Ghost Whisperer: The Fifth and Final Season

I know this hasn't come out yet (I'm sure it will be as bittersweet as any other end of a series DVD), but I just wanted to prelude its release with a plea to other fans of this show. Maybe if we buy the DVD's right away it will show CBS that they made a HUGE mistake. If sales were through the roof maybe they would realize their mistake and try to pick it up again. This happened when they cancelled Angel, only everyone involved had moved on to permanent jobs already (Bones, Supernatural). Jennifer Love is just doing small movies and guest spots right now, the writers are developing new projects, but maybe it's not too late. This just sucks. Why are network people so stupid? If you go buy the numbers and not by the fan output and desire you are not really seeing the true popularity of a show. How many people have a Nielsen box anymore? This crap that they pull is the reason why I watch the shows on DVD instead of TV. But I'm Canadian so it's not like my ratings count anyway.
Shuffling the time slots every few months, changing days to see if it will go up against another network's most popular show, showing re-runs for 3 or 4 weeks every few new episodes.... Just stand behind your show and leave it alone and you'd really see how popular it is you business school morons. I don't think we'll ever see a network hold onto a show for 10 years again... gone are the days when a show like Friends or Seinfeld can fluctuate in ratings but still stay until THEY want to leave. I miss the days when TV didn't disappoint me on a daily basis. We're really not all as stupid as you think we are Hollywood, we're getting tired of your crappy movies, re-makes of EVERYTHING that has ever made money in the past and your cheap reality TV shows. Just tell me Medium isn't next!

Rant over.

To all of you who, like me, believed that "Final Season" was a season not shown on tv or perhaps was season 6, will be sadly mistaken. I already had seasons 1 to 5 but because the packaging was different than in my set and that it was longer to be released than the others. I bought it all excited that it was finally available. Guess how IMPRESSED I was to learn that I spent the money to buy something I already had. I was very disappointed in the way it was misleadingly represented. I notice now that season 5 in the sets now show the same cover as in the single season, but when I was looking for it the packaging was completely different. So after all that I guess it was an expensive lesson learned.

Like all other season, the box claims close captioning, but there are NO subtiles on the episodes. The setup for the disks is the most rediculous I have ever seen: the episode listings are _inside_ the front and back covers, so you need to keep the first disk in the wrong slot until you get to the fourth disk, and the sixth disk can't be in the correct place while you watch the fourth and fifth disks. At least the bonus features are on the fourth and sixth disks only, which limits the disruption in the dramatic tensions, but there are no commentaries at all. Point of interest: This is the only season that actually includes a "play all" option on the menus.

One bright point: The webisodes are a vast improvement on the third season skits. (But then it reminds us that they never actually made anything of the laughing man in the man series.)

(SPOILERS FOR FOURTH SEASON)
In regards to the season itself: Jim's in Medical School in under 6 months (I believe Melinda was 4-5 weeks into the pregnancy at the end of the fourth season?) and...hey, he's _Jim_. So for effectively erasing one of the best emotional season from the show's collective memory, this season starts off on the wrong foot. (Aiden Lucas to celebrate Sam...really now? And no one thinks either of them is crazy for talking this way as if Sam Lucas, who is _right there beside Melinda Gordon_ is acting like he's not Sam Lucas? And who, by the way, has/had a father who is _not_ named Aiden? Like I said, a very, very wrong foot.)
(/SPOILERS)

Then there's the time jump and the biggest character question for me comes up: Where on Earth is Rick Payne!? You can't seriously expect the audience to buy the fact that he's actually stayed away from Melinda for five years!?

As for the storylines... I know Recycling's good and all, but not for scripts. Ghosts sending out emails, current love interests maybe being siblings...

For those storylines not covered in previous seasons: look to what I refer to as "Charmed envy". For the Book of Changes: look to the Book of Shadows; gifted child with special destiny: Wyatt; shinies: whitelighters; shadows: darklighters... Hell, they even have an episode on "demons".

The 100th episode was disappointing (I didn't know Love Hewitt was the director, and I really wouldn't have cared at the time if I had known) and the finale really was that. Not too bad, but leaving nothing to build on in Grandview. (Which is why I find the references to future seasons in the bonus meterials highly amusing.)