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"I SLEUTH DEAD PEOPLE"
- NBC's MEDIUM
by Christine Alice Corcos
NBC has launched a new weekly
series from Glenn Gordon Caron featuring Patricia Arquette as
Allison Dubois, an Arizona housewife and former law office intern,
who claims to communicate with the dead. In the pilot, Allison's
husband Joe (Jake Weber) an aerospace engineer and skeptic, tries
to help her come to terms with her odd abilities. She is unhappy
with the way her life is developing. Approaching the ancient
age of thirty, she feels too old to go to law school, the original
plan, even though she has secured an internship at the local
DA's office, where they seem to like her, and where apparently
she can continue to work after she begins her law school career.
 After Allison tells Joe about
her latest visions, which come to her in a disturbing dream,
he faxes an account of them to the Texas Rangers and they respond,
saying they'd like to talk to her. Apparently, her vision is
pretty close to a recent incident, and the Rangers think she
"knows something."
The major creative problems with Medium are that is the
writing and plotting are trite, and creator Caron leaves absolutely
no mystery about whether Allison will actually finger the guilty
party. Of course she will; she knows whodunit. That's the trouble
with having a psychic as your detective. Indeed, in an interview
with People magazine, the real-life Joe says, "When you're
married to a medium, you don't lie." Anyone who has seen
more than a few "psychic detective" or "medium"
movies or television shows know that the psychic, if s/he is
"genuine" is often disbelieved by the police, who think
she has inside information; thus s/he loses valuable time while
s/he establishes his or her bona fides. Real life psychic detectives
claim they undergo the same scrutiny. Real life police officers
claim they waste valuable time tracking down useless psychic
leads, just as the assistant DA (Balinda Alexander) complains
in the pilot episode's early scene.
In order to make Medium palatable, and interesting, to
the audience, developer Caron (Moonlighting) has to give
the television Allison many more powers than any real life psychic
could ever deliver. For one thing the tv Allison has the ability
to dream or picture very clear images. Real life psychic mediums
(and not all psychics claim to be mediums) almost never claim
to do so. Instead they tend to assert that their visions are
figurative, partial, and must be interpreted. In the episode
"Night of the Wolf" (aired January 24, 2005) Allison
actually picks up and comforts a little boy who materializes
as a physical being, and whom her six year old daughter can see
though he has been dead for five years. Until now we have not
seen either television or films make the claim that materialization
or "trance" mediums could do such a thing. John Edward,
James van Praagh, Sylvia Browne, and Rosemary Altea certainly
don't. Yet here is the fictionalized Allison Dubois touching,
holding a six year old ghost as material as her own daughter.
Ectoplasm went out with the trance mediums of the fifties, but
for purposes of Allison's credibility with the D.A.'s office
we need to see truly supernatural abilities on Allison's part.
As another medium tells Allison in the pilot, we need to see
that Allison is a rare medium indeed.
And credibility is the point. Prosecutor Manuel Devalos (Miguel
Sandoval) constantly bemoans the fact that he employs a psychic,
even as he exploits her talents. He hides her away in a broom
closet sized office, which she shares with a police sketch artist.
Devalos cautions her not to tell anyone precisely what kind of
consulting she does for him. That would spell doom, since he
would lose all bona fides with his staff, with the judges, with
the juries, with the press, with the public-it would certainly
be a disaster. Yet every episode thumps us over the head with
Allison's gifts, with her honesty, with her reliability, and
with her ability to come through in a crisis. Her visions are
dead on (sorry). Let's get some of those skeptical scientists
in from the local University to test her. In real life, the nearest
scientist available is Gary Schwartz, of the University of Arizona,
who has actually tested the real Allison DuBois and considers
her genuine. However, others who have examined the results of
his tests consider his protocols flawed, partly because of researcher
bias (see references, below).
In my own research into the work of psychics and trance mediums,
and their interactions with the law, I have yet to come across
contemporary practitioners who claim to have visions of nearly
the quality that the tv Allison has, especially when she is awake.
She talks to dead people constantly. Her dead people are just
like the live people I see every day, maybe even more animated.
They have substance. Their messages are amazingly clear. If real
life mediums could deliver on such claims, they need never fear
fraud charges and we need never worry that our police departments
might hire them to solve cold cases. Indeed, we'd never have
cold cases at all. We'd never have mistaken verdicts. We'd never
have innocent people on death row. We might not need lawyers
or judges or courtrooms, or Innocence Projects. But, according
to the People magazine interview cited below, the Texas Rangers
refuse to "confirm they even worked with DuBois." Not
exactly a ringing endorsement. Compare the insights TV Allison
has with the ones People magazine quotes. TV Allison works with
spirits who appear in specific places who point her toward actual
clues. But according to that People magazine piece, when she
worked with the Texas Rangers, she described the suspect and
accomplices and predicted the body would be found within 5 years;
it was found 4 years and 10 months later. Many bodies do eventually
turn up, given enough time. Psychics aren't the only people able
to predict such eventualities.
The big legal roadblock Allison's employer has is finding an
independent source for some, if not all, of her clues. The need
for "proof", that is, real life evidence, as opposed
to what we see through Allison's eyes, once again holds the legal
system, the defense bar, and sometimes the protections of the
Constitution, up to ridicule. In one episode, DA Devalos tells
Allison that he can't get a search warrant based on her certain
knowledge that a witness is describing the wrong suspect. Of
course he is correct, but he goes ahead, obtains the search warrant,
citing an anonymous and completely fictitious informant (probably
trading on his own credibility with the local neutral and detached
magistrate), and the case proceeds to trial. The defense attorney
attacks Allison on the stand, since she is the person who provided
the information justifying the warrant. The attorney asks her
who was her "anonymous source", since she has only
been working in the DA's office a few months. How could she have
developed a trusting relationship with anyone to the extent that
that person would give her such information? In a low tone of
voice, Allison speaks a name from his past-the name of the person
he paid to take his bar exam for him. She blackmails him into
ceasing his line of questioning. Hooray! A victory for the saintly
prosecution and a defeat for the evil defense. The real killer
is eventually convicted, we assume. But the D.A. should never
have gotten his search warrant to begin with, and the defense
attorney was right to try to get the evidence suppressed. Is
this the message we really want to see promulgated? More bashing
of the Fourth Amendment? The heroine's blackmail of opposing
counsel? The prosecuting attorney's lies? Should psychics be
putting their gifts to use by any means possible for the ends
they identify? Are they the sole judges of what is best?
This problem is only one of the legal and policy issues I see
imbedded within Medium. Another is the active promotion
of the notion that tax money might profitably be spent on the
use of psychic detectives and psychic consultants on crime solving.
Might viewers, watching this show, be led to believe that psychics
could actually help the police solve crimes by visiting crime
scenes and handling evidence? Some current psychics claim to
do so and those claims are the basis for at least some of the
activities presented on this program. But law enforcement officials
who allow non-law enforcement trained personnel to participate
as Allison does are putting both the cases and their jobs at
risk. The fact is that few, if any, police departments actually
admit to using psychics. Most officials that psychics simply
waste time predicting that bodies or missing persons will be
found near water, or trees, or buildings with red roofs. Experienced
detectives combing particular areas, can do as well, and will
not raise false hopes among the families and friends of the victims.
Medium is moderately well-acted, adequately written and
will be around in Fall, 2005 for a second season. Its success
indicates psychic phenomena and magical thinking continues to
fascinate the U. S. public. I continue to despair.
References
Allison DuBois website
Encounters with the Paranormal
(Kendrick Frazier, ed., Prometheus Press, 1998).
Carla McClain, Varied
Readings on Arizona Psychic, Arizona Daily Star, January
17, 2005
Medium website
Gary Schwartz, The Afterlife
Experiments (2002).
Alex Tresniowski, Natasha Stoynoff,
and Rebecca Paley, She Sees Dead People, People, January 31,
2005 at 81.
Posted March 4, 2005
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