Medium Liveblogging: Suspicions and Certainties (MED-002)

Episode Name: Suspicions and Certainties
Episode Number: 002 (1.02)
MED-002 Summary | All Episodes

Some time ago, I said I would be liveblogging Seasons 1 and 2 as a tasty lead-up to Season 3. So far, I have liveblogged all of one episode: the pilot. Have no fear, Medium fans. Liveblogging comin’ atcha. Lots of it. Now.

Naked bodies making sweet love in the dark. Sexy! A bit unexpected for the beginning of a Medium episode.

Whoops. The police arrive and storm the guy’s hotel room. He jabbers nonstop to the woman that it’s going to be okay and admonishes the SWAT guys to be gentlemen and not embarrass the lady. After the police drag him away, they try to get the woman to come out from under the covers only to discover…she’s a two week old corpse!

Euw! He was kissing her and rubbing his body all over hers! Gross!

One of the SWAT guys screams his bloody head off, at which point Allison wakes up screaming as does Bridgette who is sleeping between Allison and Joe.

Bridgette: Mommy, you’ve gotta stop doin’ that please stop doin’ that!

Joe: Yeah, mommy, could you maybe stop doing that?

Next it’s morning and the girls bicker as Bridgette flicks boogers at Ariel outside their parent’s closed bedroom door. Allison rolls over in bed – and comes face to face with Joe’s dad. Joe’s dead dad. He admonishes her for not jumping out of bed because her kids “need” her.

Father-in-law: I’ll be damned if I know what my son sees in you.

Allison: That’s okay. You are already damned.

Joe is singing…the Mr. Rogers Neighborhood song? Allison is depressed and decides she’ll stay in bed all day. Joe tells her depression is nothing but unchanneled anger.

Hey, good one! I always heard it was postponed decisions. Oh wait, I think that’s procrastination. Ha!

Backstory trivia: Allison is 33.

Tags: episode 2, liveblogging, medium recap, medium, medium nbc, season 1

Allison is bummed the D.A.’s office hasn’t called to use her as a consultant. To cheer her up, Joe asks her to get a sitter for the evening so they can go to dinner with friends.

Allison: Dinner with four rocket scientists and their lovely wives. Oh joy. I can barely keep my legs together at the mere thought of it.

Joe: That’s okay. I’m not much interested in you with your legs together anyway.

LMAO! Some of this dialogue completely slipped by me the first time I saw the show. Ah, how refreshing to experience it all again.

Cut to D.A. Duvalos in court getting the bad news that the judge is calling a mistrial because the jury is hopelessly deadlocked. Duvalos is a tad pissed with the jury consultant he hired to make sure they picked a jury that would convict.

They paid thousands of dollars to her? I had no idea jury consultants were so pricey.

Consultant: I don’t think I like your tone.

Duvalos: Oh well then I guess we’re even. I don’t like your work.

Cut to Allison not watching an old game show yet guessing the correct answer, and then looking longingly at the booze in the liquor cabinet. Duvalos’ office calls in the nick of time!

Duvalos asks Allison to walk him through what she does one more time. She tells him she has been seeing dead people since she was little and also having dreams that come true. Duvalos can’t use any of that in a court of law, but what about mind-reading? Can Allison guess what people are thinking? What their attitude about something might be?

Euw. Back to creepy necrophiliac guy from the beginning of the show. Duvalos tells Allison this guy suffocates his victims and hangs onto the bodies, having sex with them over a period of days and sometimes weeks. He asks Allison to help him find a jury that will give him the maximum sentence. He is very clear that he is asking Allison to help him send a man to his death, since they have the death penalty in Arizona. Then he asks her to keep her involvement a secret from everyone except her husband.

Allison: So now it’s lying and sending people to their death. (laughs)

In the ecstasy of finally being given some work by Duvalos, Allison jumps Joe’s bones as soon as he gets home from work and before they go out to dinner. On the drive to the restaurant, Joe reminds Allison who all the players are and just as I am wondering why Allison-the-psychic needs these reminders, he says: “Psychic with a bad memory. Go figure.”

He then asks Allison what she’s going to say when one of his rocket scientist co-workers asks what she does for a living.

Ooh, tension! Allison gets bitchy and asks him if he’s worried she’s going to embarrass him and sort of spits at him. It reminds me of when little kids stick out their tongues and make raspberries. Plttttttttt.

One of Joe’s co-workers is bursting with pride at his therapist wife’s recent breakthrough with an eleven year old boy who hadn’t spoken for five years. Her therapy is, “Very Annie Sullivan. Very Miracle Worker.”

He encourages her to tell the story about how she stayed locked away with the boy in a cabin, food under lock and key, blah blah blah. She is clearly uncomfortable talking about it. I wonder why? What a great accomplishment. The people from the Dr. Phil show even called her. How do we know this? Because the husband keeps butting in every other sentence! Dude. Shut up and let the woman talk, will ya?

As she relates the story, actually the husband relates most of it because he won’t shut up, Allison sees what really happened. Husband says no one slept for 37 hours. Allison sees wife asleep on the couch with the boy sneaking downstairs to get some food. He sees her boobs, or at least the great majority of them that are falling out of her top as she sleeps on the sofa, and says, “Jesus.”

His first word in five years. Everyone thinks she’s a genius. Meanwhile, you, me, Allison, and the therapist know it was just a happy accident. The therapist asks Allison what she does.

Allison: I work part-time at the district attorney’s office. It’s very boring.

Joe looks relieved. On the drive home, Allison tells Joe the Annie Sullivan and the Jesus Boy story didn’t necessarily happen the way the husband told it. Joe rightfully asks when she went from having impressions about things to being certain about things, and if that’s what she’ll be doing for the D.A. next week.

Joe: Is that what you’re selling? Certainty? Doesn’t that bother you a little?

Ah, marital bliss. Sometimes your spouse is the only one willing to call you on things. He points out things like how she didn’t know Duvalos was going to call that morning or that Ariel’s school trip was going to be cancelled, so how can she be certain she knows what those potential jurors are thinking?

As I am wondering this, too, he brings up something that didn’t occur to me. Okay, what if she does know what they are thinking and they do convict him. What if it turns out he is innocent? How will she feel about sending an innocent man to his death?

Joe: Will you listen to yourself, Allison?

Allison: That’s what I’m trying to do.

Cut to creepy necrophiliac guy showing concern that his gal-pal may be getting too much sun. As he spritzes her with water from the hose, the camera pans up to show her head is encased in plastic and her dead eyes are wide open.

Enough with the grossing me out stuff!

Back at the D.A.’s office, Duvalos gives Allison mountains of files and explains the jury selection process. He is so polite. I just love him. Allison is bummed she won’t get to meet the prospective jurors in person. All 144 of them? How about we narrow it down a bit first, m’kay? The original jury consultant has color-coded the files: red for no way, green for we want that juror.

Ooh, terminology: a deadhead is someone they absolutely won’t accept, someone who will never vote for capital punishment; strikes are free passes, people you can say no to without having to explain yourself.

Ooh, jury selection strategy: the judge will probably throw out most of the deadheads without prompting. Save your strikes for the people you think the other side is desperate for that the judge might not kick out. Meanwhile, the other side will be doing the same thing.

Duvalos asks her what she thinks after his explanation and is disappointed she isn’t getting some kind of vibe. She explains it’s all new to her, this working with inanimate objects business.

Allison: If I tell you something, I want to be certain.

Duvalos, on his way out: I’m up to my eyeballs with people who are certain. It would just be nice to meet someone who is right for a change.

Allison picks up the first file and we hear the juror’s own voice reading the questionnaire. Allison puts the same color-coded sticker on the first few files, but then we get to Maxine Harris. Born November 3rd, 1970. Baptist. Single. Data entry supervisor. Homeowner. Reads the newspaper.

We see her sitting next to her mother’s hospital bed, where she spends most of her time since her mother had a massive stroke two years ago. Maxine believes in the sanctity of life. Maxine believes things happen for a reason. Maxine seems very much like someone who would not vote for the death penalty.

Then, wham! She breaks down emotionally and completely trashes the hospital room before collapsing in a crying heap in the corner.

Next thing we see is Maxine sitting calmly in the chair next to her mother’s hospital bed. It was all in her mind! Allison places a green sticky next to the original jury consultant’s red one.

Allison’s cell phone rings and she is surprised when Joe tells her it’s twenty past nine.

Joe: Do you remember where you live?

Allison: I’m seeing a house. I’m seeing a guy in his underwear. I’m seeing lots of dishes in the sink.

Ha!

Allison tells Duvalos about Maxine and a few others, explaining why she disagrees with the previous consultant. The fireman’s best friend’s brother is on death row, so he is a No when you would normally think a law and order guy would be a Yes. The school teacher was raped 20 years ago and the guy got off and went on to rape three more women before getting caught. He’s up for parole later this year. She is a definite Yes.

Duvalos asks her to come to court with him the next day to meet some of these people.

Joe: Stop smiling like that. The moonlight’s bouncing off your teeth and keeping me awake.

Allison: It was pretty great being me today.

Then Joe proceeds to rain all over her parade by asking if she is really SURE. What a downer, man.

Cut to creepy necrophiliac guy bringing a girl home for a 3-way with his girlfriend. He picks up a bat as he turns on the light and bashes the girl in the back of the head just as she catches sight of the already-dead girlfriend on the couch. At least this time we don’t see already-dead girl. Allison wakes up.

In court, Duvalos is very sad he has no strikes left and must accept the last juror, Maxine Harris. Heh.

The real jury consultant gives him the what-for, saying she cannot accept responsibility for an outcome when she was not given the opportunity to participate in the events leading up to that outcome.

Duvalos: I don’t recall you accepting any responsibility when you did participate.

The jury consultant drops her cigarette on the courthouse veranda and squashes it before walking away in disgust.

Duvalos calls after her: That’s, uh, against the law, you know!

He is excited that everything Allison told him turned out to be true on cross-examination of the jurors.

Another dream: creepy necrophiliac guy is polling a gondola and telling Allison she was wrong about Maxine Harris. He got the hell out of Dodge as soon as the jury came back deadlocked.

In the morning, however, Duvalos calls to tell her the guy was convicted. Whew! But wait, Allison sees him on TV late that same night and…it’s not the same guy she’s been seeing in her dreams! Nooooooooo.

She calls Duvalos in a panic, waking him up. How cute he is in his PJ’s. He tells her they definitely got the right guy no matter whose face she saw in her dreams. Joe tells her the same thing when he wakes up in the middle of the night for once not due to Allison sitting bolt upright in bed. He finds her watching an old movie in the livingroom, drinking. She tells him she feels like the chemist who set out to prevent heart attacks and accidentally discovered Viagra.

Joe: That man is a very fine chemist.

Joe and Allison go to dinner again with the same group as before. It turns out the therapist didn’t do any of the publicity they talked about previously because she decided one good result does not a protocol make. (Way to save yourself future humiliation, babe.)

This time, Joe is the bragging spouse telling the group Allison was very involved in the big necrophiliac trial that, of course, everyone has heard about. Kudos to Allison! She shushes him because they’re not supposed to talk about it. Then she opens her menu as sees…the face of creepy necrophiliac guy that she had been seeing in her dreams! It’s the gondola guy on the Italian restaurant’s menu. The restaurant she has been to once a week for three weeks in a row.

Allison quietly to Joe: Psychic with a bad memory.