Well, this is it.  Barring some intervention in the strike from the spirit world, this will be the final episode of the season for Ghost Whisperer.  Luckily for me us, it's a Jim-centric episode.  In case I haven't made it clear, I really, really like Jim.  I know, what can I say?  Sometimes I'm subtle about these kind of things.

Not so subtle is the explosion that wakes Melinda and Jim up.  Jim is called to the scene at the town square, where a gas explosion has set off a raging fire inside a building.  Jim and his fellow firefighters prepare to go in as soon as the fire is contained.  When they enter, they find two men still alive.  Jim's man is trapped under debris that he and the other firefighter can't move on their own.  As the dispatcher calls everyone out of the building due to signs of instability, Jim helps carry out the other man, but before he can go back in to save the other, another explosion occurs. 

With the WGA strike holding fast, you guys are going to be reduced to watching Ghost Hunters or some other inane reality TV to get your spirit fix. This looks to be the next to the last of the filmed episodes. So sad...no more Jim to gaze at longingly no resolution to the big mystery under Grandview, this season at least.

So, either the rumors about Jennifer Love Hewitt being pregnant are true, or she must have pissed off the wardrobe department, because wow. That's a highly unflattering shirt. Nope, that has nothing to do with the plot...I just like that celebrities can also look like shit on occasion. Delia is trying to get Melinda and Jim to come to Ned's basketball game. Jim's working, but Melinda agrees, even though she's about as smart as a brain dead goat when it comes to sports.

Grandview is enjoying the holidays in typical TV-style...families frolicking in a park decorated with trees and snow, Santa in his sleigh.  Melinda, looking quite festive in a red dress, is enjoying the holidays a little less as she and Delia are overrun by customers.  Melinda spots a man and his little boy shopping.  The man is distracted by his PDA while the boy determinedly picks out a teapot for his mother.  While dad text messages away, Melinda chats with the little boy, Riley Taylor, until Dad's PDA sizzles and burns him.  Melinda spots a man with a white beard and hair watching Dad, aka William, before disappearing.  Riley mentions that this has been happening a lot, so Melinda, sensing her kind of problem, offers to wrap and deliver their purchases the next day.  

I'm only a little ashamed (read: mortifyingly so) that this freaking show has made me tear up every single time I've watched it.  Granted, that's only five or six times, but still.  It's a feat even Grey's Anatomy failed to achieve (Smallville, on the other hand, makes me tear up about every fifteen minutes, but that's more about the sheer badness of this season than Clark's teenaged angst).  Usually, I'm at my computer, hiding my tears from my cat, who would only give a crap if I was crying tuna-flavored tears (and also, gross), but this week, I watched with my mom while decorating the Christmas tree.  Ghost Whisperer is...not exactly Christmas material, but never fear, the show pulled out enough Hallmark moments to have me sniffling on the backside of the tree, hanging glass angels and Santas and pretending the twinkling lights were irritating my eyes into producing extra fluid.  What?  I'm a total softie, okay?

Melinda and Delia take a ride out to an old house that Delia's managed to sell, in spite of its reputation as haunted.  Wow, Melinda's pants are...unfortunate.  I'm not a fan of the high-waisted, big-legged trousers.  She looks really bad, and this is Jennifer Love Hewitt we're talking about.  I mean, pants have to be pretty fugly to make her look like that.  Anyway.  Delia introduces Melinda to Steve and his daughter, Marlo, before asking him to sign the papers for the house.  Melinda spots a spirit inside the garage, and leaves the others to go "explore."  Inside the garage, she offers to help the spirit, but it holds up its hands, palms out, then fists them, saying, "One of them will die."  Screams draw Melinda's attention, and she runs back to the house to find Marlo, covered in blood, while Steve stands there, rather vacantly, I might add.  Looking up, Melinda spots a large spot of blood on the ceiling, and a drop falls in slow-mo, hitting her on the forehead.  Well, that can't be sanitary.

Melinda, Jim, and Delia go to a book signing for Casey Edgars, a psychic, in spite of the fact that they're skeptical of his abilities.  Maybe they wanted to heckle him?  I don't know why else they would go, unless the free refreshments are really good.  Edgars accurately guesses that Delia's earrings were from her son, Ned, and when Melinda is volunteered to be his next subject, he guesses that she had a deep love for her grandmother, but that the love caused a rift between her parents.  Melinda, meanwhile, gets the vapors and has to sit down while Edgars is still babbling on.  She sees a ghost who's blurred and whose voice is distorted beyond comprehension.  She warns Jim and Delia that "something" is in the room with them, which would freak me right the hell out, thanks very much, and the ghost knocks some of Edgars' books off the table and disappears through the floor.  For all of his accuracy in reading people, Edgars is completely unaware that he has an unfriendly spirit at his beck and call.

Professor Rick Payne is kissing up to Claudia, a photography professor at Rockland University whom he's asked to a party celebrating the arrival of a new dean.  That's...a really lame first date.  He couldn't, like spring for dinner and movie?  He makes the observation that she's not in any of the many photos she has around her office, but she brushes it off and makes to leave.  At the party, a student with a Rockland U magazine introduces herself and then takes pictures of Rick and Claudia, but Claudia gets upset and orders the student to stop.  She says she's not feeling well and leaves.  The student, meanwhile, notices that Claudia is missing from all of the photos.  Rick snaps a few more shots of Claudia as she's leaving and then confiscates the memory card from the camera.

So, my blatant unfamiliarity of this show comes to the surface in this recap.  Melinda has a long lost brother, apparently, and he interrupts dinner to beg her to help him find out what happened to their father.  Jim throws him around and tells him to leave several times, which is pretty ineffectual, since the guy just keeps on yapping.  Seems Long Lost Bro stood by in a previous episode when Melinda died for a minute (that sounds...so anticlimactic.  And lame.  "Hey, can I call you right back?  I just need to die for minute."), and Jim and Melinda are still a little pissed.  No matter, LLB says.  He was mad because their father felt he had to hide Bro's side of the family from Melinda's side, but he's over that now and wants to work together to figure out what's going on with dear old Dad.  He gives Melinda an envelope of items from his stay in the mental hospital he grew up in and finally takes off, no thanks to Jim.

Melinda's crying over a movie at a town get-together, although she tells Jim what she should be crying over is how overwhelmed she is at the store. Delia's been distracted trying to get Ned into private school, so Jim suggests they take advantage of his mom's obsession with looking younger to camp out at her apartment in the city while she recuperates from surgery. Hopefully said apartment doesn't smell like old lady and house 85 cats. Melinda agrees just as some guy who's had a few too many barrels through the crowd, knocking over chairs and tables when he collapses. Dude, learn to hold your liquor. Women only want to get with someone who isn't going to choke on his own vomit on the bathroom floor. While Jim runs over to help, Melinda spots a woman standing next to her, watching the man intently before disappearing.