Saturday, January 30, 2010

Why I Want To Like "Ghostwhisper" and "Medium", But Don't

I was thrilled when these two shows came on TV a few years ago (yes! Shows about ghosts and the young women who see them!) I liked Patricia Arquette as an actress and for being a bit of a rebel (always secretly impressed that she was married to Nicholas Cage for a while, back when he was hot), and I was neutral on Jennifer Love Hewitt.

But these two shows, while having a common theme, have leading ladies who are polar opposite personalities, and unfortunately, I don't find either one of them realistic.

Patricia Arquette, as psychic mom Alison in Medium, is about as much fun as a sack of wet laundry. The woman never smiles, EVER, and is completely self-absorbed, ignoring her gorgeously supportive husband and three semi-psychic children, sticking her nose in people's business with the finesse of an absent-minded rhinocerous, never caring about the repercussions to the living in her quest to make sense of her dreams of the dead.

Jennifer Love Hewitt, on the other hand, as Melinda in Ghostwhisper, is so sickly sweet and dewy-eyed all the time that you wonder if the spirits are drawn to her because she's made of spun sugar. She's SO girly precious-soft-and-feely that you just know she's got stuffed animals on her own personal Jennifer Love Hewitt bed. As in right now. Right this minute. I saw her on a talk show recently where she talked about how she "bedazzles" her lady parts - as in with a rhinestone stapler - which is a bit much TMI for TV, I think.

At any rate, I like characters who are realistic, and I think the writers have missed the boat on both these shows. Mix it up a little, will ya? Get Melinda out of those fake eyelashes, and let Alison do something besides frown. Get to the ghost stories, and give us some characterization we can care about.

4 comments:

Sage Ravenwood said...

Ha! I couldn't agree with you more. I tried, really tried to like these shows but found them so unbelievable, it was brain numbing.

I can't imagine anyone would be happy to have this gift or so defeated by it either. A happy medium please.

Just wanted to let you know I had won your book 'Silent Night, Deadly Night' and since reading - I'm hooked line and sinker. I've already purchased the two books written previously.

Your character are believable.(Hugs)Indigo

Terri Garey said...

Thanks, Indigo. Hope you enjoy the books!

GladysMP said...

TV simply doesn't have much of anything of interest to me. I spend much more time reading. Of course, not knowing the names of TV actresses and actors doesn't help me much when I work the daily crossword puzzles in the paper! LOL

Laura Brown said...

I mostly stopped watching Ghost Whisperer when her husband became a recycled ghost. Then, when she suddenly gave birth to a school aged son I gave up on it forever.

I like Medium for the family parts. I can see my own family in a lot of that. But, I don't want to watch anything about serial killers and violent crimes against women. So I very rarely watch Medium. The first season was so much better than anything since.