Hey, Medium. Exactly who do you think you’re fooling? Continuity is a good friend of mine, and she said you were all out of whack in last night’s episode. As you apparently do not recall, last season included a particularly good episode in which a young Allison dreamed about her older self running into a high school friend who would turn out to be a serial rapist and murderer (Creepy Pryz). ‘Member that? I do! In that episode Allison is a junior in high school and although the year is never stated, the musical cues (“Hungry Like the Wolf”; “Sister Christian”) used in that episode solidly placed the year around about 1983 (although your set designer got screwy and slapped a Guns ‘n Roses poster up with the fuchsia haired DD and mulleted Bono pics). And that Allison was a fairly shy, reserved girl (your costuming peeps didn’t do much in the way of 80-fying anybody) scraping by with her annoying hard-up single mom.

You can imagine my confusion when Ariel starts dreaming about her mom as a high school freshman in 1987. That's not even in line with the age you've indicated adult Allison is (about 37). Or was the class of 1987 sign indicating her graduation year? Still wrong. That would have put it around 1984 and that makes the Crowded House wrong wrong wrong (although the Seven and the Ragged Tiger poster would fit), so make up your damn minds.

This is the third young Allison we’ve seen (the above mentioned and a 1st season college Allison) and this was the least consistent one yet. This Allison was nothing like her previous incarnations. She looked more like some skanky reject from a Def Leppard video than the self-conscious quiet jumper-wearer and reluctant partier we’d seen before. And what was that mention of “parents” plural? I thought we’d made it plain that Allison’s dad was not a part of the picture. Ugh! Also, so far it seems you really didn’t want to be Allison’s friend back in the day because you were doomed to have something horrible happen to you. Yeesh!

The episode itself was a bit plodding at first, but I have yet to totally dislike an episode which features Ariel discovering her powers. Petulant whiny teen she may be, but I love that kid. Joe really needs to get a job and Devalos really needs to come on back to us now. Overall, it was better than last week’s but still not on par with the first two seasons.