Archive for November 11th, 2008
TDL-evision: Random Complaining About The Ghost Whisperer - complete
One of my guilty pleasures for the last three years has been Jennifer Love Hewitt’s Giant Breasts The Ghost Whisperer. Every year, I amazed it gets renewed and every year I keep watching it. General plot overview — Melinda (Hewitt) can see and communicate with earthbound ghosts. Every week, she helps a violent ghost solve a problem so it can pass on to the afterlife by going in to “The Light.” One would think that you would eventually run out of ghosts with unfinished business in a sleepy town in Upstate New York but, hey, suspension of disbelief and all that.
Anyway, they finally pulled the trigger on a storyline that I was really hoping they were never going to do. Melinda has been married since before the first season. Her husband Jim has played supportive guy through the entire series, handily being an EMT with “friends” in the police department to get Melinda the occasional bit of info she needs to solve a case. Unfortunately for Jim there’s been a giant guillotine hanging over him since season one — the “gripping” storyline of his death so Melinda and he can have that heart-wrenching good-bye as he has to decide whether or not he should stay by Melinda’s side forever or whether he should cross over along with Melinda’s decision to have him stay beside her forever or to talk him in to crossing over. I really, desperately wanted them to stay away from this story since it was glaringly predictable and hugely depressing on a show that spends its time being hugely depressing and sad.
Two weeks ago, they teased his death in the previews and sadly followed through with a terribly forced death scene that saw him inadvertently shot by a police officer. He later died of injuries sustained while Melinda was sleeping at his bedside. His ghost woke her, trying to keep her attention away from his bedside where his body was laying dead. Next week begins the “shocking” storyline of Jim refusing to cross over and Melinda attempts to force him. I’m really, really disappointed that they decided to go in this direction. While Jim is an admittedly ancillary character (as is everyone who isn’t Hewitt), killing him off is really just a cheap storyline that has done more to kill off my interest in the show than the saddening development of JLH wearing less cleavage-baring tops.
Poorly done, Ghost Whisperer crew. Potential Shark-Jump moment.