When we last left Allison (Patricia Arquette), she and her family and friends were not in a good place. By the start of Medium: The Fourth Season, Allison's boss, Manuel Devalos (Miguel Sandoval) was ousted from his District Attorney position because Allison's abilities had gotten out to the public. Because of this, Allison's job is now non-existent, her detective friend, Lee Scanlon (David Cubitt) has been bumped to kiddie-education duty and Allison's whole family has to deal with everyone knowing what they can do. And, to top everything off, because of a disgruntled co-worker that held Allison's husband, Joe (Jake Weber), hostage; Joe is now unemployed because of the mental anguish and subsequent legal issues that came from the ordeal.

So now, Allison doesn't have a job; Joe isn't employed at his high-paying aero-space engineering position and the family is generally seen as a black sheep among Allison's friends. Most of the season focuses on the Dubois family's struggle with this arrangement as they try to make a living whereever they can, while dodging bill collectors and trying to convince the people that can really help to listen to Allison (and several times her daughters') dreams.

Early in the season, Allison impresses an investigator from AmeriTips in a missing persons case. Cynthia Keener (played by Anjelica Huston), then hires Allison to help her with some cases in an under-the-table fashion so that Cynthia gets all the glory for the rescued kids. But seeing as Allison's abilities aren't really under her control and "don't work that way," she and Cynthia butt heads pretty frequently concerning the progress being made on the cases.

Meanwhile, Joe looks for jobs on a daily basis and even seeks employment at the only two other local companies that deal in his field (the price of being highly specialized), but for one reason or another, things never really work out, until Joe himself has a dream, not really a prophetic one like the rest of his family, but he gets inspiration in the middle of the night for a new invention. Could this finally bring the Dubois family back on top?

As for the kids, Ariel (Sofia Vassilieva), the oldest, has to deal with her friends knowing what her mom can do, suspecting that she has the same powers, and either being teased about it or asked to tell fortunes. There are quite a few episodes this season that focus on how she deals with her fellow classmates and the fact that her family doesn't have a lot of money anymore. The other two daughters aren't really a major focus; they each have an episode or two where they are involved directly in the plot (like when the youngest needs glasses, or the middle child dreams of the bank-owner giving Joe a lot of money), but for the most part, they are in the background.

While this season is actually more interesting to me, and far less formulaic than the past ones, I still find that the series in general just doesn't feel right. I still think Patricia Arquette and Jake Weber just don't have the right chemistry, and Arquette's acting is still pretty stiff. But besides those overarcing issues, Medium is a good show to catch on DVD, but I wouldn't necessarily drop everything to see it live.