(S05E10) "He's a killer with a badge." - The ghost of the week to Melinda and Eli

Bad cop or good cop? That was the question Melinda and company asked themselves while working on the case of the week, which involved a cop.

"Excessive Force" is an episode that fell flat for me. It's like the writers spent all their energy writing the November sweeps episodes and, now that sweeps are over, offered us a stand alone episode that didn't give us a tiny bit of character development.

When the episode started, I thought this would be a good filler episode since it looked like Officer Ramsay would be using his police privileges to make Melinda's life miserable enough for her to stop investigating Dylan's death. Yes, Ramsay did have Melinda's car undergo a drug search but that was pretty much it. Bummer as him using his cop's powers could have made the episode quite interesting.

The episode took a boring turn for me about mid-point. Not only was it obvious that Ramsay didn't kill Dylan since the latter kept claiming that Ramsay was at fault and because Melinda said over and over that she couldn't see who hit Dylan. Also we've heard this story before: an overprotective father discovers that his daughter is seeing a guy and the father tries to scare the guy away so they won't hook up. Same old, same old.

The ending -- Jake accidentally hitting Dylan with the baseball bat while trying to trash the mailbox -- also felt flat to me. The ending wasn't crunchy enough for my taste especially since most GW episodes have been dark and spooky so far this year and "Excessive Force" didn't follow suit.

The only somewhat interesting tidbit we've discovered this week is that Melinda is that first real best friend Eli has had since he was 12-years-old. That tells us a lot about Eli's life as a teenager, which I hope we'll see some flashbacks of in the coming weeks.

Am I the only one who felt like this week's episode, the latest new one before January, was not that good? Actually, someone who forgot to watch the episode doesn't need to since nothing significant happened. Then again, just for the eye candy -- JLove or David Conrad, depending on your preferences -- GW is always worth watching.

[Watch clips of Ghost Whisperer at SlashControl.]