Lower Decks

The following review contains spoilers for Ghost Whisperer through the current episode, “Big Chills,” originally broadcast October 10th, 2008.

Like the season premiere, “Big Chills” was an episode on a mission. It had to develop the character of Eli James, introduced in “Firestarter,” while following up on the ominous warning Melinda was given, the one about death brushing off on something (or someone) she touches. Plus, there had to be the requisite ghost-of-the-week. In all three categories “Big Chills” succeeded.

The ghost-of-the-week is a man named Lucas, found dead in a parking lot by his friend Grace. As if finding the body of her best friend sprawled across the pavement wasn’t bad enough, Grace sees a pair of bloody handprints appear on the window of Lucas’s car. Creepy. It turns out Melinda went to high school with both Lucas and Grace, plus Grace’s boyfriend Ryan (a surgical resident at Grandview Hospital) and Lucas’s on-again, off-again girlfriend Haylie. And they were not kind to her, due to her association with ghosts, calling her names like Meloony Gordon (teenagers can be so cruel).

Meanwhile, Melinda and Jim are trying to get pregnant. Melinda appears somewhat more enthusiastic about the whole thing, going through baby catalogues and drawing up plans to convert the garage into a guest room. Jim thinks they should wait until Melinda is actually pregnant before diving headfirst into renovations. After all, they’ll still have nine months before the baby is born. Although she puts on a brave face for Jim, Melinda isn’t happy about waiting.

As for Eli, he gets his first taste of dealing with the family of an angry ghost when he helps Melinda with the problem of Lucas. After talking with Grace and Ryan, Melinda has Eli talk with Haylie and the mystery begins to unravel. Lucas underwent a drastic change in disposition after a road trip to visit colleges a decade ago. At Lucas’s apartment, Eli finds one of those plastic wallet photograph cases with photographs of a man and his family. After touching it, Melinda has another vision: during that road trip, Lucas, Ryan and Grace killed a man.

Eli then heads out to meet with the man’s widow. He has a tough time at first, hearing the man’s ghost whispering in his ear, but eventually is able to show her the photographs. He learns that Lucas, under the name Mark, visited the widow shortly after her husband, Tim, was killed and sent her money every few months. Melinda wonders why Lucas was the only one being haunted by Tim. Moments later, as Grace and Ryan are driving home, Tim’s ghost appears, Ryan gets a nosebleed, blood starts pooling everyone, the car swerves, skids and then flips over.

Despite the horrific crash, both Ryan and Grace survive. And they tell Melinda everything. They were driving back home after a party, Lucas was the least drunk, and a man on a motorcycle swerves to pass them and wipes out. Although Ryan desperately performs CPR on the man, he dies on the side of the road. Because Lucas was technically drunk, Ryan convinces the others to leave the body. They didn’t hit him, after all, and their lives would be ruined if the police found them. Somehow, after hearing this, Melinda realizes that Tim’s ghost isn’t haunting Grace and Ryan. Lucas is. She confronts him and he explains that Grace was the only reason he didn’t admit everything to the police (ah, the power of unrequited love). And he tells her he didn’t overdose. She assumes that means Ryan killed him.

Eventually, the real truth comes out (but only after Ryan gives a moving speech about moving forward and announces he and Grace are getting married). Grace and Ryan have one secret about the accident that they never talk about. They were making out at the party, Lucas saw them, and for the first time in his life he got drunk. During the drive home, they all ignored it. Ryan was only trying to protect them all when he suggested they leave the body and pretend nothing happened. And he was trying to protect Lucas ten years later when he gave him drugs. Lucas even admits that Ryan warned him about not mixing his medication.

What killed Lucas was the silence. Even with all the drugs, he couldn’t sleep. He would just keep popping pills. The night he died, he had gone out to his car to get headphones so he could watch television without bothering his neighbors (how considerate). The next thing he knows, he’s standing over his own body. The reason he haunted Grace and Ryan was to protect them, to keep them from having their lives ruined by the guilt. Eli brings Grace and Ryan to Tim’s widow’s house to tell her about her husband’s last moments and Lucas sees the light and goes towards it.

The episode ends with Melinda finding Jim hard at work in the garage. He knew that she wasn’t happy about waiting until she was pregnant and so he started building the guest room. Melinda tells him what the ghosts told her, about something bad happening in return for doing what she does. Without missing a beat, Jim tells her they need to believe that the right thing will happen to them, just the way she believes in helping people. And they will believe until it happens. Melinda asks where he learned to be so brave. He says from her.

Thus everything was covered. Eli learns a little about what Melinda goes through every time she tries to help a ghost and Jim learns that something vaguely terrible might happen because he happens to be married to the ghost whisperer. And Lucas crosses over and Grace and Ryan learn a valuable lesson about life. It might sound corny, but somehow it all worked rather well. The confusion over who was haunting who — was it Tim or Lucas — and eventual revelation that Lucas was doing all the haunting caught me by surprise. I do wish it had been explained a little bit clearer how Melinda realized Lucas was haunting his friends. But even then, there were still more surprises. Lucas wasn’t trying to kill Grace and Ryan. He was trying to save them.

After one episode, Professor Eli James is no Professor Rick Payne. The character simply isn’t developed enough. When he was first talking with Melinda about Lucas, it felt as if the scene had been written with Professor Payne in mind. Perhaps, if it was necessary to give Melinda a new sidekick, he shouldn’t have been another professor. And why is Delia still sticking around if she never does anything? She was in one scene this episode and had perhaps two or three lines. Once Delia found out about Melinda’s ability, she never developed further as a character. All she ever does is get a little upset about Melinda’s ghosts.

During the first season, Andrea had a much bigger role in Melinda’s life. And then Professor Payne was introduced and started having more and more of an impact on the series. Both Delia and Jim were downsized somewhat, although Jim at least usually has something to do with the ghost-of-the-week, rather than just appearing in a scene with Melinda. If Professor Payne had not been replaced, the triumvirate of Melinda/Jim/Delia could have been revived and Delia could have taken on more responsibility. As things stand now, Delia always feels like an afterthought.