In the US: Fridays, 8pm ET/PT, CBS
In the UK: Season one on E4 right now and on ABC1 in January. Hopefully, they'll both be sane enough not to pick up season two.
Characters re-cast: 0
Major characters gotten rid of: 1
Major new characters: 2
Format change percentage: 10%
Well that was painful. I've seen some pretty rubbish shows in my time, but Ghost Whisperer makes Night Man and Viper look like Six Feet Under. It's as though someone thought Charmed was just a little too edgy and a little too simple and they really needed something more complex and more touchy-feely.
Jennifer “I'd love to eat some food but I just can't force it down” Hewitt can see and speak with dead people. She runs a shop. She tries to help the dead people. Occasionally there'll be bad dead people. That's it. It's Medium without the good dialogue or the fun. It's Charmed with only one sister.
This first episode is a continuation of last season's finale, in which a bad dead person tries to get the soul of JLH (I want to say “Justice League of Haiti” when I see that, but clearly she's not). He ends up with season one regular Aisha Tyler's soul instead. Or something.
Then I got lost. Even the recap was confusing. Apparently, if there's an r in the month and you dance up and down on one leg in East Africa, you can invoke the magic powers of the Oompah Loompahs or something and that stops dark spirits, provided you've remembered to carry the 1.
Suffice it to say, evil dark soul with an evil hat doesn't get JLH's soul by the end of the episode, but Aisha “I'm heading towards the light” Tyler is not going to be a regular this season. Instead, Jay Mohr as a psychiatry professor specialising in supernatural stuff and some bloke who appears to be stalking JLH look like they're going to be stepping up to the mark in her place. But maybe they've had budget cuts and can't afford any new regulars.
Otherwise, it's going to be business as usual in the Little Shop of Some Scenes of Mild Peril for the rest of the season. Regular viewers, why are you even watching? Still, you'll probably be happy, unless for some bizarre reason you really liked Aisha Tyler.
New viewers: STAY AWAY. Just don't. Look in the other direction, don't catch their eye, but whatever you do, don't watch it. It's awful.
September 27, 2006 | Reply
When it comes to reviews, I almost prefer to read the bad ones. This is top-class "it-stinks" review!
September 27, 2006 | Reply
This is one of the shows that's so bad the E4 announcer takes the piss out of it in trails... makes me think they got it in a package with something decent.
September 27, 2006 | Reply
As in "You can repeat Friends 17,000 times every day, but only if you show Ghost Whisperer as well"? Was the price still too high, I wonder?