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GHOST WHISPERER |
Season Overview
Melinda Gordon - Jennifer Love Hewitt Jim Clancy - David Conrad Delia Banks - Camryn Manheim Rick Payne - Jay Mohr 
OTHER GHOST WHISPERER SEASONS Season 1 Season 3 Season 4 Season 5 THEY ALSO SEE DEAD PEOPLE Medium Haunted Afterlife Millennium 
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SEASON OVERVIEWMelinda Gordon is back with her perfect life blighted only by the appearance of ghosts whose problems she has to solve before they can cross over into the light. Now in its third season, the show has made little change (none in fact) to its default template of ghost appears being scary, Melinda investigates and finds out ghost isn't scary, gets past the family's initial disbelief and gets everyone in a ghostly group hug by the end credits. There is virtually no moving away from this template to some of the more interesting forays into the spirit world that there might have been in past seasons, making this tediously predictable. The cast are the same, as dependable as ever. Jennifer Love Hewitt looks concerned in silly outfits and cries an awful lot. She must be making a fortune out of advertising waterproof mascara. David Conrad looks concerned in an only slightly more macho way and if he could be any more the perfect husband then they would have to canonise him on the spot. The surprise is that fellow shop help Delia Banks is all but sidelined in this season. Her place is taken up almost completely by Jay Mohr's wonderfully eccentric Professor Payne who manages to steal every scene he is in and save some of the audience from joining the spirit world willingly. If the sentimentality levels of the show weren't high enough already then the thin (and boy do we mean thin) running arc through the series is one of family. The opening episode and the final two are all about Melinda's relationship with her parents, which is complicated at best and a whole soap opera at worst. In the episode Weight of What Was she even manages to meet the spirit of her great grandmother (or whichever ancestor it turned out to be). Looking for stand out episodes in a series that sticks so rigidly to its template is really hard, but Christmas Spirit actually has some, No Safe Place has a stalker creepier than any ghost and Bad Blood has spirits that are irredeemably evil and therefore a total breath of fresh air. In season 3, GHOST WHISPERER is as predictable and repetitive as ever. TopUNDERNEATHFollowing the tumultuous events of the end of Season 2, Melinda struggles with the aftermath of her dying. Not only was it traumatic, but she saw her father, meaning that he is most likely dead, who seemed to be trying to tell her something. Now he appears to be showing up on her x-rays and publicity pictures. And who, or what, is trying to rise up from under the ground? At the end of SEASON 2, Melinda died. This doesn't seem to have affected her much. In fact, it doesn't seem to have affected her at all since she forgets all about it within minutes and gets stuck into the new case of haunting. This brings back her mother, played by Anne Archer, who reveals some secrets of their family past, secrets that you instantly know are going to be the core of this season's plot arc. With her father, mother and brother all involved, it looks like being a family affair. The episode, however, ought to be sued under the breach of promise laws because it promises to be a dark look into Melinda's past, most specifically her father, but then it descends into being another 'ghost of the week' story, but one that is made even less effective because of the time spent setting up Melinda's family story and adding in a blogger who is interested in Melinda, interested enough to steal files from Professor Payne's computer. Since this goes nowhere, we can assume that this is going to be another plot arc. The CGI used in this episode is particularly weak (the hands rising through asphalt, the collapse of the town centre etc), but there are a couple of spooky sequences such as the lawn dragging Melinda down and the door that leads to...where? All the cast are present and correct. All of the characters are utterly understanding and supportive (with the exception of Melinda's mother, which makes her instantly more interesting) and it's all a bit too sweet and sickly. So business as usual. GHOST WHISPERER is back. TopDON'T TRY THIS AT HOMEThe story of Bloody Mary, a girl who was buried alive and tore her hands to bloody shreds on the inside of her coffin has a version in almost every culture and so it is no surprise that Grandview has its own version, only this version happens to be real, haunting some college girls at the local university. Melinda starts to investigate and suspects that all is not as it seems. Episode 2 of the third season and it's back to the basic template for the show, so if you're a fan of GHOST WHISPERER then you'll find all your favourite bits present and correct, but if you find that it's all sentimental goo then you'll hate it. To be fair, the mixing in of the Bloody Mary mythology (stand in front a mirror and say her name three times if you dare - see SUPERNATURAL for further evidence that this is not a good idea) gives the story a bit more breadth by delving into the backstories of the various Mary myths. It also gives us more Professor Payne and Jay Mohr, bless him, is still the best thing on the show as the scatty, unconventional academic. As for the rest, it's the usual solve the mystery, get everyone in a group blub and away the ghost goes. TopHAUNTED HEROA soldier, and friend of Jim, comes back from the war in Iraq the last survivor of a patrol and a hero. He can't, however, remember the events of the fateful night when he was injured and is being haunted by the ghosts of the men who died. When a video surfaces purporting to show him abandoning his men under fire, he is unable to deny the fact that he is a coward. Well, if ever there was an episode that did what it said on the tin.... The ambush scenes in the Iraqi village that Melissa is forced to inhabit are well done, but the rest is GHOST WHISPERER by numbers. This episode couldn't exist without the ultra-convenient post-trauma amnesia and this show is so devoid of thinking bad of people that there is never any doubt that the man is anything other than a hero. TopNO SAFE PLACEMelinda encounters a man who is being haunted by the ghost of the woman who stalked him in real life. Or at least that's his story. It turns out that he was the stalker and now he has has his twisted mind set on Melinda. None of her friends are safe. There are some twisted mind games here, which has the pleasing effect of making this episode more watchable than most of the others, taking it away from the tried and tested format. The methods that the stalker uses to isolate and damage his prey are unnerving and actually scarier than the usual ghostly nonsense. When he turns on Melinda it seems that there is no defence against a clever man, but finally he starts acting like a standard crazy man, showing up in far less intelligent places than he ought. The turnaround resolution is enjoyable, however. Finally, the episode reverts to form with the tearful goodbye. Shame really. TopWEIGHT OF WHAT WASGabriel, the dark ghost whisperer and potential half-brother, comes to er Melinda asking for help to find their father. She then starts to get visions of the woman she believes to be his mother, visions that lead to an underground church and some long-buried secrets. For once the story in this episode feels more like a part of a larger picture both in terms of Melinda's personal history and Grandview's position in the scheme of things. This moves it away from the usual template and makes for a much more interesting plotline. Amy Ackerman (Fred from series 2 onwards of ANGEL) pops up as the ghost of a woman wronged, the spirit to be crossed over and something much more personal. None of this comes as any surprise, but it is a step up from the norm. The hints of what is going on between Melinda, her father and her half-brother are actually intriguing. More like this would improve the show immensely. TopDOUBLE EXPOSUREProfessor Payne hooks up with a fellow academic, a teacher of photography, and introduces her to Melinda when it becomes clear that she does not appear in any photographs of herself. Instead, a shadowy figure appears, a figure that might be a student of hers who died in a car accident, but turns out to be a drowning woman. It's back to ghost of the week time and Melinda is back to finding out what the unhappy problem was between the living and dead so that there can be a tearful resolution, this time on the beach, and the spirit can move on. It follows the standard GHOST WHISPERER format to the letter. Even the 'fight' between Melinda and Jim about his going to medical school and their moving out of Grandview is pretty much by the numbers and never feels credible. Victoria Pratt (CLEOPATRA 2525, DAY BREAK and MUTANT X) appears to no real effect. The only really memorable image is that of the girl sending a video message of her drowning, a suicide note for the 21st century. Now that's chilling. TopUNHAPPY MEDIUMA famous psychic comes into town to consult on the case of a missing girl. Melinda senses that he has a ghost attached to him, a ghost that might possibly be able to tell them where the girl is, but the psychic is really no psychic, just a fraud with a really strong sense of people and psychological profiling. Even though she hates what he's doing, Melinda teams up with him to find out the truth behind the girl's disappearance. The ironclad GHOST WHISPERER format is back and in full control of the show once again. Another hurting family, another mystery to be unravelled and another tearful parting. It's unoriginal, unexciting and bringing in the false psychic starts off as fun, but then gets drowned in the flood of sentimentality so that even he goes away a better person. TopBAD BLOODAn unhappy man and his daughter, both sharing a dark secret, take on a remote house outside of Grandview and immediately strange things start to happen. They act as though they were other people and Melinda recognises that they are under the influence of two ghosts who are connected with the house, an unusual state of affairs. Things get even darker when it becomes clear that the ghosts are playing out some sort of game that will kill either the father or the daughter. What a refreshing change. Instead of the bog-standard confused, amnesiac ghost who just needs to remember what happened and have a blub fest with wife/husband/mother/sister/insert relative here for everything to be all right we get two ghosts who are quite aware of their condition, happy in the evil that they are causing and have absolutely no plans to go into any sort of light whatsoever. In fact, when the female of the pair announces that they are 'just not very nice people', she sums them up with just the right amount of understatement. Theirs is a petty, banal sort of evil. Though it kills people it is merely a poor entertainment, a weak attempt at exorcising their own guilt, guilt which they are unwilling to admit to. This means that Melinda's usual bag of tricks won't work with them and it is nice to see her on the back foot and at a loss as to how to go forward. The threat to father and daughter is much more real than usual as these are ghosts that mean actual harm. There is the usual blubfest at the end, but as the rest of the show has stepped away from the usual template it is much easier to take. There's even some friction between Melinda and Delia, spoiling the usual calm waters of support for the psychic one. Definitely one of the better episodes. TopALL GHOSTS LEAD TO GRANDVIEWOn a camping trip in the woods, Jim and Melinda encounter a runaway young girl who is being haunted, haunted by a ghost that she can see. In fact, she can see all the ghosts. With the girl's parents on the way, Melinda has 48 hours to teach the new ghost whisperer how to deal with ghosts and cross them over or send her back to a life of misery and pills and mental institutions. Two weeks after the fake medium (Unhappy Medium) we get the real thing and a Melinda gets to act as a mentor. There's no need to suggest how it goes because there isn't one single surprise in the whole story. The worst thing about it is that not only do we get the usual teary-eyed crossover of the ghost, but we also have the family accepting their daughter's gift as well. It's more sugar than one person ought to be required to take. Only the brief appearance of the irrepressible Professor Payne brings this to life, thanks be to Jay Mohr. TopCHRISTMAS SPIRITIt's a few days before Christmas and one of Melinda's customers reveals that all kinds of wierd things have been happening lately. Melinda guesses it might have something to do with the ghost that's haunting him, the ghost who believes he's Father Christmas. Oh dear, a Christmas edition of GHOST WHISPERER? Can we cope with the goodwill overkill? Trying a little of the real Christmas spirit, we will simply say that if you love GHOST WHISPERER then you will love this episode. Apart from the fact that the ghost thinks he's Santa, the story follows the same tried and trusted formula of a family in pain and a ghost who can't cross over until the problem is sorted, but doesn't really understand what the problem is. Add to this a large amount of tree decorating, but thankfully no carol singing, and you get the idea. Dee Wallace (Elliot's mother in ET THE EXTRATERRESTRIAL pops up as the grandmother of the family for no particular reason and to no particularly enhanced effect. TopSLAMMelinda picks up on a ghost who is making life at High School miserable for some of the kids in Delia's son's year. He is trying to protect his sister from being villified on an internet hate site, but the true story has not yet emerged. It took less than twenty minutes to figure out what the big secret was that everyone was hiding and that meant another 45 minutes of watching the characters slog through to the same conclusion and the final reconciliation scene. This show really needs to come up with some new material. Perhaps our attention span has slipped with this show, but Ned (that's Delia's son) seems to have grown a good few years since we last saw him in SEASON 2. That and the existence of these high school hate websites (the 'Slambook') is the only thing that made the episode bearable as it ran through its predictable story to the inevitable oversweet ending. Melinda also managed to pick herself up another suspicious fringe character in the shape of Justin the blogger, clearly presaging something for the end of the season. TopFIRST DO NO HARMJim has to make a choice between saving two people from a collapsing building. At first Melindsa thinks that a ghost causing problems is after him for revenge, but it turns out that the ghost is after one of the nurses, a nurse with no past and a big secret. Once again it is possible to work out what the nurse is hiding and what the ghost is not remembering from a fairly early stage and so the rest of the episode is a painful slog as all the characters catch up. Worse than that, because of Jim's guilt there gets to be two whole tearful confession/reconciliation scenes which, quite frankly, is evil on the part of the writers. TopHOME BUT NOT ALONEDelia's son Ned has a girlfriend and the girlfriend has a ghost. Melinda's investigations point towards the dead father, but as she digs deeper Melinda finds a truth about the home situtation that could tear remainder of the family apart. If the title doesn't give away what is really going on in the girlfriend's household then the twist in the middle of the show might come as a surprise to you, but otherwise the episode treads the well-worn groove of the plot template that the show seems to stick so religiously to. Which means, of course, that if you love GHOST WHISPERER then you'll love this episode. If, however, you're not a big fan then it's just another repetitious retelling of the same story with different names. TopTHE GRAVESITTERMelinda's shop is being graffiti'd with red painted slogans such as 'witchcraft' and 'killer'. The perpetrator turns out to be Justin, the student whose blog has been giving her so much trouble. When she challenges him, he explains that he is not aware of doing these things and that he is dying. When he dies he wants her to help him find someone who is already dead, but Melinda's research suggests that the person who is waiting for him is not what he believes her to be or has his best interests at heart. Throughout the first half of this episode there isn't a ghost to be seen, just a conflicted and troubled young man. This makes for a fresh experience, but this is THE GHOST WHISPERER and so duly a ghost appears and the story abandons any freshness and passes through a challenge for the poor boy's soul, a confession and a tearful farewell, two if you count the one with the duplicitous girlfriend. For a while we hoped that we were going to see something new, but then that hope was cruelly snatched away. As for the title, The Gravesitter, well that comes from a reminiscence that is a little less saccharine and a little more touching than the usual. It's a shame that the rest of the episode didn't have the courage to be a little bit more different. TopHORROR SHOWProfessor Payne introduces Melinda to one of his students who has just lost her scholarship and looks like she's going to flunk out of college. Melinda sees a ghost and identifies the hauntings as scenes from famous horror movies. When the girl denies knowing anyone that has died recently, Melinda is sucked into a mystery revolving around an unfinished horror documentary. There are two good moments in this episode of GHOST WHISPERER (which is about two more than usual). The first is when Rick Payne suggests what might be causing his student to fail her grades - "sex, drugs, guitar hero" and the second is the look that Jay Mohr gives Jennifer Love Hewitt when he is listing horror movies and gets to 'I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER' (in which she starred). They're both underplayed and are blink and you miss 'em moments, but they enliven what is otherwise another leaden run through the same stuff that has become so rigid a formula as to be utterly tedious. Not to mention that we figure it all out about 35 minutes before the characters in the show do. Please, do something different or just stop doing anything at all. TopDEADBEAT DADSA woman with whom Professor Payne had a relationship before his wife comes back into his life with a child born at about the right time and with mental attributes that just scream he is the professor's son. As Payne prepares to pay for the kid's education with the insurance money from his wife's death, she comes back in all her vengeful glory determined to make his life even more of a misery. This episode centres around Professor Payne and his wife and that means there is a lot more of Jay Mohr in evidence, which is all to the good as he is one of the few really good things about this show. His performance aside, though, this is a bog-standard GHOST WHISPERER plot that ticks all the boxes for the regular fan whilst doing nothing for anyone else. There are no surprises and the drawing of the parallel between the Paynes' position and that of Melinda and Jim is drawn so painfully obviously that it just grates. And just what is with Nikki Cox's (the girlfriend) lips? They are a distraction throughout from what is an otherwise forgettable contribution. TopSTRANGLEHOLDTom Gordon finally walks back into his daughter's life, not as dead as she expected, but definitely haunted. It turns out that the ghost was a man that her father convicted of a child murder during his time as district attorney. Melinda meets the boy's ghost and begins to suspect that her father made a mistake. This is a set up episode for the big finale and feels like it all the way through. Sure, there is a ghost to get to go into the light, but that's really just a sideshow to the main event of what's going on with her father and the wronged man (who wears a mask because he was burned in a fire), but that's for the final episode, making this a necessary, but totally underwhelming, episode. TopPATER FAMILIASThe truth about the child that was killed by Paul Eastham has been resolved and yet the ghost is still trying to kill Tom Gordon, who he blames for his imprisonment. There's much more to it than either her father or her mother is willing to admit, so Melinda goes in search of the masked man and finally gets the truth from her parents about why Tom abandoned his family when she was only nine, but it's a secret that might cost Melinda her life. Secrets come tumbling out in this altogether unconvincing mess of a family soap opera. Melinda doesn't do any investigation at all, she is merely told everything by everyone who has worked so hard to keep it all a secret. The fact that she remembered some of it and completely repressed the memories is almost as unbelievable as the story of how her mother met Tom in the first place. This all leads to a mildly tense climax that, after the plane crash of SEASON 1 and Melinda's death in SEASON 2 is a total damp squib, not to mention utterly predictable. The last line of the script ensures that Melinda and her ghosts will return, but we can't say that the prospect fills us with glee. Top |
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