Medium The Fourth Season Review

Posted by eric | Date: 2 Sep | Categories: Medium, TV On DVD

Release Date: September 9th, 2008
Genre: Crime Drama, Sci-Fi
Price: $41.99 on Amazon
Run Time: 682 Minutes
Publisher: Paramount
Starring: Patricia Arquette, Jake Webber, Miguel Sandoval, David Cubitt, Sofia Vassilieva, Maria Lark
Special Features: Deleted Scenes, Joe’s Crayon Dream, Introducing Cynthia Keener, The Making of Medium Season 4, Gag Reel

The fourth season of Medium continues to follow psychic Allison Dubois who has vivid dreams about people who have recently been killed. Her life is overturned when her secret gets out. She ends up losing her job along with her boss Manuel Devalos. Meanwhile Joe also loses his job which puts the family in financial troubles. Allison works through it all as she tries to bring down more criminals with her unique abilities.

As some of you probably already know I am not a huge fan of crime dramas. The main reason I don’t really like crime dramas is that they are rarely original. The crime drama genre has to be the most unoriginal genre on television. Pretty much every single crime drama is a clone of another crime drama with a tiny new twist. Overall I would say Medium avoids some of these problems but still suffers from some as well.

If you have never seen Medium before it is structured like most other crime dramas. Each week there is usually a new case (sometimes they are two part episodes). Allison uses her dreams to help the police solve crimes. Along with a weekly case there is a season long storyline. This season’s storyline deals with the families financial troubles and Joe’s solution to them.

Overall I thought both types of stories were above average. The weekly cases weren’t extremely original but were well produced. Allison’s ability at least breaths some originality into these crimes that have been rehashed over and over again. As far as the season long storyline is concerned I thought it was decent. I thought the idea was good but it got a little old toward the end of the season in my opinion.

Since this is a DVD set after all I obviously need to address the special features. While there isn’t a ton of special features I think fans of the show should enjoy them. First there are some deleted scenes. I have never really been a huge fan of deleted scenes and the deleted scenes in this set didn’t really change my mind. Second there is Joe’s Crayon Dream which details how Joe’s cartoonish dream sequence was created (it is actually pretty interesting). This special feature is around 10 minutes long. Third is Introducing Cynthia Keener which is a special feature about the new character for this season and how the character was created. This special feature is also around 10 minutes long. The longest special feature (around 20 minutes) is The Making of Medium Season 4. This special feature pretty much goes through all the episodes of the season and brings up unique facts about each episode. Finally there is a gag reel. The gag reel really isn’t anything special. It is pretty much your average gag reel. If you are a fan of the show I would recommend the special features but if you aren’t I would recommend that you take a pass on the special features.

If you have never seen Medium before you are probably wondering whether you should even think about picking up this season of the show. While there are some references to older episodes I think you could easily pick up the show in the fourth season. As long as you understand the basic concept of the show you should be fine.

Overall I thought Medium is a little above average crime drama. I like the twist on the genre and I think it keeps Medium away from all the repetitiveness in the genre. If you are a crime drama fan and haven’t seen Medium yet I would recommend that you pick it up. If you are a fan of Medium I would recommend that you pick up the fourth season. With a combination of solid episodes and pretty good special features any fan of the show should enjoy the fourth season of Medium on DVD.