Belated Review: Ghost Whisperer
In which Jennifer Love Hewitt tells me to go into the light.
A few weeks ago, I got COVID for the first time since we first knew of the virus back in 2020. (I almost definitely had it in December 2019, because I got the worst "cold" I've ever had and I lost my sense of smell entirely. But there's no way to know for sure, I suppose.) Unlike some people in this country, I still take COVID very seriously and do NOT think it is actually a bad cold, no matter how mild the symptoms, so I was dedicated to resting. Something I never used to do before the pandemic; I was sick so often, I always pushed myself to just power through it, which probably didn't help the whole "getting sick so often" thing, in retrospect. So this time, I was committed to doing literally nothing. I turned off all my morning alarms, took Nyquil every night, and let my body sleep for as long as it needed to. During the day, I stayed on the couch, only getting up to eat or use the bathroom or shower. And to occupy my time and my brain while I was on said couch, I did two things simultaneously: I downloaded and started playing Disney Dreamlight Valley on my Switch (a game I will definitely be talking about at length at a later date), and I watched the entirety of the Jennifer Love Hewitt masterpiece of a show Ghost Whisperer. 107 episodes in exactly two weeks. I'm not joking when I tell you I hardly did anything else.
Despite falling squarely in what I call the Dark Ages (aka when I was in college and not watching much weekly television), having aired from 2005-2010 I did watch the first few seasons of this show when it was on. I don't know if I caught it in reruns over the summer, or if my dad saved them on the TiVo for me when I came home for breaks, because I didn't even have cable in college, but I do remember seeing those early seasons. I have been in love with Jennifer Love Hewitt for what feels like my whole life, but in reality was since I was 10 and saw I Know What You Did Last Summer for the first time. (God that seems so young to have been watching a slasher, but I definitely did see it then! Many times!) I probably also loved her in Kids Incorporated, because I did love that show, but I'm not sure I knew her name yet at that point. I loved her in that one episode of Boy Meets World, the 90s comedy Can't Hardly Wait, the LFO music video Girl on TV, and even though I watched it much later than it aired, Party of Five. She was one of the celebrities I clipped out of magazines, and I felt so fiercely about her that despite Perez Hilton being at the height of his popularity at the time (before social media, when gossip rags were much more prevalent than they are now), the day he made a post about Jennifer Love Hewitt and implied she might be gaining weight (Oh what because she was not a teenager anymore? Grow up.) was the day I quit visiting that site forever. I have never forgiven him, and once had the distinct honor of being able to glower at him in person when we happened to be seated in the same row at a production of Bayside!, the unauthorized parody musical of Saved By the Bell.
All this to say, I love Jennifer Love Hewitt. I've been delighted that she has been following me to some of my favorite shows, like when she showed up on my comfort show Criminal Minds, or when she joined the ranks of one of my go-to procedurals, 9-1-1. And casting her as a 911 operator actually is the best idea anyone has had in a long time, because she is such a comforting presence, but I'll get into that in a minute.
One of my favorite things about this series is that, in all 107 episodes, they never quit the monster-of-the-week format. Much like Criminal Minds, almost every single episode has a problem and a solution, but instead of a murder, it's a ghost. The formula is this: Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt) sees a ghost, Melinda and her friends figure out what is keeping this spirit Earthbound, Melinda helps the ghost cross over. Almost every single episode is that neat and tidy. Now, there are also often other things going on that span the whole season, like an evil ghost trying to keep spirits from going into the light, strange prophecies, etc. But despite any given throughline, there is still a Ghost of the Week. And I love that format so much.
Another thing I loved about watching this show in particular is the GUEST STARS. It was actually unreal how many people who are now much more famous than I imagine they were then were at the time of this show - and even a few who were definitely already very famous but still popped by for a quick guest spot on this show. Which I am choosing to take as a testament to Jennifer Love Hewitt as a person, as she was a producer. Some of these guest stars I was less happy to see (specifically Matthew Morrison and Evan Peters) but most delighted me to no end, including but not limited to: Mary J Blige, Madeline Zima, Joey King, Justina Machado, Hilary Duff, Abigail Spencer, Rachel Shelley, Ariel Winter, Abigail Breslin, Lindy Booth, Vanessa Lengies, Debi Mazar, Lacey Chabert, Elizabeth Moss, Brittany Curran, Debbi Morgan, Bellamy Young, Alexa PenaVega, Peyton List the Elder, Katey Sagal, Rachael Leigh Cook, Mae Whitman, Amy Acker, and more! There was even a brief appearance by Kate Siegel. She had no lines but I clocked her immediately. Also when I was looking at the IMDb to see if I missed any notable guest stars, I realized Brie Larson was in an episode and I didn't even recognize her because she was a wee teenager. (Though I went back to watch and now that I know it's her, I can see it. I guess out of context, I wasn't expecting to see her playing a 15-year-old girly girl. I would say that I blame Disney Dreamlight Valley but I do very much remember this episode, because it was one of only two in total that featured lesbians. AND SHE WAS ONE OF THE WEE LESBIANS. My mind is blown. I am shook.) And all that is not even including Aisha Tyler and Camryn Manheim, who play Melinda's best friend at different points in the show. Every time someone new I recognized showed up I squealed with delight. It was quite the ride.
The basic plot of this show is that Melinda Gordon owns an antique shop in a small town with her best friend and is married to her EMT husband who she loves more than anything, and also she can see ghosts. It's something she's always been able to do, a power her late grandmother helped her hone, and now she uses it to guide spirits into the light. At first, she avoids telling as many people as she can, but by the end of the series, it seems like Melinda's gift is the worst kept secret in Grandview. She's faced with plenty of skeptics along the way, and as the years go on, it seems the veil between the spirit world and Grandview gets thinner, because ghosts are able to do more and more harm, beyond just messing with the electricity or moving small objects. The stakes go from helping a little boy who won't stop interrupting Melinda while she's with customers, making her look a wee bit nutty, to her literal life being in danger. You just never know what a spirit is going to get up to!
I think what I love most about this show is that it's so many stories packed into one show. Every spirit comes with a whole, rich life and story, and there are often misunderstandings to iron out, misconceptions to clear up, or even just mysteries to unfold. Every story is unique and every spirit needs something slightly different for their unfinished business.
And this is going to sound whatever, but over the past few years I've developed a new anxiety, where I start to spiral about the nothingness of death in a way I never did when I was more religious and believed in heaven and hell, but this show and its secular spirituality (God or gods rarely if ever come into it; this isn't Touched by an Angel, it's just earthbound spirits, and a light full of warmth and peace and the loved ones you've lost), and I've decided to adopt it as my own belief in the afterlife to ease the anxiety. It helped me realize there's a way to be agnostic and unsure what, if any, higher powers exist, and also believe that there's an afterlife where our spirits and consciousness lives on and will be reunited with the ones we love.
ANYWAY.
Okay, here is where I tell you there will be spoilers below for this television show that has now been off the air for almost 15 years. Luckily, the true joy of this show is in each individual episode, more than the overarching story, so even if you're mildly spoiled on the overall direction, I still wholeheartedly believe you can and will love this show.
The Spoiler Zone
To get into more specifics about the show that I loved, I first want to talk about Aisha Tyler's character. I loved her very much, and I loved her friendship with Melinda. And if you had asked me before I started my rewatch, I would have been sure she was in two or three seasons of the show; to me, she was a pivotal part of it, and I thought she split the best friend role with Camryn Manheim 50/50, but I was wrong! Aisha Tyler's Andrea was only in the first season. Supposedly she had other projects going on, and that's why she was replaced with Camryn Manheim's Delia. Who is also great! But I wish Andrea had been around longer. Hilariously, Aisha Tyler and Jennifer Love Hewitt would both later be in Criminal Minds, but sadly with no overlap. I actually also enjoyed the character Rick Payne (played by Jay Mohr), a professor of the supernatural Melinda sometimes consulted with. I liked him more than the man he was eventually replaced my Eli (Jamie Kennedy), though Eli was also fun. It was also really nice for Melinda to have male best friends that were never a threat to her marriage, or something her husband was jealous of.
Jennifer Love Hewitt's Melinda Gordon is comforting me in a similar way that AJ Cook's JJ Jareau is on Criminal Minds. Her voice is soothing, and she's always comforting people in a way that I think would cure me if it was ever directed at me. My dad and I have a running joke that J.Love is only cast in roles where she has to cry constantly, but damn is she good at it! Why WOULDN'T you want to cast someone who looks so pretty with tears streaming gently down her face, who can water up on a dime, and who manages to express so much emotion so subtly, never overdoing it or being overdramatic. (I mean, mostly. Sometimes Melinda was a bit overdramatic. But sometimes the situation calls for it!!) She is also very funny. I found myself giggling aloud a lot at Melinda's little one-liners or jokes or cute little mannerisms, or just any time something made HER laugh. You can't take life too seriously when you deal with life and death so often, you'll lose your whole mind.
In the last season, Melinda's son that she had at the end of the previous season is aged up to 5 years, and watching her with that little boy was so precious. Watching her Mama Bear into action was a nice new dynamic, and it also helped that the time jump aged Delia's son up, too, giving them space to play around with what college kids were up to, a dynamic they hadn't yet explored.
Sure, maybe it’s not realistic that Melinda’s antique shop stayed in business with how often she abandoned it to help a spirit. And sure, maybe they jumped the shark a LITTLE when Melinda's husband Jim died but his spirit was so unwilling to leave her that he jumped into a different body, but it was something interesting and new! Since Melinda could still "see" her husband's spirit in the new man's body, he was still played by the old actor. He saw his stolen body in the mirror for one season, but in the final season they simply never mentioned it again. Hilarious. And while they did temporarily explore some interesting differences between what the body vs the soul remembers, I'm glad they didn't drag that out into the final season. (This fact is how I know I definitely watched at least through Season 4, because I have distinct memories of Jim looking at his reflection and seeing a different actor, though I don't remember having watched the final season with Melinda and Jim's son.) But I was more than willing to hand-wave away any logistics or minute details for the fun of the show. Because even though I remembered the main characters, I definitely didn't remember any of the individual ghost stories, so each one was a delight.
Also it was so refreshing to go back to a show with 22 episodes per season. I know the internet is divided on this, and I do think some shows really do benefit from half seasons (however, I think very few shows make sense with only SIX EPISODES), but procedural shows like this with a clear format and tight mini stories are best told in bigger chunks.
I think this show could have gone on much longer. The series finale didn't feel quite series finale-y to me, even though it was a great season finale. To make sure I wasn't imagining that, I did a little digging, and did find that the cancellation took them by surprise. Jennifer Love Hewitt is quoted as saying she assumed they were almost done, that maybe Season 6 would be their last, because they'd been going for so long, but she thought they had more time. In what I thought was a poignant statement, Jennifer Love Hewitt once said, "When you've taken people on a journey for so long, the least you can do is give them a goodbye. For a show that was about unfinished business, we didn't get to finish."
She also said that she would be absolutely down to reboot it someday, but that she's not relinquishing the Melinda Gordon role to anyone else, which I respect the hell out of. She didn't cry on screen for that many hours, weeks, and years just to pass the torch. And besides, the show just wouldn't be the same without her specific presence.
Thank you for reading my long-winded love letter to seminal classic Ghost Whisperer! I can't wait to find out what long-finished series I latch onto next. Some options I have on my list are Heroes, The Leftovers, Dead Like Me, and Twin Peaks. For now, I'll be doing a speed rewatch of Wynonna Earp to get ready for Friday's 90-minute special, Vengeance.