TVSquad

After the first-episode-of-the- season jitters, everyone seems back in the groove of the show. And we're thrown immediately into Allison's head with the skillful device of Gloria Gaynor's anthem, I Will Survive. The changing volume, the skipping, the subtitles - I can feel Allison's pain. It's annoying for someone in the other room, but it's fantastic. And I'm drawn into the mystery, into Allison's life.

A girl, Isabel Navarro, is missing. The song leads Allison to her bloodstained iPod, and tells her that the girl's priest knows something. There's a complication; she's also dreaming of an airplane crash, which she takes to mean that her family shouldn't fly (as they'd planned to) to Salt Lake City for Joe's sister's (third) wedding. It can't be that simple. Right?

While this episode was far better than the last one, I feel as if the writers are running out of realistic crimes for Allison's visions and are turning toward the quirky, the unexplained. This episode, in particular, leaves questions that will likely remain unanswered.

When Allison has a chat with the priest who heard details about the crime in his confessional, why can't he just up and tell her what to do? He has to give her the imprecise advice about going to her sister-in-law's wedding. [update: I get this now. I had a baby screaming during the revelation that the killer had committed suicide - I thought it was the priest who had committed suicide, and he was coming to visit her from the dead. An issue with psychic shows: you never are sure who's dead!]

And then there's the airplane crash. The clear message from the first time it's brought up is that Bridget is having the same dream as her mom (and what an awful dream for a six-year-old girl): an airplane crashes across a country road, and when it lands, there is Joe, bloody and dead, hanging in a tree. Both mother and daughter insist that the family should not fly, whatever they do.

It's obvious, all the unsubtle foreshadowing is saying: Dubois family, get in the car. It's nice, though, that Joe tries to rationalize the psychic dreams (when just Allison is having them). He's trying to come up with an explanation for the supernatural - such an engineer thing to do.

But why does the bad guy have the girl hidden under that strange miniature tableau? And why are the dreams so imprecise and leading Allison in the direction of the girl... even though nothing in them is real? And where is the bad guy? Why did he take Isabel?

Throughout the segment in the barn, I'm expecting the bad guy to jump out at any time, but he doesn't, she just saves the girl, everything's o.k. It's just such a random way for the mystical universe to work, it requires so many coincidences and wrong turns to go the right way. It seems as if it could be neater, more sewn up, more obvious. But then, I have no supernatural abilities. What do I know?