'Ghost Whisperer' is obsessed with soaps

Why, oh why, oh why did this episode of "Ghost Whisperer" wait until the last one minute and thirty seconds to reveal that Melinda is pregnant? Couldn't we have started with that? I care about that!

Instead we get a overly complicated story about some haunted soap opera stars with a couple of not-so-scary moments thrown in as an afterthought.

A famous soap opera, Hope's Edge, rolls into town to shoot a couple of episodes. The director, creator, and all around owner of the show, Cally (LOVE Kellie Martin), and the lead heartthrob Grant, have a ghost attached to them - a former colleague of theirs from Rockland, who was shot and killed in a freak accident during a performance of a play written by Cally. Seriously, everyone in the world is connected to Grandview or went to Rockland, I think. The shooter in the play is a current professor at Rockland, Brooke, who is tied to Cally and Grant. It was considered an accident, but the Scooby Gang thinks otherwise.

After Miles uses scenes from Hope's Edge to scare Brooke, Brooke tells Eli and Melinda that the play was supposed to have been their big break in New York, and Miles was going to be a star, but she and Grant were fired just before the performance when  Miles died. Also, she had been dating Grant, but she was pretty sure he'd been cheating on her with Cally. Soap opera indeed!

Melinda confronts Cally, who believes her when she says Miles is haunting her. She and Grant are still an item after all these years, and while the current buzz is that Grant is leaving the show, Cally is sure he'll be back because he always comes back to it - and her. But Grant has eyes for Brooke instead, and Miles wants Cally to know about it. Cally ends up roping Grant back into the show.

That night, Melinda dreams she's puking up pieces of paper spelling out "lies". The Scooby Gang can't figure out who is the lying liar, but all agree the show itself is a soap within a soap. Well, duh. That day, our lovely Melinda gets a walk-on part as Sexy Coroner #2, with the push-up bra that defies all reason. Grant pleads with Cally to let him leave the show, but she refuses. Miles says that Grant has to leave the show, no matter what, and if Cally won't kill him off, he'll kill him for real. He moves a boom onto Sexy Coroner #2, missing Grant.

In the end, Melinda gets Cally, Grant, and Brooke into a room together, and speaks for Miles - who tells everyone that he was the one who loaded the prop gun with a double charge, so his death was his fault. He says that everyone is lying, and that he wants Grant to follow his dreams, and to leave the show. Turns out Cally had originally lied to Grant and Brooke all those years ago just to keep them apart - they hadn't been fired after all. Grant stayed with Cally because he was afraid of failing without her, but he'd been writing Brooke for years anyway.

Lies all around. Bor-ing.

So, yes, Melinda is pregnant, and with Jim's baby - not Sam's. Anyone else surprised to find out the whole story arc of Jim's death, Sam's entrance, and Jim's reconnection took, at most, seven weeks and six days in Ghost Whisperer time? That's even weirder than this convoluted story we had to deal with before finding out about the pregnancy. But it was nice seeing Kellie Martin again. She's a great actress, but she was wasted here. Even she seemed bored with these lines.

And I'll admit, I giggled over the soap-obsessed banter between Delia and Eli, and Eli bodyslamming Grant to protect him from the gun. It was funny. But then I just felt exasperated because this kind of physical comedy just seems out of place on this show.

Gah! There's that pesky shark again. Please stop chumming the waters!