There is a show on network television that I can't quite freely admit that I watch. I mean, I do admit that I watch it, but my admission is always accompanied by a requisite eyeroll. The show is...cough, cough..."The Ghost Whisperer". After a few Fridays of B-ball preempting it, a new episode was aired last night. It's one of those shows that seemed 'OK' when I first started watching it. Actually, I can't quite remember WHY I started watching it, but...well, anyway, as it progressed it did start getting a bit darker. Which I liked. I had gotten tired of watching what felt like "Touched by a Ghost", and was about to ditch it from my roster until it did start venturing into darker territory. Things do still get wrapped up in a tidy little bow pretty frequently, but there are some people who get theirs in the end. Well, close enough. There was one particular storyline of a funeral home director running out of money who (to thwart losing his business to others) starts tossing "clients" in the local lake to keep profits coming in. He didn't get the usual bow, but he didn't get the tear-jerky, puppies and kittens send off that most do. I'm sticking with it because I've now put in a lengthy time commitment on the thing, and want to see what happens with the main storyline they're airing currently. I'll try and give a Reader's Digest overview. Here goes...Melinda (Jennifer Love Hewitt) is married to her paramedic husband, Jim. One night Jim gets shot at a friends cabin by a 'green' cop who sees a shadow of a man with a gun through one of the cabin windows, and shoots haphazardly hitting Jim and not the guy who actually had the gun. (Melinda is there and sees the whole thing.) So Jim is in the hospital in bad shape. Melinda falls asleep in a chair at his bedside only to awaken to his ghost, as Jim has died. Jim refuses to leave Melinda, who can "see dead people". She is grieving in a major way and tells him to go, but he still refuses. THEN...one day there is an accident in the town square. A guy on a motorcycle is hit and killed, resusitation isn't working. Dead as a doornail. Jim sees a chance to return to Melinda, so he jumps inside the guys body. NOW...the guy does come back but his identity is that of Sam, the motorcycle guy. Melinda is crushed because she knows her husband is in there, but this new guy/body doesn't know who she is. However, he does feel an unexplainable familiarity with her. They become friends, and she rents out her 'unfinished' garage apartment to him. The story arc follows Sam going in search of who he is/was. At one point he finds an old girlfriend he was going to ask to marry him before the accident - that doesn't come to fruition. Sam is starting to feel a strong attraction to Melinda. He does ask her out, but there are a lot of unexplainable things about her (i.e. when she disappears to help the living who are haunted by the deceased). Melinda tries to explain a few things to him gradually (albeit not very successfully...or well), but Sam doesn't really believe in the paranormal. THEN she gets involved with a 'case' very similar to hers. A dead guy has entered the body of another guy who died. Melinda helps that guy, and the 'dead' guy who took over the body of the newly dead guy re-enters the world. The one dead guy becomes the other dead guy. BUT in the course of helping that guy, Melinda gets trapped in a sewer area that is filling up with water and is in danger of drowning. Eli, a psych prof at the local school who has the ability to hear the dead speak (an ability he acquired when he died and came back), gets the help of Sam after a ghost tells him where Melinda is and that she needs saving. Sam decides to just accept things for whatever they are worth and do what he can to save Melinda. While swimming through a flooded corridor that leads to where she is, Sam gets caught up on some pipes and starts to drown. A life starts to flash before his eyes, but it's Jims' life not his. It's at that moment that Jim comes back, replacing Sam. SO...now Jim is back, but in someone elses body. All of the friends he had in his other 'life' don't know who this Sam guy is, and Jim is faced with having to readjust to a new face/body and whatever else from Sams' life comes down the pike. Hmmmm...I just reread that...why do I watch this show again?
I think the next several episodes will either make or break the series for me. Will I continue to watch? It really depends on how they handle this major storyline. They have a real opportunity to make it interesting with 'as yet' undiscovered tidbits from Sams' life. My guess is that it'll just be tied up with another precious little bow. Hope I'm wrong.
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