and was developed into a series by Kevin Williamson, who also created the Creek series and wrote the first two Scream movies. His trademark is well-written peppy dialogue with a lot of wordplay and pop culture references. The episodes he writes himself do indeed feature that, though the average script for the series is noticeably less sharp.

Core of the series are Damon and Stefan Salvatore, brothers who were both turned into vampires in 1864 by the evil vixen Katherine, who happens to be the spitting image of Elena, a girl the siblings both meet and fall for in current day. There’s an explanation for Elena and Katherine looking the same, but let’s just say it’s complicated. (And let’s overlook the fact that the age difference between the Salvatores and their love interest is pretty damn creepy when you think about it.) This all happens in Mystic Falls, a town where the brothers own a mansion in which they lurk around moodily, from the first episode of the series onwards. There is a love triangle between the brothers and Elena, of course, and there is a lot of angst and romantic entanglement among the whole teenage (but really in their twenties) cast. At first the vampires seem to be the only ones out of whack in a fairly normal world, but soon there are witches, vampire hunters and rings that revive you if you die. Werewolves are also likely to put in a first appearance soon.

The series has two main narrative problems: the stakes seem low even when they are high (accidental pun there) and the series hasn’t figured out how to keep its main, popular bad guy around in a way that’s believable. To start with the first problem: those back-from-the-dead rings are a lazy narrative cheat, not to mention a somewhat silly one. In a recent episode, it was suggested that the reviving would only work if something or someone supernatural was involved in the wearer’s demise. So a vampire could twist your head around and you’d die for a bit and ultimately end up just fine, but if you’d trip and hit your head on a coffee table, you’d be toast. Apparently. A couple of times already, the writers have made a spectacle out of killing a main or regular character only to have them – ta-daa! – sit up with a jolt a couple of scenes later, none the worse for wear. That really takes the edge off the threat of mortality. Admittedly, some deaths in the series did take and some people stayed in the afterlife, but watching a death scene with the initial thought ‘Meh, maybe it won’t stick anyway.’ dulls the dramatic impact. Call it the ‘Comic Book Superhero Revolving Door of Death Syndrome’, as also seen on Heroes, where it was part of the decline of the series. The origin of these magic plot-device rings has not been revealed yet, but then the same goes for the rings the Salvatores wear to be able to walk around in daylight, thankfully not glittering Twilight-style as they do so. I wonder if an enigmatic mystic jeweler will soon be putting in an appearance.

The second problem is Damon (Ian Somerhalder), the cool, morally ambiguous and funny ‘bad’ Salvatore brother who gets all the best lines. There’s no doubt he is the most entertaining character and it’s clear he should be kept in the series, but he has done some fairly unforgivable things and been forgiven nonetheless. When one of the leads just mopes around for a couple of episodes when Damon kills (or at least tries to) one of their friends or relatives, you start to wonder why you as a viewer should care, since even the people on screen don’t seem to mind that much. The cast in general seems a bit too blasé about innocent bystanders falling by the wayside at least partly because of their own actions and the emotional impact of a life lost, doesn’t last much beyond a single episode. The good guys come off as irresponsible for letting a loose cannon like Damon run around and even go so far as to hang out with him in a semi-friendly way. The writers are pushing him out of the ‘bad’ zone and into a moral grey area lately, to make his prolonged presence believable, but he still takes the occasional detour across the ‘evil’ threshold. To make him too good would ruin the character, but somehow he needs to be forced into being a relatively good boy for the long term, against his more evil nature. Hey, it worked for Spike from Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, even if it took first sticking a chip into his brain that prevented him from hurting humans and then giving him his soul back. For The Vampire Diaries a witches’ curse might do the trick, as I think in this series vampires still have their soul.

Hopefully The Vampire Diaries will find a proper place for Damon and do away with cheap gimmicks that deflate the tension. The series is unlikely to stick in the mind after it’s all done and dusted years from now, but it makes for entertaining, if highly disposable, viewing.

Television Review: Medium (Seasons 1-6)

Medium is a guilty pleasure for me. Not because it is necessarily badly written or produced but because it is less edgy than the stuff I generally go for. To sum up the concept: psychic mom Allison Dubois (played by Patricia Arquette), her loving husband Joe and their three wholesome daughters deal with complications caused by mom’s gift, as she uses it to help Phoenix law enforcement solve crimes. In early episodes the emphasis was on the crimes, but over the course of six seasons the home front has been gaining more and more screen time. This is just as well, as the cases tend to be a bit formulaic and in Medium, home is really where the heart is.

Pretty much every episode starts with Allison waking up in a shock from a dream related to a crime past, present or future. Sometimes the dream is a simple fly-on-the wall observation of the act or of moments right before or after, but you can be sure you’re not being given the full picture. The perpetrator is rarely clear and the visions are often remarkably tricky and subjective, setting up a twist for the writers to pull out of their hat for the final act of the episode. It seems that Allison is meant to prevent further crime on the basis of the dreams, but the rules that govern them are confusing and inconsistent. It’s not really clear why the spirits don’t just spit out what’s on their mind but prefer to peel back the layers on their message bit by bit, in a series of dreams. Allison also sees the occasional ghost. These ghosts seem to know what’s coming up in the future from their vantage point, guiding or manipulating her one way or the other. Why these ghosts have it together more than the ones reaching out through her dreams is not explained. She also has the occasional vision when hearing someone talk or when holding an object. But this apparently happens only when a case would be dead in the water otherwise. In early seasons, it was stated that Allison’s power rarely - if ever - gave her insight into (or affected) people she knew personally, but as the focus of the series shifted to her family, so did her visions.

The more you watch Medium, the more you realize the modus operandi of the afterlife is molded to the needs of the plot of a specific episode. This makes the tension feel artificial, as you are aware you are being pretty blatantly manipulated by the writers. Additionally, once you have watched a bunch of episodes, you tend to get wise to what information is being distorted or left out early on. You’ll end up seeing the twist coming long before Allison does. Of course, the viewer has the unfair advantage of knowing Allison is in a television series, being moved through a plot, but figuring out the truth long before she does – time and time again - does make her seem a bit slow on the uptake.

Allison works on her cases with district attorney Manuel Devalos and detective Lee Scanlon. Neither of these characters is given a lot of depth or heart and mostly they serve to regurgitate plot points. Devalos is a straightforward, moral man who lost a daughter and truly loves his wife. Scanlon is a taciturn, rigid guy, with limited emotional range and commitment issues. Neither of them overflows with charm. They have odd lapses in skill, sometimes forgetting about fingerprints or DNA evidence which you realize – once it is revealed to you how a crime really happened – should have been found earlier on in the investigation.

The true fun is to be had with Allison’s husband Joe (played perfectly by Miguel Sandoval) and the three daughters, who are moving through their growing pains as the seasons roll by and are dealing with the psychic abilities they inherited from their mom. The eldest is sensitive and all about boys and make-up, the middle one is willful and goofy - more frogs and snails than sugar and spice – and the youngest one is quiet and shy (so far). Having kids on a show who are charming and funny without being obnoxious or precocious is a pretty rare occurrence and Medium has nailed it. My personal favorite is the middle child, though a friend of mine disagrees and gets irritated by the ‘funny’ one, so personal mileage may vary. Joe is also someone you care about, as he tackles his unusual home life with an entertaining and believable combination of pragmatism, humor and worry.

What makes the show work is the contrast of this charming, happy family with the big, bad outside world in which horrible crimes occur. In a sense, the writers hold the family hostage, constantly threatening to have something happen to one or more of its members. It is an empty threat, because they know it would destroy what works about the show if they carried through on it, but you still care because the characters are so damn involving. Occasionally the show can feel a bit static, because nothing really changes within the family as the crimes-of-the-week are solved and forgotten.

The creator of the show is Glenn Gordon Caron, who also created Moonlighting. There aren’t that many similarities between the series, but there is a feel for funny-but-realistic dialogue that carries over and a willingness to experiment playfully with the format of the show. Oddly, there is a ‘real’ Allison Dubois with a husband and three daughters, an alleged psychic on whom Caron based the series. She has written a couple of books about the role she played in solving various crimes, though the police denies having worked with her. This by itself doesn’t discredit her, as law enforcement can’t exactly go to a jury and admit their evidence was gathered by way of a psychic. But a lot of the stories she tells in the books were also discredited by regular people who were involved in them. She is somewhat aggressively dismissive of skeptics and has stated that the portrayal of her family in Medium gives a fairly good impression of her home life. If that is indeed the case and she does indeed have dreams and visions like the ones in the series, she might want to ask those in the great beyond to stop being so damn cryptic and give her something to undeniably prove her powers once and for all.