Last on ‘Ghost Whisperer’: Ball and Chain
Original Air Date: December 19, 2008
Notable Guest Star: Rena Sofer (Heroes, 24, Just Shoot Me!, Melrose Place)
Notable Scene: Melinda under attack!
“Ball and Chain” is a pretty good, not great, episode, especially near the end when Melinda is attacked by a demented kidnapper who specializes in disappearing married women and then messing with their minds to make them believe he’s their husband. Sick.
One day while shopping with Delia at the outdoor produce market, Melinda meets extremely confused ghost Tammy Gardner (Sofer), who doesn’t realize she’s dead. Melinda tracks down Tammy’s husband Roger (George Newbern), and he immediately and very convincingly claims Tammy had bipolar mental issues and walked out on him two years ago.
Supposedly unaware Tammy is dead, Roger filed for divorce and married another woman. His new spouse’s name is Elizabeth (Bree Turner), and her timid body language makes it clear from the get-go that something isn’t quite right in the household.
Later, Eli finds Tammy’s car with her body in it and a hose hooked up between the exhaust pipe and the inside of the vehicle, which obviously looks like a suicide. Nonetheless, when confronted with proof of her death, Tammy still refuses to cross over, leading Melinda to believe she suffers from enormous guilt for having left behind the family she keeps mentioning.
However, a little chat with neighborhood kids reveals that Tammy and Roger had no children, thus no family like the one Tammy’s comments imply. Eli stumbles across what’s actually going on when he learns from Detective Sam Blair (Ion Overman) that the body in the car he found is Sarah Evers, a married mother of two boys from three counties away.
Melinda’s visit to the Evers home confirms that Tammy is Sarah, and her first husband Thomas (David Burke) believes she abandoned him and his sons six years ago to run off with the electrician hired to do some work around the house. Not quite.
Long story short: The electrician is Roger, who has a nasty habit of setting up the wives of clients to make it look like they’ve started a fling. He then drugs and kidnaps the women, locks them in a dark area underneath the floor of his house for a long time, and only lets them out and gives them small privileges to slowly condition them to trust him and live in fear of his threats to their real family. As Eli confirms, such mistreatment can result in classic Stockholm Syndrome.
Fortunately, when Melinda notices the raw red marks on both of Sarah’s wrists, the ghost remembers her ordeal just in time to help Melinda save Roger’s current abductee Elizabeth. The injuries come from the rope he used to tie Sarah up in the area beneath the floor.
Roger killed her and staged her “suicide” when she was late returning from the market one day after seeing a picture of her oldest son in a newspaper. Confused, she sat outside staring at the picture in a daze, trying to recall the boy.
Together, Melinda and Sarah locate Elizabeth in the area under the floor, where Roger tied her up after following her and seeing her talking to Melinda. He comes in just as they set Elizabeth free and goes after Melinda with a poker … until furious Elizabeth begins unleashing blows from behind. She gets in a kick or two also, before Melinda warns her that returning to her family is infinitely more important than getting revenge by beating Roger to death.
On the Melinda and Dead Jim front: Dead Jim remains unsure what to do about the engagement ring he found among Sam Lucas’ possessions. He’s understandably wary of renewing a relationship with someone he doesn’t remember. But, on the other hand, he worries this person might be wondering why he has abandoned them. Either way, Melinda is torn up over the possibility of losing Dead Jim to what is essentially Sam’s love interest. And, what could she possibly do to stop it?
Although I was a bit spoiled in advance about the show’s latest plotline because I knew Rena Sofer was billed as “Tammy/Sarah,” I still found the episode enjoyable.
Do you agree or not? Leave a comment below and/or vote in the poll to share your opinion.
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[...] that Ghost Whisperer has aired its final new episode of the year, last Friday’s “Ball and Chain” (click the title for a recap), let us know how you feel about the installment. I think it [...]