Sonja Flemming/CBS Patricia Arquette (right) in a scene from “Me Without You,” the final episode of “Medium.”For seven seasons, first on NBC and then on CBS, “Medium” put across some of prime time’s most outlandish story lines by grounding them in one of television’s most believable marriages. So it was fitting that the series, a combination of paranormal murder mystery and domestic dramedy, crossed over to the TV hereafter on Friday night with a series finale that was narratively challenged but emotionally satisfying. It didn’t take a medium to predict that there would be tears.
The final episode, presumably prepared in a rush after CBS’s abrupt midseason cancellation of the show, was clumsy, overly sentimental at times and infernally clever. (Severe spoiler alert here if you haven’t
seen it.)
Beginning with the apparent death by plane crash of the loyal and long-suffering husband, Joe (Jake Weber), it exploited the show’s familiar pattern of dreams and counter-dreams
by the psychic crime fighter Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette) to keep us guessing about Joe’s fate.
It was possible, and in fact mandatory, to hope until nearly the end of the episode that Allison would wake to a reality in which everyone lived happily ever after. That didn’t happen, a choice that may have infuriated some longtime fans but was entirely in keeping with the pragmatic, realistic way in which the marriage had been depicted over the years. A closing montage of the main cast members breaking character may have been cheesy, but what the heck? Few shows develop as convincing an illusion of family as “Medium” did over the years, and it was nice to see them signing off.
Ms. Arquette, playing a character based on the real-life “medium” Allison Dubois, was the series’s star and won an Emmy Award in 2005. But what made the show distinctive — providing the ballast of real life for the psychic flights of fancy — were the performances of the child actors who played her daughters and particularly the work of Mr. Weber, an underappreciated actor who was consistently terrific in a difficult and not particularly rewarding role. The final episode said it all: when the producers needed to amp up the emotions to their highest level, the first thing they did was kill off Joe.
The “Medium” finale drew 7.8 million viewers, an entirely respectable number on a Friday night. The show’s average of close to seven million viewers would be enough to keep a lot of series going, but those viewers were too old and the show, paying salaries to a relatively large number of actors who had been around for all seven seasons, was probably seen as being too expensive. On TV the nice blond woman from the district attorney’s office tells you when it’s time to go, but in the real world it’s the people in accounting.