I have a good buddy who thinks Jennifer Love Hewitt is just about the greatest woman on Earth. Familiar not only with underwhelming (to use a kind phrase) works like Heartbreakers and her early, early work in Sister Act 2, Adam isn’t just another fanboy with Hewitt’s pictures on his bulletin board: He really loves the girl.

And who can blame him? In films like Can’t Hardly Wait (and even in her TV work on Party of Five), Hewitt is the quintessential young woman that every guy in their right mind wanted to have on his arm in high school or college. Sweet, tender, sexy . . . sure, she wasn’t going to disarm any nuclear bombs or sit down with a Thomas Pynchon novel, but who cares? At her best, Jennifer Love is adorable.

Ghost Whisperer, though, is just too much

I’ve discussed my disdain for Hewitt’s series with Adam. He can’t disagree that the show is often painfully thin and redundant (filter The Twilight Zone through Party of Five through Medium, and you can pretty much approximate Ghost Whisperer’s narrative prowess), but he loves looking at pretty young Jennifer. And perhaps that’s the reason that Ghost Whisperer is still on the air. We have enough horror shows both in syndication and in first-time-air, but do we have enough with girls in tight tops fighting crimes of the preternatural? No.

And come on, look at this DVD box set’s cover (seriously, you should check out as high-res a copy as possible). While the backgrounds look like Count Dracula’s backyard at midnight, the foreground is dedicated to the supple Jennifer Love Hewitt and her boobs. I apologizing for seeming like some sort of crass pervert, but look at her boobs; they are literally about ready to fall out of her dress (maybe a ghost is to blame).

I know, I know – but what about what’s inside the box set?

Well, the series’ thin premise about a sexy young crime fighter who has an uncanny knack to communicate with entities beyond the grave (mwa hah hah hah) has been done before. And to be perfectly frank, Jennifer simply doesn’t have the gravitas to pull off the role of a channeling beyond-this-world seer. Patricia Arquette is perfect in Medium, but that’s because she has a strange charisma that extends far beyond her physical presence. Jennifer Love’s Melinda Gordon just kinda looks like she’s talking to the dead between shopping at American Apparel and J. Crew.

I feel bad complaining about this season, though, because it involves some pretty serious and plotline-changing events. While this writer is a fan of show reinvention of any kind, however, Ghost Whisperer is unsteady with a modicum of dramatic fodder in its arsenal - the last thing it needs is the death of a major character and the mournful runoff that incites (yup, one of the show's more notable cast members bites the big one here). There are less tragic advents to this new season, most notably the addition of J. Love's real-life husband-to-be Jamie Kennedy, who shows up as a professor named Eli who has a very Whisperer-esque way of hearing ghosts as they pass nearby. Kennedy's character doesn't make a whole lot of sense - his motivations and backstory are presented vaguely, at best - but I've always found Kennedy to be a goofy, fun on-screen presence (except for maybe Malibu's Most Wanted) and on a season as dirt-serious as this one, even moderate comic relief is much appreciated.

But everything else on this Fourth Season set is business as usual. Jennifer’s earnest, aw-shucks temperament as Melinda Gordon is implicitly likable, but her girl-next-door performance bent gets old quickly. Sure, she dresses fantastically throughout the season (and the show’s directors seem to pay true attention to her endowments; I guess they know who their fan base is), but compared to the bridging mystics that have populated TV dramas of years past, she pales in comparison.

Maybe they should try having a Buffy-esque musical episode next season....