Deadline Hollywood reports that talks between production company ABC Studios and ABC the network to pick up Ghost Whisperer are underway and things are looking good.Last season, CBS picked up Medium after NBC canceled it while ABC picked up Scrubs after NBC canceled it as well.

What do you think? Should ABC pick up Ghost Whisperer for a sixth season? The fifth season finale airs tomorrow and it seems highly unlikely that any lingering storylines will be wrapped up.

The Ausiello Files at EW.com reports that when the new season of Ghost Whisperer premieres this fall (likely in October based on previous seasons) the series will jump ahead four years. That jump will allow the writers to skip the birth and formative years of Jim and Melinda’s new baby. Recall that Melinda learned she was pregnant near the end of this past season. And her child will presumably have her ghost whispering abilities and more.

I’m torn. Jumping ahead four years means we can get to the creepy toddler with ghastly powers sooner rather than later. We won’t have to see Jim and Melinda dealing with diapers and formula and all that baby stuff. On the other hand, the jump could mean glossing over Jim’s death and ultimate resurrection in the body of Sam entirely. “Why is no one concerned that Melinda remarried so soon after losing her husband?” “Oh, they got used to it during the past four years.”

Still, the huge shake-up that was the Jim/Sam arc last season helped Ghost Whisperer surge in the Nielsen ratings. A jump forward and a powerful, talking four-year-old could be what the series needs to keep the buzz among fans alive. What do you think? Sound off in the comments.

I apologize for the lateness of this review. It has nothing to do with how I felt about the episode; I just didn’t get around to writing it. Anyway, this was the fourth season finale of Ghost Whisperer. And it was a pretty good finale. I don’t think it’s fair to judge this one episode on the basis of the season as a whole. Maybe in a few weeks I’ll write about what worked and what didn’t during this past season. Right now, though, I’m going to discuss “The Book of Changes.”

First things first. There wasn’t much of a wedding. I am pretty sure Melinda and Jim were married (again) by the end of the episode. It wasn’t the huge event Melinda’s mother had wanted. It was just Melinda and Jim and a few of their friends and a minister. But it was enough. They’re officially back together and they have a little one on the way. What more could they ask for? Aside from Jim looking like Jim, that is.

This was a surprisingly happy season finale. True, there was a death and some very ominous threats about the future. But Melinda and Jim are back together. Yay. I was sad to see Zoe die. I think she was first introducede in “Stage Fright” as an old friend and former girlfriend of Eli’s. At first I thought she was just going to be a one-off character introduced to help move the plot along. But then she showed up in another episode and then this one.

And now she’s dead. It was very creepy the way Eli found her body in her house while she stood next to him in ghost form, having begged him not to come into the house. But she was able to help him get his hands on the mysterious Book of Changes. Melinda wasn’t supposed to see it but Eli can’t help but show her scans of the important pages. And then he brings her the actual book.

It is filled with dates connected to events in Melinda’s life: Andrea’s death, Eli almost dying, Jim being shot, that sort of thing. And it includes one date that hasn’t taken place yet. The birth of Melinda’s baby boy. That’s disturbing. While talking with one of the ghostly watchers she asks if he’ll have her ability to whisper to ghosts. He says no. And then, just as I predicted only seconds earlier, the watcher said her son will be able to do more.

Gasp.

So although Melinda and Jim are happily married again they don’t have much time to go on a honeymoon. Their powerful spawn will be born in no time and who knows what mischief he’ll get into as an infant. Maybe he’ll be able to blink at dead people and bring them back to life. Or perhaps he’ll be able to throw up and somehow sense impending doom.

Whatever his creepy ability turns out to be I’m sure it will be at least a little annoying. Adding babies to television shows rarely, if ever, works out. And coming on the heels of a season in which the status quo was turned upside down and then righted, in a sense, I can’t help but think it isn’t going to sit all that well with fans.

This was a very strange episode. Not in a good way, unfortunately. Ignoring the fact that it was just another Ghost of the Week story, with practically no mention of Jim’s death and resurrection as Sam, it wasn’t a very good episode. I didn’t find the Ghost of the Week interesting at all. It is always nice to see Gail O’Grady on television, but that wasn’t enough to help save this episode.

It was the vampire aspects of “Endless Love” that didn’t work for me. While I’ve read some novels involving vampires and watched some television shows involving vampires, not to mention my love for the first two Underworld movies, I don’t like vampires mixed with teenagers. The angst is just far too much to handle.

Let me summarize the episode in a succinct fashion: One of Ned’s friends is haunted. She thinks a vampire is in love with her. Melinda helps her learn that an old, dead friend from childhood is haunting her. The girl’s relationship with her father is strained. Melinda helps her family (Gail O’Grady played her mother) turn a new corner. The ghost is crossed over. Also, Melinda is working on her (second) wedding to Jim. She’s even invited Jim’s mother, who thinks her son is dead. Dramatic.

Frankly, I’ve already forgotten why the ghost was haunting the girl. They were friends a long time ago but hadn’t been in touch for years. He may have been in love with her. Or concerned about her. Or something. I recall there was clay involved and Jim was taken over by the ghost for a short spell. And there was a scene in which the girl woke up in a bed filled with bugs. And she had an awkard encounter with a fellow classmate she thought was a vampire.

Next week is the season finale. Will Jim and Melinda get hitched and end the season happily (re)married? Or will something terrible and tragic happening. More tragic and terrible then Jim being shot and killed, that is. Will the finale involve a Ghost of the Week that looks to ruin the wedding? We’ll see this Friday. Hopefully it won’t be any worse than “Endless Love.”

The drama series, which is co-produced by ABC Studios and CBS Paramount Network Television, airs on Fridays from 8PM-9PM on CBS and regularly wins its time slot. According to the TV Week article, CBS wants to renew Ghost Whisperer for a fifth season but ABC Studios may demand an increased licensing fee (the amount of money CBS the network forks over for each episode):

But here’s the catch: CBS’ option assumes the network is willing to accept a dramatically higher license fee than what it now pays. Because “Ghost” is going into its fifth season, the deal now in place calls for CBS to start paying the full cost of production on the show next season, which insiders estimate to be around $3 million per episode. One person familiar with the situation said CBS now pays about half that amount per episode.

Given the tough financial times, several people familiar with the situation said ABC Studios knows that it’s unrealistic to expect CBS to pay $3 million per episode for a modest success such as “Ghost.” While the series is a solid anchor for CBS, it airs on Friday, a lower-revenue night for the networks that demands lower-cost programming.

If a deal with CBS cannot be reached, TV Week suggests that ABC Studios may try to sell the series to other networks, with ABC the most likely choice. On the other hand, the article points out, this may simply be a negotiating tactic on the part of ABC Studios and Ghost Whisperer will return on CBS for the 2009-2010 season. The series has been sold into syndication and will air on ION and cable channels SCI FI and WE beginning in the fall of 2009.

What a vexing episode this was. Putting aside for a moment my continued frustration at the way the Jim/Sam story line has been playing out of late, “Cursed” included some strange elements that seemed out of place on Ghost Whisperer and took an uninspired turn near the end. For the first third of the episode I was sure it would join “Save Our Souls” as one of my favorite episodes of the season. But now I’m not quite sure.

“Cursed” took a rather novel approach to the Ghost of the Week: a family, killed by carbon monoxide poisoning, are trapped in a dollhouse that is a recreation of their own home. Their eldest daughter, Emma, survived and is living with her aunt Lucy. The ghosts take over the dolls inside the dollhouse and try to communicate with Lucy’s daughter — Emma’s cousin — Drew.

Melinda gets involved when Emma brings Drew to the antique store looking for another doll. The family in the dollhouse want a daughter. By this point, “Cursed” had me thinking of an episode of The Twilight Zone called “Miniature” in which a man falls for a doll in a museum dollhouse that he believes is alive. Dollhouses are pretty creepy when you think about it. Houses for little dolls complete with beds and chairs and tables and bookshelves and stairs?

While helping Emma and Drew, Melinda touches a chair from the dollhouse and has a vision of someone cutting their wrist in a house that looks just like the dollhouse. She worries that Emma is suicidal and goes to talk with Lucy. She learns that the dollhouse is being kept for Emma in case she wants it for her children. That conflicts with what Emma has been told. Before long, both Melinda and Emma believe that Lucy is up to no good.

This helps explain why Lucy was so shocked to find Emma alive the morning her family was found dead. If Lucy was the one who killed the family and thought Emma was in the house, she’d certainly be surprised to find Emma alive. After finding human hair in the dollhouse Melinda and Eli determine that the ghosts of Emma’s family have been trapped in the dollhouse by voodoo cast by Lucy.

The ghosts believe their actual home has been destroyed and that, should they leave the dollhouse, they’ll be forced to walk the earth forever, unrecognizable. One of Eli’s fellow professors, and old friend from graduate school, is an expert on the occult and warns him that ghosts trapped in such a way become even more powerful and eventually escape.

The ghosts warn Emma that she’s next (by using a tiny piece of chalk and a tiny chalkboard) and she flees, promising to return for Drew if needed. Later, Drew sees her mother casting another spell on the dollhouse, speaking in French and cutting the palm of her hand to draw blood. She gets scared and waves a knife at her mother. Emma rushes in and tells Lucy to stay away from Drew. Lucy takes the knife, grabs Emma and threatens to kill her.

With the house shaking and quaking, Melinda shows up and stops everything. The ghosts reveal that they, too, think Lucy killed them, having seen her outside the house the night they died. But she didn’t do it. The reason she was outside that night was because earlier in the evening she thought she saw Emma coming out of a bar with a boy. Despite not having spoken to her brother or his family in years she was worried. But when she looked in the windows she saw everyone asleep and left.

They weren’t asleep. They were dead. And Emma wasn’t in her bed. Lucy had seen her out the other night. Due to the confusion, Lucy thought she was being haunted by the ghosts of her brother’s family and tried to curse them to the dollhouse to keep her family safe. And although the curse isn’t real, the ghosts stay in the house. Once Melinda works everything out, however, Lucy and Emma have a reconciliation and the ghosts cross over.

I don’t recall voodoo popping up in previous episodes of Ghost Whisperer. Even if it has, it still bothers me. For some reason, despite the fact that the show is all about ghosts and the supernatural, the idea of voodoo and magic seems out of place. In the end, though, the voodoo was just a bunch of hooey, so I suppose I can let it slide. What really bothered me about the episode is the way everything worked out in the end.

Granted, most episodes of Ghost Whisperer have happy endings. Ghosts are crossed over, friends and loved ones learn the truth, tears are shed and so on and so forth. But Bellamy Young did such a wonderful job as the potentially “evil” Lucy and Michelle Page was so convincing as a niece terrified of her own aunt that the ending just didn’t ring true. As disturbing as the idea of a woman killing her brother and her family for money it was actually a little refreshing. But the episode ended on a trite note which is why I’m not sure exactly how I feel about it.

This was a heavy Melinda episode with only a few scenes involving Delia or Eli. I think Ned had exactly one short scene in which he told Melinda that Lucy had taken the dollhouse back (how exactly does one pack up and move a dollhouse of that size?). Jim was featured a little more at the beginning and end of the episode. Melinda nad Jim are on a date in town and talk about their baby. He almost forgets to respond to the name Sam Lucas.

The episode also includes a running plot point about Melinda having lost the wedding rings she wears on a necklace. At the end of the episode she learns that Jim had found them in the car and taken Melinda’s to get engraved. I don’t recall Jim actually proposing but the episode closed with the indication that the two are going to get married. Again.

Except they’re not just renewing their vows. To everyone outside their inner circle, Melinda will be marrying Sam only a few months after Jim died. Time and time again I’ve complained that killing Jim only to bring him back as Sam and then ignore the fact that he looks like another man is an outrageous way to conclude this season’s big story arc. What about Jim’s family? What about Melinda’s? What about Sam’s?

With two episodes left in the season there’s still time to have this come to a head. I hope it does. I really do. Otherwise, it will be a slap in the face to viewers who’ve stuck by or returned to Ghost Whisperer this season. Killing Jim has to have consequences.

Unlike the last new episode (“Thrilled to Death,” shown two weeks ago) the Ghost of the Week storyline in “Stage Fright” was actually very interesting. There still wasn’t much going on with Melinda and Jim, though, and that’s frustrating. This was a show-within-a-show episode, involving a fake soap opera (or daytime serial) called “Hope’s Edge” that both Delia and Jim are fans of, and included an amusing in-joke for viewers of Ghost Whisperer.

The producers of “Hope’s Edge,” including creator Cally O’Keefe (played by Kellie Martin) are shooting an episode in Grandview and want to use Melinda’s antique shop. After seeing the amount of money they’re willing to pay for that privilege Melinda agrees. She’s also offered tickets to a special 10th anniversary presentation at the university and brings Delia and Jim with her. Eli has also been invited.

Before long both Eli and Melinda realize something isn’t quite right. A ghost is interfering with the question and answer session. Melinda recognized him as Miles Maitland (played by Johnny Pacar), an actor killed in an accident during a play more than a decade ago. Author of the play? None other than Cally O’Keefe. Furthermore, acting opposite Miles was Grant Harper (played by Thad Luckinbill) who later rocketed to fame on “Hope’s Edge” as the hunky Dr. Troy Holden.

As if that wasn’t confusing enough, Brook Dennis, a professor at the university, was also in the play. She’s the one who pulled the trigger of the prop gun that killed Miles. Rounding out this improbable cast of characters is Suzanne Zale (played by Lesli Kay) — she plays Celese Barrington, owner of the hospital on “Hope’s Edge.” It wasn’t that difficult to keep all the characters (and levels of characters) straight while watching the episode. But I did have to check the IMDb to get all the names right.

Initially, Melinda, Delia and Eli believe someone killed Miles and that’s why he’s hanging around. They learn that Dr. Troy Holden is being written out of “Hope’s Edge” and while watching Grant and Suzanne shooting his farewell scene, which involved a pistol, Eli charges Grant and knocks him to the ground. He thought perhaps the prop gun was still deadly. It wasn’t.

After having her own marathon of “Hope’s Edge” and coughing up some letters cut out of magazines (that was a disturbing scene, wasn’t it?) Melinda eventually realizes that Miles doesn’t want revenge. He wants Grant to be able to move on with his life. Miles was the one who fiddled with the prop gun that would later kill him. He wanted to shake up the play after Cally informed him the play was going the New York City without him.

So, despite Cally lying and telling Grant that he couldn’t leave the show, after Melinda explains why Miles is hanging around everything turns out okay in the end. Grant will leave the show and teach a class. Cally will keep working on “Hope’s Edge” with Suzanne. Brook will stay at the university. And Miles will cross over.

Oh and Melinda is pregnant.

That’s right. Melinda is with child. It’s Jim’s, of course, and was conceived prior to his death and later reincarnation as Sam. Given that Melinda and Jim (who still looks like Sam to everyone else) are comfortable walking around Grandview holding hands and kissing and otherwise being lovey-dovey, I doubt a baby is going to complicate things as much as it should.

To the outside world it must look like Melinda has moved on from Jim’s death really, really fast. It’s been, what, a few months at the most since Jim’s funeral? And now there’s another man living in her house and she’s openly kissing him in public? That has to be tough for Jim’s friends to handle. Melinda’s too, although most of them are part of her inner circle and know the truth.

Add to this a baby fathered by Jim and, well, Melinda is going to have the town abuzz with gossip for the foreseeable future. Unless, of course, it is glossed over and otherwise ignored. That could happen easily enough. It has so far, aside from a few comments from one of Jim’s fellow paramedics to Jim.

Anyway. Aside from the revelation of the pregnancy, “Stage Fright” had little to do with Melinda and Jim/Sam. Melinda did get a walk-on role in the “Hope’s Edge” episode as Sexy Coroner #2. She kept missing her mark, though, and sprained her hand when a light smashed into her hand (Miles was responsible for that). It was a fun episode.

And the in-joke regarding a character on a television being killed off only to later return was amusing. It was mentioned a handful of times, always obliquely. Dr. Troy Holden is going to be shot and killed on “Hope’s Edge” but Cally tells Melinda that he’ll be back. The ratings will go up when he leaves and they’ll go up when he comes back. Shades of Ghost Whisperer, obviously.