Last week's premiere of Ghost Whisperer was the highest rated program on Friday night. I would say this confuses me, but like most programming on CBS, I've stopped asking myself why people watch it.

Last night's episode piled on the sadness by focusing on the ghost of a small boy who was killed when a train collided with his family's SUV. Melinda (Jennifer Love Hewitt, the "ghost whisperer" if you will) meets the young boy by the tracks and learns that the boy is unaware he's been killed, and is waiting for his mother. Of course, the boy, like all the "earthbound spirits" on this program, has some unfinished business, and it's up to Melinda to help him find closure. Just like it was up to her to help a dead soldier find closure in last week's episode, and just like it will be her job in every episode until the show goes off the air.

Ghost Whisperer doesn't seem to be a show that's so much about ghosts as it is about people who believe that even after a person dies they can't move on until everything in their terrestrial lives is taken care of. This is the idea psychics tend to perpetuate, and it makes for a great way to earn some extra cash if you can convince a grieving person that their loved one is still hanging around. Of course, Melinda doesn't charge for her service, she does it out of kindness. In a scene that could be seen a mile away through heavy fog, she encounters the boy's parents and fails to convince them that their little boy is still around and talking to her. By the end of the show Melinda figures out what she should have known all along, which is that all she needed to do was to get the boy to tell her something only his parent's would know, and then relay that information. Instead, the story drags out for an hour while you wait for this inevitable ending. Using my suggestion, Melinda could take care of about twenty wandering spirits per episode.