After our epic three-hour long “How To Make a Killing in Big Business” extravaganza, NBC inexplicably decided to follow it up with a completely unrelated episode. I don’t know if they’re trying to figure out whether they want to be a procedural or a more serialized show, but it was kind of weird to have two new episodes back to back and have the second one be completely unrelated to the past several that have aired. With that said, it was definitely an interesting episode.
Patricia Arquette was largely missing from the middle of this episode, replaced, naturally, by George Bluth himself, Jeffrey Tambor. Obviously, having Allison inhabit his body was a little out there, but I’ve got to say: Tambor did a damn good job playing her.
It’s been so long since I’ve seen Patricia Arquette in anything but Medium, so I can’t remember if she always has this subdued, out-of-breath murmuring thing going on, or if it’s just a character choice. Either way, Tambor nailed it. I’m sure part of what made it so good is that we’re used to the way Allison Dubois is written, so Tambor was saying some very familiar lines. Regardless, I could imagine Patricia Arquette saying every single thing he was, and it was fascinating.
For her part, Arquette didn’t do quite as good of a job playing Tambor. While Tambor just matched the cadence and the tone of her voice, she actually deepened hers, making her sound sort of like a drunken pirate. An older dude inhabited her body, but it didn’t make her walk like an old man, or pee standing up, so why would it make her speak in a deeper voice? Luckily that part of the episode didn’t last very long, because it just wasn’t working for me.
The other interesting thing about this episode was getting to delve a little bit into Marie’s visions. The littlest Dubois doesn’t have a whole lot to do very often, but tonight she opened the show. Sure, her dreams were probably born more out of stress than any “sensitivities,” but she was wearing the exact same peapod costume in her dream as the one that was made for her several days later. Hopefully poor Marie will be able to stick to school-related dreams for a little while instead of those involving massacres and other terrible things like all the other females in her household.
Overall, I really like how the family is being utilized more in recent Medium episodes. The casting on this show is impeccable, and they really lucked out with the kids. Now that they’re all getting older, as a viewer I can’t wait to see what happens as their psychic abilities develop. Poor Joe must already feel like he’s out of the loop; I have a feeling it’s only going to get worse for him.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on May 14, 2009 @ 09:00 EST5EDT
