The Good
A very engaging ghost story show.
The Bad
I didn’t like this show’s constant need to rely on quick editing and camera tricks.
Melinda Gordon (Jennifer Love Hewitt) has her work cut out for her in Ghost Whisperer: The Second Season. As a very evil force wages battle against Melinda for the souls of Grandview, she is aided in her fight by Delia Banks (Camryn Manheim) and husband Jim (David Conrad). Having the ability to see the walking dead and help them make the transition from this world to the next, Melinda is able to help the dead as much as the people they have left behind.
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This second season opens with Melinda trying to help her friend Andrea (Aisha Taylor) get to the world beyond ours in “Love Never Dies.” As the series moves on we see Melinda have a very creepy encounter on Halloween when she comes across an author who claims to be buried in the wrong grave in “A Grave Matter.” “Dead to Rights” is one of the most interesting episodes in this 22 episode set. Melinda comes into contact with a spirit who is being torn apart watching his parents fight with his wife over keeping him on life support. I think that my favorite episode in this collection was “Love Still Won’t Die” which has Melinda getting the last laugh when she comes into contact with someone who broke up with her because of her power. Now he’s dead…
I must say that I really enjoyed Ghost Whisperer: The Second Season. While I could do without all the editing and camera parlor tricks, I was very impressed with the various levels of tone this serious show was able to achieve.
Features
There are a bunch of commentary tracks on this DVD that are listed out on the packaging and on the discs themselves. Due to time constraints I only watched the commentary for the episode “Love Never Dies.” This features writer John Gray and executive producer Kim Moses and, I hate to say it, was pretty dull. They talked about wanting to have no images for the second season. It seems they wanted to keep the portal that Melinda uses but just have it be more exciting. After this they discuss how even when you die on Ghost Whisperer due to the nature of the show, you’re never really off of it. Gray then talks about loving horror movies when he was a kid and that’s what makes doing this show so much fun now, and then he and Moses praise the DPs for this show. I didn’t listen to any of the other commentary tracks but I don’t know if I want to.
Grandview Graveyard
A Conversation with the Living
Sadly, this was a pretty run-of-the-mill talk with the cast and crew about Ghost Whisperer: The Second Season. They discuss how the show has changed, that they were trying to go in a more eery, suspenseful direction in this second season, and how they were also trying to expand on the characters of Melinda and Jim. I am a bit dubious toward this special feature probably because nobody really said anything I didn’t expect them to say. This show has a very ponderous quality to it that isn’t all bad. It was cool getting to see how this type of thing was achieved, but for the most part I just don’t know how necessary this featurette was.
The Other Side
Melinda’s Closet
Alright… was this really necessary either? It might be because I am a guy but I don’t really see what the big deal is about the clothes that Jennifer Love Hewitt wears as the Melinda character on the show. They talk about her outfits and how they try and have them speak to the subject matter of that particular episode, but I just found this whole thing to be a waste of my viewing time. I am not just saying that I don’t get it but I really have a hard time seeing something deep in what this character is wearing. To me, Melinda looked how I might expect she would look living in a place like Grandview. Was there really a reason to devote a whole segment to it?
Jennifer Love Hewitt Speed Painting Video
Ghostly Visions
Finally, pay dirt! Truthfully this was worth the wait because I love seeing the effects people in action. Having done a zombie movie where I was in make-up for over an hour, I always love seeing how the process looks on the other end. Kandace Westmore takes us into the process of what she and her fellow makeup artists have to do to get people to look dead. Some of the make-up they do is more involved than others, but I guess that just depends on how the person in question met their end. Overall, this was extremely enjoyable and I just wish it would have been longer.
Video
Widescreen Version Enhanced for 16:9 TVs. The compression on this show is very well done. While I wish that they wouldn’t cut so much (as I think that takes away from the powerfulness of the scary images they are trying to put across), I can very much appreciate the moody quality that this show has. There are a lot of blacks, blues, and in between tones and all of this plays quite well on these discs. Sometimes I thought that the characters themselves played things a bit too moody, rather than simply being normal against their dour backdrop. On the whole though the folks at Paramount have done a solid job with this DVD.
Audio
Dolby Digital: English 5.1 Surround / English Stereo Surround. Whispering!!! WHISPERING!!! I don’t know when this started on dramatic TV shows but I really wish that it would end. I know that in dealing with spooky/scary subject matter it probably makes it easier to talk this way, but it does me absolutely no good here. I liked the sound effects and the soundtrack that this show had and I think all of it would have been more powerful if everything (the acting, the editing, etc.) had been played more toward the realistic instead of the dramatic.
Package
A sultry Jennifer Love Hewitt takes up the entire left side of the front of this bluish/black, slipcase cover. The back of this slipcase continues this color scheme with some images from the show (there is one promo shot featuring Hewitt and Manheim), a tiny description of what this show is about, a Special Features listing, and then underneath this slipcase is where users can find the technical specs listing. The 6 discs that make up this set are stored in 3 slim cases, all of which feature different images of Hewitt. The backs of these cases list out the episodes, their descriptions, airdates and where to find the special features.
Final Word
I don’t know what it is but I do and don’t find Jennifer Love Hewitt believable on this show. It might be because of how she plays this character but I just always got this feeling of overt melodrama. As if she’s acting in this role the way that one would expect someone in her position to act. It never felt 100% genuine to me. Make no mistake about it, I think that if people have to look at someone for over 16 hours of content, they could do a lot worse than having to gaze at Hewitt. I just felt that in all her situations, whether she was scared, investigating something, talking to people normally, she was always aware that the camera was on her. It is because of this that her performances seemed somewhat tepid and hard to believe.
Yet, despite all of my reservations to the contrary, I really do like this show a lot. I love how they decorate the sets, I love the stories and I love the way that Grandview, more than anything else on this show, just feels real. Ghost Whisperer: The Second Season delivers because of how it looks on screen. The creative forces behind this show should let the camera linger more because they are undercutting the scariness of the mood when they don’t.
Ghost Whisperer was released .
