I am not a religious or a superstitious person. I don’t actually believe in ghosts or reincarnation. Nonetheless, one program we follow obsessively in my family (and I’m the prime instigator) is “Ghost Whisperer.”
Partly it’s because I think Jennifer Love Hewitt is really hot. For my wife, it is about the extremest level of horror she can handle, but she does get a delicious thrill. And the stories are simple enough that the kids can understand, and harmless enough that their young minds won’t be seriously traumatized.
It really is a stupid show. They are living in this typical American “small town” which has a University, quite a large hospital, art galleries, fancy restaurants and can fill an auditorium for a poetry reading or a magic show with no problem.
She tells pretty much everybody that she sees ghosts, and yet it’s still a big secret.
She’s been seeing ghosts since she was a little girl and yet she still gets surprised.
There’s even a ghost dog.
So, it’s a stupid show but I like it. That’s why I was excited when I watched the trailers, and then the 1st episode or so, of “The Others.” Cool idea, I thought. A group of people with various psychic powers, doing good and fighting evil while trying to live their personal lives and not be freaks in society.
But it falls totally flat. There’s no Jennifer Love Hewitt. Marion, the girl from Iowa character, who is obviously supposed to be the JLH parallel, with her ability to see ghosts and whatnot, has a charisma level which hovers at around 0. Satori, who I suspect is supposed to be Ginger to Marion’s Mary Ann, is not much hotter. I liked her at first because she, like me, reads the Tarot Cards, but, being a true psychic, she refers to people like me as frauds and charlatans. The problem’s the same, though. No charisma.
I also liked, at first, the guy who is a bit nuts and just keeps seeing all sorts of symbolism in everything he sees, license plates, random phrases in advertisements, addresses. Again, I sort of identified with him and definitely thought of him as the character I would most like to smoke a joint with. But his craziness is really nothing more than Kramer without the comedy, and it doesn’t go anywhere. The grumpy old blind guy is a pathetic pain in the ass, the kindly old black man is kind of cool, but how many times can you almost die before everybody says “Enough, die, already.” The guy who is obviously supposed to be a copy of Professor Payne has an even lower likeability factor than Payne, if that’s possible, and the young doctor just doesn’t display enough emotion for his supposed gift of perfect empathy.
It rather reminds me of when E.R. and Chicago Hope premiered at the same time. I couldn’t put my finger on why I liked E.R. and didn’t get drawn into Chicago Hope at all.
The situations were almost identical. They had the same composition to their cast.
But one show had charisma and one didn’t. That’s the way it goes.
www.gurukalehuru.com 