Medium Liveblogging: Mother’s Little Helper (MED-044)
Episode Name: Mother’s Little Helper
Episode Number: 044 (3.06)
MED-044 Summary | All Episodes
Sofia is at a school dance. She looks so pretty! And she and the boy she came with, Wyatt, were just named King and Queen of the dance. Aw, how cute is that?
Oh crap! They just showed a bucket of something perched above Ariel on the stage. Did you see the movie Carrie (1976)? In Carrie, it was a bucket of pig’s blood and it got dumped all over …
Yep. Bucket-o-blood. All over Ariel. The gym is full of kids, all pointing and laughing. And there go the doors. Ariel is closing them with her mind, just like Sissy Spacek did in Carrie in the 70’s.
Allison wakes up from the nightmare. Good thing, too. Carrie set the gym on fire with her fellow students locked inside. Probably best not to see what Ariel would do.
Allison verifies with Joe that Ariel is NOT going to the Spring Fling this Saturday. He reminds her of dinner, where Ariel announced not only was she not going to the Spring Fling, but she would not be going to any dance, anywhere, ever, for the rest of her life because Wyatt did not ask her to the Spring Fling and was rumored to be going with her nemesis, Crystal.
***
At breakfast, Ariel has just found the dress she wants for the dance in a bridal magazine. She had a dream, you see, where she and Wyatt are crowned King and Queen of the Spring Fling, so she must be prepared in case he does end up asking her. (In her dream, rose petals fell from the ceiling and it was “magical.” No pig’s blood.) After much back and forth, Allison gives in and agrees to take her to try on the dress at a local bridal shop.
The dress is pink and gathered and lovely and Ariel dashes to the dressing room to try it on. The shopkeeper has not made an appearance, so Allison rings the bell on the counter. (Those little bells are so annoying) No shopkeeper. Hm. Allison noses around and–
Ugh. Two bodies, shot to death on the back room floor. Turns out they are the shop owner and her daughter, Patty and Claire. Claire was 14.
Back at home, Ariel hangs up the dress. Why does she still have it? Oh, she wore it home because she was wearing it when they found the bodies.
Allison is freaked that Ariel saw the scene of a murder but keeps telling herself she did not see the dead bodies so she will get over it soon.
Right. Sure. Okay. Keep telling yourself that.
Tags: medium, medium liveblogging, medium nbc, mother’s little helper, medium season 3, med-044
Dream 1: She dream from the murderer’s point of view. He (she?) enters the back door of the dress shop, finds the mother crying, and as she looks up, shoots her.
Allison wakes up.
Dream 2: The murderer hides in a closet as the wounded mother moans on the floor and the daughter runs in. Bam!
Ariel wakes up.
***
Allison finds Ariel already up and studying when she goes out to make coffee in the morning. Ariel is so upset…but in a quiet, tragic, you-can’t-really-help-me sort of way. It just rips my heart out.
At school, a couple of Ariel’s girlfriends tell her she is famous because she was in the paper. She and her mom, like, found the bodies. Euw! Then they tell her Wyatt and Crystal had a fight so they are not going to the dance together and, oh look, here he comes! (Lordy. I may be long out of high school, but I do remember those “OMG here comes a boy!” moments. And isn’t Wyatt just dreamy?)
As Wyatt walks Ariel to class, this her chance to impress him with her intelligence and accomplished conversational skills. Too bad she is completely distracted by a vision of the dead Claire standing there covered in blood.
Really! Such an inconvenient time to make an appearance.
***
Scanlon tells Allison they have basically got bubkus on the murderer. Patty’s husband is dead and she has not dated since, so no jealous boyfriends lurk in the shadows. Allison tells him about her dream, which tracks with the forensic evidence, but doesn’t get them any closer to who did it.
Dream (but whose?): Claire is working at the shop and yakking on the phone with a girlfriend while surfing her own “Friends” page (can you say MySpace reference?) on mom’s computer. Apparently mom is out with her new “mystery man” boyfriend, who she won’t even admit she is dating.
A girl comes in to pick up her wedding dress and Claire has her try it on to be sure it fits.
Meanwhile, she gets back on the phone and some weirdo named Shred182 IM’s her to meet him at Fashion Square food court. The girlfriend on the phone convinces her to arrange a meet-up and stand him up. How mean!
The bride-to-be comes out in the wedding dress and, when Claire tell her the dress is one of her favorites, the bride asks her if she wants it because she doesn’t think she is going to need it any more. Then she has a major meltdown, takes off the dress right there in the middle of the store, and stands there in her bra and panties.
As Claire stands there in shock, she hears her Mom come in the back room and goes to get her. Only mom has a big ole shiner from the double secret boyfriend, whom she now admits to having but only because she just broke up with him and the shiner was his parting gift to her.
Nice.
Claire goes back out front to find the wedding dress in a heap on the floor and the bride-to-be nowhere to be found. As she calls to her mom to come out front, Ariel wakes up at her desk at school with the kids laughing at her because she is mumbling, “Mom…please…” just like Claire.
On the drive home, she tells Allison the girl who died won’t leave her alone and the mom had a boyfriend who hit her.
Ariel: I don’t want any more dreams. I just want for all of this to go away. I want a normal life. I want to be normal.
Allison: You are normal.
Ariel: Right. You should have never had children. Not when you knew there was a chance they would be like you.
Then teenager from hell: Mom, I blame you for everything. Ah, I remember it well.
***
Ariel refuses to say goodnight to Allison. Allison is bummed.
Dream 1: Patty is on the phone at the shop talking to the daughter and making her give up her Friends password. (The password turns out to be “invasive.” Ha!) As she logs in, she calls the voicemail of the fiance of the girl who left the dress in a heap and says the dress cannot be returned because it was altered. As she is leaving the message, Claire (whom she is logged in as) gets threatening IM’s from Shred182 calling her a whore because she stood him up yesterday. At the food court. How old
is this guy?
Allison wakes up.
Dream 2: As Claire locks up the shop, a man bangs on the glass doors asking for her mother. He knows her name and insists she go get her mother. The daughter says, “I know who you are and she doesn’t want to see you.” He gets, um, angry, which scares her so she runs to the back of the store and out of sight. He seems genuinely contrite but, well, that is a very angry man.
Ariel wakes up.
At breakfast, she tells Allison that she saw the killer.
***
Joe and Allison brush their teeth and argue about whether or not Ariel should go down to the police station to describe the guy from her dream to the police sketch artist. Allison wins.
Hey, it Wayne-the-sketch-artist from Season One!
Scanlon and Devalos have a few leads. One is Shred182. They will have his identity from Friends by the end of the day. The other is Ben Radley, Patty’s secret boyfriend and her dead husband’s former best friend. A married man, thus all the secrecy. Ariel checks him out through two-way glass but it is not the man from her dream.
Hey, this is the scene I saw them rehearse! Joe and Allison are in the kitchen talking about the potential perps. Shred182 turns out to be a 15 year old kid who had an alibi for the time of the murders. Ben has never owned a firearm, so they are back at square one as far as suspects are concerned.
Okay, an alibi would eliminate someone, yes, but since when does not officially owning a firearm mean you must be innocent? How about illegally obtained handguns? Stealing from the neighbor? Hello?
Joe has a talk with Ariel about all the good things she gets from Allison, in addition to the not so good psychic thing. Aw, what a great dad and husband. Hey, Ariel is wearing the butterfly necklace from Peggy Li designs! Kewl. (BTW, did you notice when they showed Claire IM Shred182, she spelled “kewl” just like that? Useless trivia, but I cannot help myself.)
Allison and Ariel dream simultaneously now and we see it on a split screen. Neato! Patty is in the back room of the store, arguing with her married boyfriend, Ben. He is trying to give her a necklace and says he is going to leave his wife. For reals this time. Uh-huh. She declines the necklace and says what they have was just a “thing” and was never meant to be.
Meanwhile, creepy guy from the other night comes in the front of the store to talk to Claire. He is the fiance of the girl who left the wedding dress in a heap on the floor.
Ben heads out of the back of the store to the parking lot and Peggy follows. They argue. In public! Oh my.
Jilted Fiance asks Claire why his bride left him at the altar and where she is now. He is not happy when Claire tells him she does not know.
Ben jumps in his car and peels out of the parking lot, swiping Jilted Fiance’s car in the process. Patty doesn’t even notice the damaged car as she stands there crying from the emotional confrontation. Jilted Fiance runs out and starts screaming at her, asking her if she saw what happened and got the license plate number. She runs back in through the rear entrance of the store.
Jilted Fiance follows her in and - Holy Crap! - he just shoots her! And he keeps on shooting her. He hides behind the door when he hears Claire coming from the front of the store and shoots her from behind as she runs in to see her mother lying in her own blood on the floor.
He is having a “Bad day?” You don’t kill people when you are having a bad day. What a deranged ass!
Allison and Ariel explain the whole thing to Devalos, while Scanlon has Jilted Fiance, aka Mr. Wallaby, in custody. Ariel identifies him through the two-way glass.
At school, Ariel looks so pretty with her high pony tail and pink crocheted sweater as she get her books out of her locker. She turns to see Claire, no longer bloody but all dolled up in the pink dress Ariel was going to wear to the dance. As Ariel approaches her, Claire runs around the corner and Ariel, hot on her ghostly heels, practically runs Wyatt over as she rounds the bend. He asks her to the dance (of course!) and she accepts. Awwwww.
The Spring Fling plays out just as Ariel dreamed it. Rose petals. Lots and lots of rose petals.
_____________________
For a recap of Mother’s Little Helper, check out TV Squad.
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1 opinion for Medium Liveblogging: Mother’s Little Helper (MED-044)
Athanasios
May 21, 2007 at 10:08 am
Nice!
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