Just who was that masked man on 'Ghost Whisperer'?

A series of visions and memories pave the way to a greater understanding of our heroine's past and present on this season's finale of Ghost Whisperer.

Hey, we only got a few episodes this spring, and there's a lot of ground to cover, so this is going to be a long recap. Get some popcorn, and settle in for the spoilers.

Tom Gordon isn't dead! But just barely. Jim arrives in time to stabilize him, and hears Tom say he did it to protect Melinda. Melinda, not understanding, is sure that he's still being possessed by Paul Eastman. She visits him in his hospital bed, and asks him not to go anywhere - they have too much to learn about each other.

The next morning in the store, Melinda breaks a glass, and has a brief vision of a shattering mirror on the floor. She heads downstairs to the spooky store basement to retrieve a new glass, and hears breathing coming from the entrance to Grandview's Underground. She heads into that storyline, I mean, area, only to discover Paul Eastman himself, mask and all. She asks why he hates Tom so much, and he says few people deserve to be hated as much as Tom. She asks him, daring him, to show her why, and he shows her a vision of a dilapidated old house. Under the basement stairs, in a shallow grave, she finds a jawbone, and a skull... along with the mask.

She heads to see her mother Beth, who, in all her loving motherly glory, who refuses to talk about Paul Eastman, and pointedly tells Melinda that her father is not a good person, and that he doesn't deserve her good intentions. Melinda then heads to see Rick, who points out that no one's bones are buried in a grave like that unless they were murdered. Jim calls with the news that the house in her vision, where Paul Eastman is, is the first house her parents owned, her first home. Back to see Mom, who still won't give her any information. Beth asks for Melinda to leave this alone. Melinda says she can't live with a lie, to which her mom counters that you can learn to live with a lot. Hmmm.

Jim and Melinda visit the house in person, and Jim tells Melinda that he agrees with her mom, but Melinda again refuses to let her father go. She has to follow this through. As Melinda leaves to head back to the store, Jim gets a call from the hospital that Tom is up and conscious. Jim decides to pay his own visit to Tom first.

Pulling no punches, Jim explains that he'll cut some important wires in Tom's hospital room if he doesn't start telling the truth. Tom says that Paul Eastman, after escaping from prison, confronted him at their house, and threatened to kill Tom, and the whole family. Tom killed Paul himself, and buried him in the basement. He says that the important thing to keep in mind is that Paul Eastman, in spirit, still wants to kill him, as well as Beth and Melinda.

Jim asks Melinda why Paul Eastman, this powerful ghost, hasn't possessed her yet. She says she's not sure, but that there are things she needs to learn. She heads to the hospital, just in time to see Tom checking himself out of the hospital. She confronts him about Paul, and asks if she's ever going to find out the truth, whether or not he loved her, or her mom. She tries to get him to have some closure with Paul Eastman, because that's the only way they will have any chance to learning about each other. He agrees, and says he'll meet her at the store that night.

But he doesn't. She waits for Tom to show up, but instead, gets another vision of the mirror, importantly, of a man punching the mirror. At the same moment, Beth gets a message from a possessed stranger on the street - she has to be the one to tell Melinda the truth about Tom, because he's going to hurt her. As Beth leaves, we see Paul Eastman remove himself from the stranger's body. She heads straight to Jim and Melinda's house, and begins to spill the beans. Beth tells Melinda she was in love with Paul Eastman, and living with him when he was arrested. She knew Paul hadn't been guilty of the boy's murder. She'd gone to visit Tom after Paul was convicted, to convince him that Paul was innocent by explaining that they could see spirits. While Paul was in prison becoming angry and bitter, she started having feelings for Tom, believing he was a good man. Paul ended up killing a man in prison, and Beth ended up marrying Tom instead. Jim becomes incredibly angry, and all says that Melinda deserved to be protected, and to be accepted and loved, and told the absolute truth.

It turns out that when Paul Eastman was arrested, Beth was already pregnant with Melinda.

Melinda screams that she's lying and runs out. She heads to the town square, where she finds Tom. He tells her that Beth is trying to drive a wedge between them. He asks her to go with him, where she will be safe, and understand everything. He takes her back to her childhood home. He asks her what she remembers from the night Paul Eastman came to the house, and she says only the face in the mask. He persistently asks her what else she might remember, and she begins to relive her own memories as a vision. She remembers watching Tom kill Paul Eastman. And now that she remembers, Tom tells her that she has to die now, too. He tells her that she's too good, and by heading into the Underground and waking the spirit of Paul Eastman, he had to come back and find her. He begins to choke her, but she cries out "Dad!" Tom replies that he's not her father, and she responds, "I wasn't talking to you."

Paul Eastman appears behind Tom, possesses him, and throws Tom down the stairs.  Handy way to kill someone, possession. At the moment of Tom's death, Jim rushes in, and Melinda gets a moment with Paul Eastman, on her own. He tells her that he was a lost spirit who couldn't remember anything about his life, until he saw her in the Underground church. He realized she was pining for a man who wasn't her father, trying to sort out her own past. Paul tells Melinda that it's time to put the shadow of Tom Gordon behind her, and embrace her Beth as her mother.

In the end, Melinda tells Beth that her father, her real father, didn't abandon her. Paul Eastman, whole and unburned, appears. He tells Beth he wouldn't change anything that happened because out of all of it, they created Melinda. After telling Melinda how much he loves her, he crosses over.   

But we are left with one strange moment... when our faithful cast heads off into the summer sunset together, the six people standing the sunlight only cast five shadows. Ah, something to pull us into the next fall. Besides, the Underground was too big a storyline to solve in this all too short season.

Random Thoughts:

• I'm going to start a David Conrad Fan Club. I'm sure there already is one, but he needs a few. Yay David. Yay Jim for really standing up for Melinda when she wasn't able to do it for herself.
• What kind of Garanimals shirt was Rick Payne wearing? It had like a dinosaur print on it or something.
• Corin Nemec, the actor who played Paul Eastman, could be mistaken for the Lost Gibb Brother. Someone call that man to play a Bee Gee.

Freaking good show. See you guys next fall. Remember to wear sunscreen.

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