The show: Medium
The episode: "There Will Be Blood... Type B," aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: Allison lets Jennifer (Vanessa Marano), a homeless teenager haunted by dreams of a cold-blooded killer, stay in her house, despite objections from her husband and daughters. After a few nights, Jennifer steals money from the house and goes sleep at a laundromat. There, she dreams of the killer calmly killing a cop. She wakes up in such despair from that dream that she tries to drink an entire bottle of Clorox (or some other brand of bleach). Luckily, Allison dreams of Jennifer's suicide attempt and is able to get her to the Hospital in time to save her life.
What has me wondering: Most laundromats I've been to are practically run by Ferengi. Want two drier sheets? Pay a dollar. I seriously doubt that a laundromat owner would leave an entire bottle of Clorox just lying around for anyone to use. However, this doesn't rule out that the bottle of Clorox belonged to another customer. Also, the editing gives the impression that if Allison hadn't dreamt Jennifer chugging the Clorox, Jennifer would have died. Even if we accept there were no customers in the laundromat at the time (one of whom forgot her bottle of Clorox), where was the laundromat employee at?
Showing posts with label Allison DuBois. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Allison DuBois. Show all posts
Monday, April 12, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
The conveniently talkative doctor
One thing I find so fascinating about Medium is how often Allison's dreams are exactly correct, yet she misunderstands them in one crucial detail. Over the course of the episode, she obtains clarification on the exact meaning of the episode's first dream. There are a few stand-alone episodes (not Part I of a two-parter) that have a dream at the end. In those cases, the dream has to be perfectly clear to Allison and to the viewers.
A good example of this is the episode that was rerun last Friday, "You Give Me Fever." With the episode's running time almost up, Allison goes to bed fretting that the bad guy has gotten away scot-free. Then she has a dream in which the bad guy is in a hospital bed with a fever, unable to speak, shaking. A doctor explains to him (and to Allison, and, by extension, to the viewers) that the bad guy has a high fever, and that there is hope that he could recover. Then, when the doctor leaves, the bad guy's ex-boyfriend, who was lurking in the shadows, approaches the patient and explains how the bad guy's attempt to infect him with the virus actually backfired on him. Allison wakes up, pleasantly surprised to have learned that the bad guy does get his comeuppance after all.
It is the doctor's monologue that strikes me as unrealistic here. I get the feeling that if (Heaven forbid) I was ever in such a medical condition that I couldn't talk, my doctor wouldn't bother talking to me. My doctor would perhaps talk to my family. But this doesn't rise to the level of a nit because there isn't something in the episode to indicate that the doctor would have no reason to talk to the patient; the doctor might even think that by talking to the patient, he might be able to keep up the patient's spirits and perhaps effect a recovery. Still, the two monologues seem like a major plot contrivance in a rush to wrap everything with a neat little bow within the hour.
A good example of this is the episode that was rerun last Friday, "You Give Me Fever." With the episode's running time almost up, Allison goes to bed fretting that the bad guy has gotten away scot-free. Then she has a dream in which the bad guy is in a hospital bed with a fever, unable to speak, shaking. A doctor explains to him (and to Allison, and, by extension, to the viewers) that the bad guy has a high fever, and that there is hope that he could recover. Then, when the doctor leaves, the bad guy's ex-boyfriend, who was lurking in the shadows, approaches the patient and explains how the bad guy's attempt to infect him with the virus actually backfired on him. Allison wakes up, pleasantly surprised to have learned that the bad guy does get his comeuppance after all.
It is the doctor's monologue that strikes me as unrealistic here. I get the feeling that if (Heaven forbid) I was ever in such a medical condition that I couldn't talk, my doctor wouldn't bother talking to me. My doctor would perhaps talk to my family. But this doesn't rise to the level of a nit because there isn't something in the episode to indicate that the doctor would have no reason to talk to the patient; the doctor might even think that by talking to the patient, he might be able to keep up the patient's spirits and perhaps effect a recovery. Still, the two monologues seem like a major plot contrivance in a rush to wrap everything with a neat little bow within the hour.
Monday, February 8, 2010
Low to medium computer literacy
The show: Medium
The episode: "Will the Real Fred Rovick Please Stand Up?" First aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: For some reason, almost every man looks like Diedrich Bader to Allison. (On the IMDb, the actor Diedrich Bader is identified as playing the character of Fred Rovick, but in a very real sense, Bader also plays Joe Dubois and Detective Lee Scanlon in this episode, as well as quite a few other characters). This complicates Allison's work on a murder case, because even though she dreams the murder, both the murderer and the victim look the same to Allison (both are played by Diedrich Bader). Allison is still able to give sufficient information to the police to catch the killer. Eventually, Allison figures out that the reason that the reason so many people show the same face to her is that they're the people who've fallen pray to an identity fraud scam perpetrated by the man who actually has that face, the real Fred Rovick. Near the end of the episode, Lee and Allison figure out that the scam was perpetrated by sending out e-mails spoofing the city, claiming that the recipient's voting district had changed. People who opened the e-mails allowed a program into their systems which stole their private financial information, allowing Fred Rovick to clean out their bank accounts.
What doesn't quite make sense: Just reading an e-mail is not enough to inadvertently install Trojan malware on your computer. You have to take the step of downloading the infected attachment. For what plausible reason could an e-mail titled "Your voting district has changed" have an attachment? If such an e-mail is legitimate, all that it needs to tell you is what your new district is and where the polling location is; both these things can be accomplished with plain text. Maybe a legitimate sender would include a JPEG with a map of the new district and polling location; you can't put Trojan viruses in a JPEG.
Now, a video is starting to stretch it, but it is plausible and videos can contain Trojan viruses. However, the episode doesn't say that a video was attached to the fraudulent e-mail, and in fact makes it sound like the mere act of reading the e-mail infects the recipient's computer. But consider also the human factor: if you get an e-mail telling you your voting district has changed, how likely are you to delete it without even reading it? I doubt many people would fall for it. In the episode, Allison deletes the e-mail without reading it because she knows the city's computer systems have recently experienced some malfunctions. But even without that knowledge, Allison's reaction to the message seems perfectly realistic to me.
The episode: "Will the Real Fred Rovick Please Stand Up?" First aired last Friday on CBS.
What happened: For some reason, almost every man looks like Diedrich Bader to Allison. (On the IMDb, the actor Diedrich Bader is identified as playing the character of Fred Rovick, but in a very real sense, Bader also plays Joe Dubois and Detective Lee Scanlon in this episode, as well as quite a few other characters). This complicates Allison's work on a murder case, because even though she dreams the murder, both the murderer and the victim look the same to Allison (both are played by Diedrich Bader). Allison is still able to give sufficient information to the police to catch the killer. Eventually, Allison figures out that the reason that the reason so many people show the same face to her is that they're the people who've fallen pray to an identity fraud scam perpetrated by the man who actually has that face, the real Fred Rovick. Near the end of the episode, Lee and Allison figure out that the scam was perpetrated by sending out e-mails spoofing the city, claiming that the recipient's voting district had changed. People who opened the e-mails allowed a program into their systems which stole their private financial information, allowing Fred Rovick to clean out their bank accounts.
What doesn't quite make sense: Just reading an e-mail is not enough to inadvertently install Trojan malware on your computer. You have to take the step of downloading the infected attachment. For what plausible reason could an e-mail titled "Your voting district has changed" have an attachment? If such an e-mail is legitimate, all that it needs to tell you is what your new district is and where the polling location is; both these things can be accomplished with plain text. Maybe a legitimate sender would include a JPEG with a map of the new district and polling location; you can't put Trojan viruses in a JPEG.
Now, a video is starting to stretch it, but it is plausible and videos can contain Trojan viruses. However, the episode doesn't say that a video was attached to the fraudulent e-mail, and in fact makes it sound like the mere act of reading the e-mail infects the recipient's computer. But consider also the human factor: if you get an e-mail telling you your voting district has changed, how likely are you to delete it without even reading it? I doubt many people would fall for it. In the episode, Allison deletes the e-mail without reading it because she knows the city's computer systems have recently experienced some malfunctions. But even without that knowledge, Allison's reaction to the message seems perfectly realistic to me.
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
A note about nitpicking Medium
We've gotten a number of comments, both publicly and privately, that psychics are not real and that that is a major nit for the show. But we can't count that as a nit because Allison DuBois being psychic is the fundamental premise of the show. If you can find an episode that flatly contradicts the basic premise of the show, that would be different. In fact, that would be nitpicker's gold.
When you watch a show, you have to accept its fundamental premise, at least while you're watching. Otherwise, why watch that show? So with Star Trek we accept that humans can (or will be able to) travel faster than light without suffering the relativistic side effects predicted by Einstein, with Knight Rider you accept that a car can drive itself and do all this other cool stuff, with Xena you accept... well, you get the idea.
For things that are not part of the basic premise of the show, it is fair game to nitpick them based on real life knowledge, provided that previous episodes have not established anything in the matter. That's why it's valid for Lisa to nitpick the cryptography in last week's Medium rerun based on her real-life knowledge of cryptography. Unless one of you can come up with something from a previous episode to render her nits moot.
When you watch a show, you have to accept its fundamental premise, at least while you're watching. Otherwise, why watch that show? So with Star Trek we accept that humans can (or will be able to) travel faster than light without suffering the relativistic side effects predicted by Einstein, with Knight Rider you accept that a car can drive itself and do all this other cool stuff, with Xena you accept... well, you get the idea.
For things that are not part of the basic premise of the show, it is fair game to nitpick them based on real life knowledge, provided that previous episodes have not established anything in the matter. That's why it's valid for Lisa to nitpick the cryptography in last week's Medium rerun based on her real-life knowledge of cryptography. Unless one of you can come up with something from a previous episode to render her nits moot.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Don't know much 'bout cryptography
The show: Medium
The episode: "The Medium is the Message," first aired on CBS on October 16, 2009, and reran last week in a different time slot (there was a new episode on Friday).
What happened: Allison starts seeing strange symbols everywhere. Her visions and dreams lead her to the infamous Libra Slayer, a serial killer who long ago murdered young women and left coded messages disclosing his next victim, and who has just now resurfaced. The strange symbols are so pervasive for Allison that she even writes a note for one of her daughter's teachers using the symbols instead of the English alphabet. Davalos is predictably skeptical when Allison tells him the Libra has resurfaced, but must take her seriously when a new victim shows up with a coded message.
Scanlon in this episode is less skeptical of Allison, and when he finds a bookshelf filled with books on cryptography in the house of Neal (Fisher Stevens), the man Allison says is the Libra, he sounds convinced that they're on the right track. However, the clock is ticking as it takes the police hours to decode the Libra's messages and they know the Libra will strike again soon because they have a new message that needs decoding. Just in the nick of time, Allison digs up the weird note she wrote for her daughter and creates the key with which to decode the message and figure out the Libra's next victim.
What has me wondering: Both times I've watched this episode, the scene of Scanlon and the bookshelf bothered me, and I wasn't sure why. Now that I've thought about it more, it was the scene of Allison creating the key to decode the message that should've bothered me. At first I was like, well, I have a bookshelf of Bibles and books about the Bible, but it doesn't make me a theologian. A bookshelf of books about cryptography doesn't make Neal a cryptologist. However, for his purposes as a serial killer, Neal doesn't want to create unbreakable codes. He wants to create codes that can be solved but only after he has committed the crime. I don't know much about cryptography, but I do know that there are encryption schemes that would be suitable for Neal's purpose. And I also know that a simple substitution cypher is not one of them!
See, in a substitution cypher, all you're doing is replacing each instance of a symbol with another. Take for example the message "I will kill Bill." Replace each letter with the next letter in the alphabet, make them all uppercase, remove spaces, and you get "JXJMMLJMMCJMM." Notice that the letter M occurs a lot in the coded message, because L occurred a lot in the plaintext. A short message like that might not be as susceptible to frequency analysis, especially if the author contrives it to have a higher than normal proportion of certain letters, but it's short enough that you can try every possibility until you hit the one that makes sense. That might take ten minutes by hand. A longer message in English will have a greater frequency of E than of L. (Try it with my previous blog post).
That means that a longer message, like the ones the Libra Slayer writes, should also be susceptible to frequency analysis if they are coded with simple substitution cyphers. The fact that Allison was able to create a key for the message proves that the Libra's message, at least his latest one, was in fact a substitution cypher. It's true that he used strange symbols instead of English letters. That can slow down computer entry. But here's what I would do: I would just sequentially assign letters to the symbols as I go over the message. Let's say the first symbol of the message looks like a half moon with a horizontal slash. All the half moons with slashes in the message are now As. Say the second symbol is a square divided into nine smaller squares. Guess what? All the squares with nine squares inside them just became Bs. And so on and so forth. That might take ten minutes, doing it slowly so as to be sure to do it correctly.
With that done, I can transcribe the message into English letters. It still looks like gibberish, but now I can feed that gibberish into a computer and have it do a frequency analysis, and if that fails (if the author was clever enough to avoid the letter E in the plaintext), I can just have the computer try all 25 possibilities and see if any of them make sense. Why does that take the police 10 hours to do? No wonder the police have a reputation for incompetence.
The episode: "The Medium is the Message," first aired on CBS on October 16, 2009, and reran last week in a different time slot (there was a new episode on Friday).
What happened: Allison starts seeing strange symbols everywhere. Her visions and dreams lead her to the infamous Libra Slayer, a serial killer who long ago murdered young women and left coded messages disclosing his next victim, and who has just now resurfaced. The strange symbols are so pervasive for Allison that she even writes a note for one of her daughter's teachers using the symbols instead of the English alphabet. Davalos is predictably skeptical when Allison tells him the Libra has resurfaced, but must take her seriously when a new victim shows up with a coded message.
Scanlon in this episode is less skeptical of Allison, and when he finds a bookshelf filled with books on cryptography in the house of Neal (Fisher Stevens), the man Allison says is the Libra, he sounds convinced that they're on the right track. However, the clock is ticking as it takes the police hours to decode the Libra's messages and they know the Libra will strike again soon because they have a new message that needs decoding. Just in the nick of time, Allison digs up the weird note she wrote for her daughter and creates the key with which to decode the message and figure out the Libra's next victim.
What has me wondering: Both times I've watched this episode, the scene of Scanlon and the bookshelf bothered me, and I wasn't sure why. Now that I've thought about it more, it was the scene of Allison creating the key to decode the message that should've bothered me. At first I was like, well, I have a bookshelf of Bibles and books about the Bible, but it doesn't make me a theologian. A bookshelf of books about cryptography doesn't make Neal a cryptologist. However, for his purposes as a serial killer, Neal doesn't want to create unbreakable codes. He wants to create codes that can be solved but only after he has committed the crime. I don't know much about cryptography, but I do know that there are encryption schemes that would be suitable for Neal's purpose. And I also know that a simple substitution cypher is not one of them!
See, in a substitution cypher, all you're doing is replacing each instance of a symbol with another. Take for example the message "I will kill Bill." Replace each letter with the next letter in the alphabet, make them all uppercase, remove spaces, and you get "JXJMMLJMMCJMM." Notice that the letter M occurs a lot in the coded message, because L occurred a lot in the plaintext. A short message like that might not be as susceptible to frequency analysis, especially if the author contrives it to have a higher than normal proportion of certain letters, but it's short enough that you can try every possibility until you hit the one that makes sense. That might take ten minutes by hand. A longer message in English will have a greater frequency of E than of L. (Try it with my previous blog post).
That means that a longer message, like the ones the Libra Slayer writes, should also be susceptible to frequency analysis if they are coded with simple substitution cyphers. The fact that Allison was able to create a key for the message proves that the Libra's message, at least his latest one, was in fact a substitution cypher. It's true that he used strange symbols instead of English letters. That can slow down computer entry. But here's what I would do: I would just sequentially assign letters to the symbols as I go over the message. Let's say the first symbol of the message looks like a half moon with a horizontal slash. All the half moons with slashes in the message are now As. Say the second symbol is a square divided into nine smaller squares. Guess what? All the squares with nine squares inside them just became Bs. And so on and so forth. That might take ten minutes, doing it slowly so as to be sure to do it correctly.
With that done, I can transcribe the message into English letters. It still looks like gibberish, but now I can feed that gibberish into a computer and have it do a frequency analysis, and if that fails (if the author was clever enough to avoid the letter E in the plaintext), I can just have the computer try all 25 possibilities and see if any of them make sense. Why does that take the police 10 hours to do? No wonder the police have a reputation for incompetence.
Saturday, October 31, 2009
Finally you believe Allison
It was nice to see on last night's Halloween episode of Medium Detective Scanlon (David Cubitt) regard Allison with a little more credulity. In this blog, Lisa has often complained about how Scanlon and the others keep acting as if Allison hasn't proven her clairvoyance time and time again. Not so in last night's episode: Allison screams upon seeing a junkie coughing up blood like a zombie, and Scanlon, instead of dismissing Allison's screams, gets to work at finding the connection between the junkie and the funeral home owner who was murdered.
Monday, October 5, 2009
You forgot your wife used to be Jeffrey Tambor, Joe!
The show: Medium
The episode: "Who's That Girl," first aired this past Friday on CBS.
What happened: Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva) begins acting strangely, and Allison (Patricia Arquette) is convinced that her daughter has been taken over by the spirit of the recently deceased Elena who is hell-bent on exacting revenge on her killer. Allison tells her husband Joe (Jake Weber) about this. His response: "Knock it off!" Joe doesn't take Allison's claim about Ariel seriously until after finding some money missing from his sock drawer (which Ariel/Elena used to buy a gun with) and getting a strange response from Ariel regarding her birthday.
Why it makes no sense: You would probably react with the same incredulity the first time you're confronted with the idea of someone close to you being taken over by the spirit of a stranger. But for Joe DuBois, this is not exactly the first time body/soul transference affects his family. In the episode titled "The Man in the Mirror," first aired this past May on NBC, Allison's soul found its way into the body of a man named Todd Emory (Jeffrey Tambor). Joe was understandably incredulous at first, but eventually he was able to let Todd/Allison stay in his house. So why is it such a big leap for Joe to accept that some other soul could occupy Ariel's body? And did the writers think no one who watched the show on NBC would watch it on CBS? I don't recall the first new episode aired on CBS making any effort to re-establish the basic premise of the show as if it was something new to the viewers.
The episode: "Who's That Girl," first aired this past Friday on CBS.
What happened: Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva) begins acting strangely, and Allison (Patricia Arquette) is convinced that her daughter has been taken over by the spirit of the recently deceased Elena who is hell-bent on exacting revenge on her killer. Allison tells her husband Joe (Jake Weber) about this. His response: "Knock it off!" Joe doesn't take Allison's claim about Ariel seriously until after finding some money missing from his sock drawer (which Ariel/Elena used to buy a gun with) and getting a strange response from Ariel regarding her birthday.
Why it makes no sense: You would probably react with the same incredulity the first time you're confronted with the idea of someone close to you being taken over by the spirit of a stranger. But for Joe DuBois, this is not exactly the first time body/soul transference affects his family. In the episode titled "The Man in the Mirror," first aired this past May on NBC, Allison's soul found its way into the body of a man named Todd Emory (Jeffrey Tambor). Joe was understandably incredulous at first, but eventually he was able to let Todd/Allison stay in his house. So why is it such a big leap for Joe to accept that some other soul could occupy Ariel's body? And did the writers think no one who watched the show on NBC would watch it on CBS? I don't recall the first new episode aired on CBS making any effort to re-establish the basic premise of the show as if it was something new to the viewers.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Still doubting Allison
I don't know to what extent the NBC series Medium reflects the real-life experiences of police psychic Allison DuBois. Certainly some names have to be changed, some characters composited, some things explained more often than they would have to in real life. Still, for the hour that I watch the show, I buy into the idea that psychics are real and that they can help the police. But what has me wondering is the continued skepticism Allison gets from Devalos and Scanlon.
When Allison goes up to someone she's never met before and warns them about something they wouldn't even think to worry about, it's completely understandable that they would be very skeptical. But Devalos and Scanlon ought to know bettter by now. In episode after episode, Allison starts out making improbable-sounding claims that are proven to be exactly right at the end. In too many episodes Scanlon says things along the lines of "I don't know what to tell you" and "We already have the perp." Devalos fares a little better, saying things along the lines of "Even if that's true, I can't do anything about it without more information." Still, it gets tiresome to see them in episode after episode acting as if Allison is completely crazy and then at the end not thanking her for leading them to perp and/or victim.
Granted that in last night's episode, "The Devil Inside" (Part I), Scanlon was right to call Allison's identification of the dentist as the jogger's killer a mistake. But he couldn't possibly know that the now-dead Lucas Harvey is interfering with the veracity of Allison's dreams.
When Allison goes up to someone she's never met before and warns them about something they wouldn't even think to worry about, it's completely understandable that they would be very skeptical. But Devalos and Scanlon ought to know bettter by now. In episode after episode, Allison starts out making improbable-sounding claims that are proven to be exactly right at the end. In too many episodes Scanlon says things along the lines of "I don't know what to tell you" and "We already have the perp." Devalos fares a little better, saying things along the lines of "Even if that's true, I can't do anything about it without more information." Still, it gets tiresome to see them in episode after episode acting as if Allison is completely crazy and then at the end not thanking her for leading them to perp and/or victim.
Granted that in last night's episode, "The Devil Inside" (Part I), Scanlon was right to call Allison's identification of the dentist as the jogger's killer a mistake. But he couldn't possibly know that the now-dead Lucas Harvey is interfering with the veracity of Allison's dreams.
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