Stars: Patricia Arquette, Jake Weber, Miguel Sandoval, Sofia Vassilieva, Maria Lark, David Cubitt, Miranda Carabello
Writers: Glenn Gordon Caron and Craig Sweeny & Robert Doherty
Director: Peter Werner
Network: CBS, airs Friday nights @ 8:00 p.m.
Original Telecast: January 21, 2010

It’s so hard to wrap up a long-running series, be faithful to the core values of it and still satisfy fan expectations. It’s even harder when your series comes to an end quicker than you would have liked or expected.

The latter is the case of MEDIUM. It only made it through a half-season this year before CBS pulled the plug after seven years (five of those were spent on NBC, two on CBS).

This at least gave creator Glenn Gordon Caron time to craft an actual finale, rather than leaving the show on a limbo note.

Since the show has largely been standalone episodes, with occasional serialized threads running throughout, Caron didn’t need multiple episodes to finish off existing story arcs, which is good.

In fact, true to form, Caron decided to do some major time jumps and twists to deliver a MEDIUM episode that stays true to form to the show’s essence some seven years later.

The series follows Allison Dubois (Patricia Arquette), a psychic who aids the D.A. in criminal cases – usually through her cryptic and often puzzling dreams. She has a loving husband Joe (Jake Weber) and three daughters who also share her gift in some form.

In the finale “Me Without You,” a plane crash kills Joe and devastates Allison’s life. The episode jumps ahead seven years later to deal with the aftermath. Allison has now graduated law school and involved in a major criminal case – but strangely, the case somehow ties to Joe with the potential that he’s still alive.

There are some great twists along the way as Allison finally gets the real information through her dreams she needs and the last six minutes or so of the episode time jumps again 41 years later for a very satisfying and emotional moment [sorry, I’m not going to release any spoilers here].

It’s a pretty simple conclusion to a somewhat groundbreaking and offbeat show which is loosely based on real like psychic Allison Dubois.

Throughout its run, Caron continually tweaked and perverted the TV genre mixing in so many different textures and elements over the years (from horror, suspense, comedy, etc). that MEDIUM was a show that looked like nothing out there and nothing will look like it afterward.

At its core was the strong relationship and foundation between Allison and Joe. It was the heart of the show and it provided one of the few functional husband/wife relationships on TV. Both Arquette and Weber were so good at playing their roles and the relationship, that it was satisfying that the finale “Me Without You” was all about them.

Yes, it felt like a cheat and horrible thing to do to fans to have Joe die in a plane crash five minutes into the episode – but as fans have known all along with MEDIUM, nothing is ever easy as it seems with this unique series.

MEDIUM is over and it had an amazing seven-year run. It survived cancellation by one network and gained a two-year reprieve with additional stories that continued to showcase the quality and care that went into the show. It will be missed and the finale proved you don’t need a full season to lead up to an ending. Sometimes, all you need is an emotional response to pay thanks to the fans that believed in you and stuck by you all this time – and for that, we have Caron for wrapping things up the MEDIUM way.

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CLICK HERE for EXCLUSIVE interviews with JAKE WEBER and the girls of MEDIUM

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