music, books, love and kindness

(DO NOT READ if you watch "Medium" and haven't seen the finale yet!)





I just finished watching the series finale of "Medium." I don't normally say this, but I'm going to anyway: WTF?  I started watching already sad to see the show go since it's one of my favorites, but by the time the credits rolled I was sad, very disappointed and rather angry. The writers and producers gave a terrific show bleak and mostly tragic closure when it should given it something more buoyant and "upward and onward."

Those of us who love "Medium" watched tonight as Allison mourned the loss of her husband for seven years. And then, just when all hope was gone, she discovered he somehow survived a horrible plane crash and washed up on a beach in Mexico...but wait, that turned out to be false hope because Allison was really just dreaming and Joe (her husband) woke up her (in a rather abrupt and coldly detached manner, I thought) to tell her he was, indeed, completely, without a doubt, "this is no dream" dead.

Those seven years never happened and it was actually just minutes after Joe died during his return flight from a business flight in Hawaii.

If you don't watch "Medium" this probably doesn't make much sense. Of course, I'm tired and in a bad mood, so I'm not sure I'm writing in a clear or direct manner anyway.

Maybe I should put it this way: tonight's finale should have been warm and fuzzy and left devoted viewers with the beloved and familiar image of what, for the past seven seasons, has been a mostly happy family doing family-like things in a way that is more like what a real family would do than a tv one. Modern film and tv is so bent on constantly having that dark edge on things that it seems like "warm and fuzzy" is somehow dirty and useless.

Yes, "Medium" has often had a dark side when it comes to its crimes and the people behind them, but the family itself? No.

I wanted warm and fuzzy. I wanted Allison and Joe and the girls to have another crazy morning of hurried breakfast and "who's driving the girls to school today?"...for there to be several more mornings like that in the Dubois family's future...for Joe and Allison to still have their healthy marital arguments...for Allison to wake Joe up because she had a bad dream.

Instead, though on a much, much less intense level, I felt the way I do when I wake from dreaming of a departed loved one's miraculous return: depleted and despondent that the bleaker version, not the pleasant one in my dreams, is the true version of what happened.