'Ghost Whisperer': I'm gonna get ya', get ya', get ya', get ya'

This week on Ghost Whisperer, Jim(Sam) and Melinda go for a roadtrip to North Carolina to learn about Jim's past, and find Nicole, his almost-fiancee. Delia reconnects with some old, and some dead, friends, Eli flies solo, and Ned becomes a party guy. Well, almost.

Delia is throwing a dinner party with some old friends, Marla and Jodi. She's nervous about the whole affair, and she's not made it easier on herself by inviting Eli to join them. Melinda is trying to figure out how to crash Jim's roadtrip to Raleigh to find out about his old life. She's hoping to recreate the roadtrip experience that she and Jim (the real Jim) had together to continue his discovery of his past.

She tells Jim that she's bought some estate sale furniture that she needs to bring back north, but Jim isn't too keen on the idea. Having Melinda with him may not be the best impression on Nicole, but he's game. Even when he finds out she's rented a giant truck for them to drive down in. The truck has a hitchhiker attached though - a ghost with a bloody head wound who is excited that Melinda can see him. It seems we're going to have some ghost moments while on the road.

Delia's dinner party starts out well, with Marla and Jodi squealing over Ned and how they're so old now. Ned bags on dinner, though, and heads to Melinda's place to housesit for the evening. While he's there, his friends crash Melinda's house, dragging a keg and everything in. Party at the Ghost Whisperer's pad!

The hitchhiking ghost is Frank, who sits in between Melinda and Jim on the way down south. Frank starts putting two and two together, and figures out that Melinda's got some backstory at work with Jim. In order to talk to Frank without giving her ghostly powers away, Melinda pretends to be on her cell phone. We learn Frank was a coin collector who rented the truck for a show, when he was fixing a flat on the truck and the jack gave way. He's hanging around because he lost a rather valuable penny in the cargo area. He wants Melinda to find the penny and send it to his wife so she can get some extra money. Melinda agrees to help, and with that, Frank heads into the light. Jim just looks puzzled over the whole conversation.

Back at the dinner party, Delia's friends are real live wires and both Delia and Eli are growing tired of them. That's when an old friend shows up - a ghostly friend, Angie. Eli doesn't get a chance to say anything to Delia about her because seconds later, Delia gets a phone call from one of Melinda's neighbors, who tells her about the situation at Melinda's house. Furious, Delia assumes Ned was the party-planner, and hauls him back home after cleaning the kids out of Melinda's house. Angie the ghost is sticking around, though, and listens in on Delia freaking out on Ned for the party. Just before she fades away, she says "Delia Rayburn? The party animal? No way."

Early the next morning, Melinda and Jim show up at Nicole's house in Raleigh. She watches from the truck as Jim and a pretty girl embrace, and then she writes something on his arm. It turns out this girl is Nicole's old roommate; Nicole has moved out, and didn't want to see Jim again. He leaves a message at the number the roommate gave her.

Delia is still angry at Ned, but realizing that something, or someone, must be in her house - Angie won't let her open the shades. She's weirded out over that, and over the fact that she finds a joint with Ned's jacket. Eli comes over to help her figure out the joint, and the ghost. Delia says Angie was a big party girl from Delia's high school who was hit by a car their senior year. Delia wants her out of there, and is convinced Ned picked her up somehow, and she somehow planted the drugs in Ned's stuff. Angie, who remembers what Delia herself was like in high school, isn't pleased, and Eli tells Delia that Angie came in with Marla and Jody, not Ned, and that the joint might just be theirs.

Back in Raleigh, Jim and Melinda have arrived at the garage full of furniture to haul back to Grandview. Of course, there's a ghost in with the heirlooms. The woman wants to be buried with a specific brooch, and tells Melinda where her funeral is taking place. Before they can start hauling the stuff out, Jim gets a call from Nicole, who unceremoniously dumps him over the phone.

Well, that was anticlimatic.

Melinda drags Jim over to the ghost's funeral, using the excuse that she was a friend of her mom's. As she pins the brooch onto the woman, Jim watches her talk to thin air. Hmmmm.

Delia calls Marla and Jodi, who both deny the pot is theirs. Eli, however, thinks that Angie has attached herself to Delia because she may be a little more "simpatico" to her current state of affairs. He stole Delia's senior yearbook and has been reading the comments. Delia doesn't deny she was into the parties, but she grew out of it, and she doesn't want Ned to get involved in that scene. That evening, Delia confronts Ned about the party, and that if Ned was involved in any kind of drugs, he could talk to her about it. He denies the joint is his, and storms out. Angie remarks that it's all so Afterschool Special. True that.

Over Mexican food at a place Melinda is sure Jim will love, he asks her what was up with the moment at the casket. She brushes him off by insisting that he'll love the mole sauce at this place. He takes a bite, and has a vivid moment of recollection... just before breaking out in hives. Seems Jim might love mole, but Sam is allergic to something in it. While he's getting some Benadryl, Melinda strikes up a conversation with a Spanish-speaking ghost at the bar, and by repeating the Spanish the ghost feeds her, Melinda unknowingly tells the man sitting next to the ghost that his current girlfriend looks like hooker. Jim comes to her defense and gets socked in the jaw for his troubles.

Meanwhile, Angie is freaking Ned out by showing him Delia's old yearbook and playing a voicemail message for him from Marla. Turns out the joint was indeed hers. It fuels his anger over how Delia is treating him, and Delia freaks out and send him to his room without admitting that he's right. 

At the hospital, getting stitches in his lip, Jim has an even more vivid moment - of his own death. His shoulder starts hurting again, and he tells Melinda that he remembers getting shot. On the drive back, Melinda tries to slowly work up to talking about his past life, and that there might be a whole different life inside him, the "Jim" inside him. He says that the key might be a place, or a person, and instead of turning to a willing Melinda, he calls Nicole. While he's on the phone, he reconsiders and hangs up. He then draws a now sleeping Melinda closer to him, as he drives.

Delia heads to see Eli, and Angie heads along with her. Eli tells Delia that Angie is mad that she's just like her parents now, and Delia says she's just trying to keep her son from ending up like her. Angie flashes home to Ned, who is texting and IMing his friends that he can't go out. She turns on Blondie's "One Way or Another" - her signature song - and opens the window for him to escape. When Delia and Eli get back home, they follow the IM directions to the party, and find it being busted by the cops. Angie is there, though, and tells Eli that Ned has gone home. Delia flies into the house over the top mad that Ned went down to the party in the first place. That's when Angie shows up and says that she'd still be alive if it weren't for her parents. Eli stops Delia and makes her listen to Angie. Turns out that she was walking back to the party the night she was killed - not walking home. She'd been locked out of the house because she'd busted curfew. Delia realizes that she's being too hard on Ned, even though a lot of how she's feeling is because of what happened to Angie. To help Angie out, Eli tells her that he's called her parents already to help them reconnect with each other, and Ned and Delia reconnect with each other too. 

As they drive, Jim tells Melinda that she's kind of amazing, and a little strange. She tells him that he's amazing too. After they get home, Jim asks Melinda out on a date. As she opens her mouth to accept, a cab pulls up with Nicole in it.

Thoughts and musings...

• This episode made me remember what great chemistry Melinda and Jim have. It also made me think that if it's handled correctly, this "new" Jim could be interesting. It's definitely making for a better job for David Conrad. But I'm not 100% sold on it yet.
• Now that Teri Polo is playing Nicole, it should make things even more interesting. She's great.
• Go Eli, doing your own little Ghost Whisperer thing! That was great. And I really want Delia to have more of her own experiences.

What about you? Still not feeling the storyline? What do you think of this idea of "walk-ins" brought up by a reader last week? I still have to do some research on that...

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