Review: Medium – Bite Me

I’ve spoken before about the importance of TV shows who are in their later seasons switching up the game a bit and experimenting. Medium has been doing a really good job of that so far this season: first with Allison’s stroke and its lasting effects, and now with a completely experimental episode like “Bite Me.”

What’s interesting about this episode, is that it’s completely by-the-book, as far as the Medium formula goes. Allison has a dream that tells her about a crime, then she uses the information culled from her dream to help her solve the crime, but in this episode, the writers add just enough new elements to make it seem completely different: Allison’s dream takes on the form of a movie she was watching, and wounds she has in the dream appear on her after she wakes. To me, that’s the mark of a successful episode: switch it up, without changing what makes it familiar.

The black and white scenes were used to good effect; they added to the episode, but were used sparingly enough not to seem too gimmicky. It didn’t seem like Allison had more dream sequences than normal, although it was pretty obvious that the use of Joe and the girls was just an excuse to get more castmembers into the Night of the Living Dead scenes. Even so, it was still fun to see them all, especially Scanlon and Devalos at the end.

As far as Elvira’s cameo, it could have been done better. Just having her wake up in bed as Allison was cute, but it didn’t really fit in with the rest of the episode. It would have been better, if as one commenter predicted earlier, if she were on television introducing Night of the Living Dead like she used to do for horror movies. It would have been fun if she were the one who Allison thought was speaking to her at the end.

My only other criticism of the episode is that the mystery was too easy to solve. So far this season, they’ve been pretty good at throwing me off and introducing effective red herrings. However, if you were on the Open Mic, or if you read the transcript, I kind of had it figured out a while before the mystery was revealed. That hasn’t been the case very often this season, so the fact that it was so easy for me this time was a little disappointing.

In fact, the mystery of Miss Scarlett had me guessing more than the main mystery this week. The use of the tarantula as a Halloween device was brilliant– I loved the gratuitous creepiness of Miss Scarlett crawling out of the teacher’s mouth. It was also kind of cool to see Bridgette as a mini Allison, with Miss Scarlett coming back from the dead, seeking Bridgette’s help. As far as B-plots go, this one was highly entertaining.

Also entertaining this week was the use of humor in the episode from Joe’s comment of, “they’re not running the one where they’re stuck in the mall, are they?,” which was a reference to Jake Weber’s starring turn in Dawn of the Dead, a remake of the sequel to Night of the Living Dead. Also, I don’t know about you guys, but to me, the scene in her dream where Allison shuts the door on her family and lets them get eaten by zombies is hilarious. Between last week’s obsessing over another baby and ignoring her kids to letting them get eaten alive by zombies this week, Allison isn’t exactly winning Mother of the Year. It makes that witch costume she wears at the end seem especially fitting.

Image: Michael Yarish/CBS

Horror Classics on DVD:

George A. Romero’s Night of the Living Dead

George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead

Dawn of the Dead starring Jake Weber (Dawn of the Dead [Blu-ray])