The disturbing moral lessons of Numb(three)rs and Medium

My fandom for actor Peter MacNicol ensured that I would tune in to Numb(three)rs when it premiered some six years back. I found the show to be a passable procedural, barely worth mentioning, let alone remembering. Still, the inertia of fiction kept me watching for the next few seasons, even as I began to grow unsettled by the show’s lacklustre storytelling, terribly-used science, and its habit of borrowing its plots rather shamelessly from other shows and popular films.

This came to a head at the beginning of season five, when an episode so closely remade the plot of a film that the writers’ arrogance triggered a kind of reflexive disgust in me, and I haven’t watched an episode since (save for the time Gregg Henry was on, because hey, Gregg Henry).

Thinking back I can’t imagine the episode was as bad as I remember, but its obviousness was just too much to bear. If you don’t believe me, just check out ‘Blowback’, or as I call it: “The Numb(three)rs theatre players present: LA Confidential - The TV Show!”.

Is Medium Screwing With Me?

Or am I just that bad at math?

In a late-last-season episode of Medium the oldest daughter, whose name escapes me at the moment, was taking the SATs (or a practice test, whatever), and a single math question appeared on screen. Being obsessive about fake books produced for TV shows, I captured an image of it:

Okay, am I crazy, or are none of those the correct answer?

It Seems that the Writers of Medium Watch Criminal Minds

Yes, every story has already been told, and it’s only natural to steal a good idea here or there, and most importantly, when there’s three shows on the air that deal exclusively with serial killers, there’s going to be some overlap, but last week’s episode of Medium demonstrated a basic lack of the care necessary to avoid committing outright plagiarism.

The episode concerned a fake Zodiac Killer, and the author who had written a book about him. The author is played by Marcus Giamatti, who is Paul Giamatti’s brother, and who I always confuse with Beardo from the show ‘Bones’. This aspect of the storyline is fairly close to the true story of the Zodiac case, with Giamatti playing a Graysmith type who’d spent his life tracking down a serial killer, only to have the killer die before he could confirm the man’s identity.

When the murders start up again there are only two possibilities – 1: Giamatti’s doing the killing. Or 2: His investigation was wrong, and the real killer’s still out there.

Of course, since this is an episode of Medium, we don’t have to wait around to discover the truth, they just flat out tell us immediately through one of Allison’s dreams that Giamiatti lied, and the suspect didn’t confess on his deathbed. Which means the real killer is still out there… But who could it be?

Medium drops the ball in the most spectacular way possible.

The Inside was not a beloved television show. Already having one strike against it by being about profilers, it suffered from a lead actress whose ability to emote hovered somewhere between Tori Spelling and a block of wood shaped like Tori Spelling. The rest of the cast, including Adam Baldwin, Peter Coyote, and the hilarious sister from Wonderfalls all did a stellar job, and the scripts, while not significantly above par, were certainly better written than any of the more popular procedurals it was up against at the time. It might have done better had it not been aired in the middle of the summer with no promotion, but Fox hates quality television, so what are you doing to do?

Among all the regular crime solving antics of the series was a single stellar episode, a fantastic piece of drama, and likely the best serial-killer themed entertainment in a decade. Actually, it wasn’t even a stellar episode. It was a stellar half-episode. The second part got bogged down in the standard dull cat and mouse morass that thrillers too often fall into with the killer giving clues to the cops in order to prove how smart he is and blah blah blah…