BRING ON THE PSYCHIC STUFF
TV SUITS have finally figured out that they need help. Big help. Divine inspiration help. I mean, dear Lord, when left to their own devices they come up with stuff like “Big Brother” and “Daddio.”
So, when all else fails, give the people what they want: New age psychic stuff.
Since I go to psychics for a living, this for me is real Must See Reality TV. (Oh, stop it! Like you’ve never been to a freaking psychic yourself!) So if you, too, can’t get enough of dead people walking, then “Crossing Over with John Edward” on Sci Fi is for you.
One of the reasons I have a particular fondness for psychic John Edward (he speaks to dead people), is because my ex-husband’s new wife once went to him for a reading, and who should Edward conjure up but my dead father.
My dear old dad then spent the ex’s wife’s whole reading (not to mention time and money) talking about me! Now that’s a psychic after my own heart.
On Edward’s show, he talks to dead people who belong to live people in the studio audience. On his premiere, he also conjured up dead relatives for one celebrity, the soap queen Linda Dano, who cried. Now, for all I know, Linda Dano cries at art shows, but still I was moved.
Of course, I cry at art shows too, so maybe I’m not the best judge. But when Edward conjured up a woman’s dead husband and even managed to bring her a stuffed frog which he was inspired to buy on the way to work, I was bawling. (Her dead husband’s nickname was frog.)
I interviewed Edward once, but he didn’t remember meeting my ex’s next, nor my father’s spirit. But seeing how he meets hundreds of new dead people every week at work, I imagine it’s hard to remember them all.
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Not new this season, but back for a second season at a new time is “Beyond Chance,” hosted by Melissa Etheridge, on Lifetime.
Each week the series explores several inspirational/unexplainable events that have happened to ordinary people in real life.
In the series premiere, there are the parents who had premonitions of their son’s death, and there’s a visit with him after he’s already passed over.
There’s also the story of the girls who grew up in an orphanage in Massachusetts 60 years ago and were separated when the first girl had to leave when she turned 18.
Last year, out of the blue, one of the women was driving in Florida and lost control of the steering wheel. It pulled her into the parking lot of a restaurant. She went in and who was there – yup – her long lost “sister” from the orphanage.
There are also several little stories, like the one about the novel being returned to someone who’s wanted it for 50 years, and so forth.
Hey – if it’s good enough for Melissa Etheridge, it’s good enough for me.
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Things aren’t so good once script writers step in. NBC’s new offering, “Mysterious Ways,” which will shift to PAX in late August, isn’t bad – but it’s not great.
“Mysterious Ways” is good in the way that “The Others” is good. It’s good because it’s about the unexplained. It’s bad because it gets sappy.
It’s about this cute professor, (Adrian Pasdar) who spends his spare time exploring and debunking miracles. I suspect he’ll probably be doing a lot more verifying than debunking.
In the premiere episode he meets a beautiful, but skeptical, shrink (Rae Dawn Chong), and together (with his useless but cute dog, Mole) they explore the phenomenon of a little kid who fell through the ice and drowned, but ended up on top of the ice and almost alive. The actors in this show are very good.
I was extremely interested until it turned all sappy and precious half way through. For sappy, I’ll take Linda Dano’s dead relatives anytime.
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“Crossing Over with
John Edward”
Weeknights at 11 p.m. on Sci Fi ( )
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“Beyond Chance”
July 23 at 10 p.m. on Lifetime ( )
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“Mysterious Ways”
July 24 at 8 p.m. on WNBC/Ch. 4
and in August on PAX ( )

