Warning! This article contains major spoilers for the fourth season of Ghost Whisperer.
The weird thing about television is that even the shows you don't think anyone watches have incredibly devoted, fervent fan bases that get very, very angry when anything goes wrong. (See also: Moonlight.) So, while you may not know anyone who's willing admit to watching Ghost Whisperer, there is a surprisingly big group of viewers who are very angry about an upcoming plot point on the Jennifer Love Hewitt drama – so angry, in fact, that they are threatening to stop watching.
So what was the big spoiler that sent fans into such a tizzy? Brace yourselves: Entertainment Weekly's Michael Ausiello reports that producers are planning to kill off Jim (David Conrad), husband of Hewitt's character, Melinda. It's OK – take a minute to regroup.
The fan response to the shocking news has been so loud and incensed that Ghost Whisperer's executive producers P.K. Simonds and Kim Moses agreed to an interview with Ausiello in an effort to calm viewers down. Of course, they refused to explicitly confirm Jim's upcoming death, but they're not really fooling anybody.
"What we're trying to do is this season is do an overall arc or mythology which is entirely about Melinda and her relationships. It's also a way of kind of bringing together all the strands of the show, because it is a show, let's face it, that deals with death," said Simonds. "We are going to confront our main characters with death in an intense and personal way, but we're going to find the real point of the storytelling. It's not who or what or when, really, it's about what comes next."
The producers also hinted that Jim may return as a ghost, with Moses saying the controversial storyline will "explore some ghost rules, but still stay true to the ghost rules that were set up in the beginning."
They also vehemently denied that the unconfirmed plot twist was any kind of desperate grab for ratings.
"What the audience cares about is the exact same thing we care about, and we would never do anything to betray our audience or the investment that they have in those characters and that relationship," Simonds added.
Colour us skeptical. We're guessing that none of the producers even considered the fans would react so negatively, but now it's too late to change anything, so everyone has gone into damage control mode. Nice try!
Er, not that we even watch Ghost Whisperer. We don't even the names of any of the characters and we especially don't covet Hewitt's wardrobe.
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