What to say about this week’s ‘Ghost Whisperer’

GHOST WHISPERER: 5.07 “Devil’s Bargain”

I’m at a bit of a loss as to what to say about this week’s Ghost Whisperer. If you were paying attention to my twitter this weekend, you would have seen that I was postponing watching the show because of the Jennifer Love Hewitt pole-dancing scene. Yes, that was enough to make me not watch because it seemed as needless as her video game outfit last season.

And really, it was. Melinda could have just as easily watched the other girl pole dance as much as she really needed to. That was rather ridiculous. I wonder who’s brilliant idea that was.

Honestly, this entire episode just seemed very convoluted. It makes me question whether the writers have taken on too much with their introduction of the “shadows” storyline. I mean, we had a ghost, that was supposedly angry at the beginning but by the end was supposedly trying to protect the good doctor; a doctor that was ex-best friends with the president of the university; the president of the university that somehow got his job because of the shadows and has a sick mother; and more people. It just seemed like we were hopping from one story to another, and I started to lose track.

The main thing we were supposed to realize was that the president of the university has some sort of deal with the shadows–or at least are being blackmailed by them–and knows about the book.

I’m curious to know what the shadows really are. I’m excited to know that they’re really making a tangible presence on the show, but they’re still too far beyond arm’s reach to really make sense of the information being revealed to us. The book is protecting itself by hiding information about them. They can take over someone’s body and cause events to happen–elevators crashing, people to die. They overtook Melinda so she could barely move. Clearly, they’re bad and they need to be stopped.

And I do want to know what parts of people they really are. The evil side of people? Say, if you have a bad heart, it’s left behind? Who knows?

But the way it’s being presented. Uggh. It’s horrible. I can’t understand left from right with this. I think the show needs to focus. And here’s how:

1. Choose your episodes carefully. If you’re going to reveal a lot about a story arc, make it a story arc-centric episode. The writing’s not strong enough to juggle.
2. Make filler episodes better. Make them so much better that we don’t realize they’re filler episodes. Keep the story arc out, keep the storylines clean, and then get the episode done.
3. Focus the story arc episodes. Don’t throw too many people in the episodes that surround the arc. Make us keep guessing, too. Don’t tell us the answer (like you did last week). Give us material that when we rewatch, we go, “How did I not notice that last time?”
4. See the minor characters. Just because the Emmys and Oscars define people as supporting actors and actresses doesn’t mean the show itself doesn’t. Focus on someone other than Melinda and Eli for an episode. You’ve got some strong talent. Show it.
5. Cut back Aiden. He might see more things than Melinda, but he’s a terrible actor. Cut back his air time, and start using heresay. It’ll work just as effectively with fewer headaches.

Anyway, that’s just my two cents. Hopefully I understood enough from this week’s episode to understand next week’s (which has Greg Germann in it–yay!), but here goes nothin’!