Jennifer Love Hewitt

KELLIE PICKLER: Why, hello, Jennifer.

J.LO.HEW: Hi.. Kellie?

KELLIE: Yes, that's my name. You might remember me from American Idol, or all those stories about how I'm besties with Taylor Swift, even though she and Miley Cyrus pretended to be BFFs at the Grammys. We all know that's a lie. I mean, I am way more interesting than Miley! I'm older! Wiser!

J.LO.HEW: Are you, though? Because I confess, I didn't recognize you, because you made the decision not to look like yourself at ALL.

KELLIE: How do you mean?

J.LO.HEW: It's all that makeup, hon. You look like you're TRYING to channel Portia de Rossi in a mediocre Gwen Stefani costume that actually came out looking way more like Mary Cherry from Popular.

KELLIE: And YOU look really short in that dress. I don't think, if I had just broken things off with my fiance and lost 25 pounds, that I would have worn something with proportions that unflattering.

J.LO.HEW: But...

KELLIE: And, HA HA, what was with that carpet cape? What, did a ghost whisper that idea to yout? Did you run around all day singing, "I'm a Berber Girl, in a Berber woooooorld..."?

J.LO.HEW: Ouch.

KELLE: See? You are not the ONLY one who can tell brutal truths, beeyotch!

J.LO.HEW: I guess we'll never be friends, then.

KELLE: Guess not.

J.LO.HEW: Okay. Smile!

Listen, J.Lo.Hew, we have to talk.

[Photo: FlynetOnline.com]

Don't look at me like that, missy, because I'm only here to help. Here's the thing: I know times are rough right now. You just broke up with Liebgott from Band of Brothers, Us Weekly did a whole cover story alleging you are a neurotic mess who refused to wear anything that wasn't a size 4 or lower even when you weren't, you lost a boatload of weight you didn't need to lose in a really short amount of time that probably left you hungry and crabby all the time, you're stuck in this horrible storyline on Ghost Whisperer where they killed your hot husband and saw his spirit jump into a way less hot dude's body and your character is trying to date him, and you're in shock that it turned out that Jay Mohr was the glue of the show and that now he's gone things are bleak with Jamie Kennedy in there as his proxy. I get that it's probably really hard for you right now. And I wish it weren't, because I like you. But wearing rugs from the clearance rack at Cost Plus/World Market is NOT the answer. And it's a very slippery slope. First you're turning your throw rug into a cape, and then all of a sudden, you're hitting the supermarket in slippers with a bathmat wrapped around your boobs, and finally someone spies you at CBS parties in a Snuggie with your hair in curlers, smoking a hand-rolled cigarette stuffed with things from your spice rack and jammed into a holder you bought on eBay for twenty bucks at 3 a.m.

Don't let the bastards WIN, J.Lo.Hew. You can beat this. If you have to put on boots specifically so you can yank yourself up by their straps, then do it. Just take off the carpet first.

Thank God that Ghost Whisperer is starting up again -- and while it's entirely possible no one has ever said that before, my addiction to the weird stuff they put Jennifer Love Hewitt in is well-documented.

For instance, I am dying -- HA, see what I did there? -- to get to the episode where she runs around town in this:


[Photo: FlynetOnline.com]

Yes, Virginia, that IS a lady-tailcoat. But maybe I'm not giving the costumers enough credit. In abstract ways, she could be considered the Grim Reaper's foot-soldier, so I suppose it makes sense that she'd be wearing his livery.

JENNIFER LOVE HEWITT: I am SKINNY and TAN now. I'm like the Lauren Conrad of ghost whispering!

HAYDEN PANETTIERE: Do I look old enough to be dating a 30-something man? I do, right? This is sufficiently mature, isn't it? I look like a grown-up woman, don't I? 

J. LO. HEW: Take that, all you douchewads who said I was fat! Wait until you have to sit through the 90-minute infomercial for the diet and exercise DVD I'm making right now! I'm calling it Party Of Five; Eating For One, Exercising for Four and you can get it for only five low payments of $79.99!

HAYDEN: I really don't want anyone to pay any attention to me, actually. Maybe if I could just blend into the background. Please, please don't ask me if Heroes is better this year.

J. LO. HEW: I didn't need those boobs!!

HAYDEN: I have like fifteen years to look young and hot, right? I mean, I'm going to be nubile for a while, aren't I? Like, I can be super demure right now and then later, I can pull out all the Hot Young Girl stops, can't I? I have some time for that, right? I mean, I'm not blowing my chances right now, don't you think? I'm not going to look back on this and me all, "damn, why didn't I just wear open toe shoes?" am I? I'm not going to regret this, am I? AM I????

J. LO. HEW: WHEE!! US WEEKLY, CALL ME!!

Jennifer. JENNIFER.

We'd been doing SO MUCH BETTER lately. And you finally darkened the hair! But for what? So you could wear one of Gretl von Trapp's performance dresses over a pair of jeans? Is your fiance planning to carry you out of the venue and up the stairs after you sing about how the sun has gone to bed?

The thing is, I could live with the dress -- it doesn't fit your chest tremendously well, but overall, I'd probably have ignored this completely if you'd just worn it bare-legged. And possibly with a stiletto heel rather than a wedge. But the jeans, J.Lo.Hew? THE NEEDLESS JEANS? Is this how you repay all the people who got you booted out of Fug Madness in the first round by voting for Scarlett Johansson? And why did my TiVo cut off the end of Top Model last night? How is it possible that I am out of Diet Coke? WHY MUST EVERYTHING BE SUCH A STRUGGLE?

Friday is FINALLY here. We are thrilled; it's been a long week for us - we're currently traveling for work and blogging by candlelight in the wee hours, so thanks for putting up with our often hugely slap-happy ramblings, which for us feel scrawled on the back of our hands with a sinister blood quill a la Dolores Umbridge's torture method in the fifth Harry Potter book. Anyway, the net effect is that, in addition to getting behind on other things -- like sleeping, and eating vegetables -- I am lagging on a post I'd been meaning to do all week about Ghost Whisperer.

I know, you guys are probably sort of sick of hearing us yap about cheesy television shows you likely ignore but we love for inexplicable -- well, totally explicable, but maybe only to us -- reasons. But hear me out: I was way behind on my episodes, so I didn't realize that back in November, their rogue costumer struck again.

[Photo: My TV set and a digital camera]

Ahoy, Jay Mohr! First of all, what are you even doing on Ghost Whisperer? Don't you usually play a fast-talking jackhole, as opposed to the fast-talking family-friendly academic you're playing here? Granted, your snarky comments are becoming the show's only bright spot, but it's still really jarring to see you doing gentle weekend television and spewing stuff about the occult and the spirit world and Chinese takeaway instead of cussing out some poor schmoe. Second, please do tell us how you managed to avert your eyes from Jennifer Love Hewitt's insane shirt. It looks like her elbows are wearing a wedding dress. They are the brides of Fuggenstein. And third, are Jennifer Love Hewitt's arms actually that freakishly short, or is it just an optical illusion? It reminds me of the Seinfeld Puffy Shirt. If she's going on the Today show tomorrow to hawk it for charity, I will feel bad. But not as bad as if I'd been forced to wear it. I'm beginning to understand why actresses become divas -- it's to stop stuff like this from happening to them at the hands of other people who don't understand how long a human's arms are supposed to look.

However, this was not the most grievous offense of Rogue Costumer. That was merely the icing on this chewy, billowy, trouser cake. With apologies for the quality of the photos, behold:

Katherine Heigl's recent spate of interviews and the wretchedly unfunny previews for 27 Dresses have me a) concerned she might be a bit of a pill in real life, b) totally sick of her, and c) in disbelief that this movie appears to think that simply dyeing her hair faintly brown will help us believe Katherine Heigl is suddenly sort of frumpy and dowdy and weak-willed. Great message there, people.

In fact, I wish Jennifer Love Hewitt would go BACK to being a darker brunette because it makes her look more striking. Check it out:

This is just an achingly pretty dress, which paired with the shoes gives Jennifer a really lovely old-movie glamour. Even Cardbord Heigl seems to be eyeing her, all, "I can't believe you look better than I do. SLEEP WITH ONE EYE OPEN, ho. Trust."

As a fair-skinned lass, I know it's tough to wear that pale pinky color without it washing you out (and as a side note, I accidentally pasted that sentence into Google and it came up with a line from what's trying to be the world's longest poem that read, "It would help if the firefighter inside you lit a fire," which... I don't think THAT'S necessarily the solution here; for one thing, it would char the heck out of her womb). Jennifer mostly succeeds, and I think the "mostly" comes from the fact that it's her hair -- with an assist from her makeup -- washing her out and not the dress. If she went back to that awesome, shiny darker brown hair, and possibly rediscovered bangs, she could probably get away with the minimalist makeup and the light hue of the dress, because the dark cherry on top would elevate it all.

Also, Dark-Haired-Hewitt is from the glory days of the Ghost Whisperer -- YES, the show has some, thank you very much -- when her coifs and fake eyelashes and old-school nighties and bedjackets were HUUUGE. So maybe I'm just being nostalgic. Still, that doesn't detract from how fantastic that dress is on her. She's someone who's struggled, I think, to find the right cuts of clothes to accentuate her natural assets (I am not at all sure the Ghost Whisperer costumer is putting this kind of effort into it). This one is perfect: She's all woman, brimming with curves that demand to be celebrated. Which I am sure her fiance will gleefully take care of later.

Apparently, Jennifer Love Hewitt made a statement recently on her personal blog in response to photos of her in Hawaii in a bikini -- in which she looked lovely and curvy and healthy and as if she actually enjoys her life, as opposed to analyzing the carb content on every plate of food that passes her way and obsessing over her hips. It takes a lot of guts to enjoy your beach vacation when you're a celebrity who knows she's going to get photographed but doesn't have Cameron Diaz's tall tree of a body, which is what most people seem to expect. And so it came to pass that J.Lo.Hew responded to criticism of the photos with a note about how, in fact, her body is totally healthy. And it made me love her even more than I did when she premiered on Ghost Whisperer with the bangs and the giant hair and the eyelashes, and all those nighties and bed jackets (speaking of which, J, we miss those -- can you consider going back to the hair, at least?).

Anyway, so that, plus the news that she got engaged to cute, cute Liebgott from Band of Brothers, has us all aglow with warm feelings for Ms. Lo.Hew. Feelings which only intensified when we saw the recent paparazzi photos of their "romantic walk on the beach." Which is not to say that it couldn't have been romantic, but rather that I seriously wonder whether it was spontaneous.

[Photos: Splash News]

I mean... that is a RANDOM PARROT on her shoulder. Is there really such a thing as a random parrot in this world? Where did this parrot come from, and why is it perched on her while she walks meaningfully along the shoreline wrapped in an old bedsheet? Did Ross coordinate his shirt on purpose? And how did the paps know they'd be there? It all sort of smacks of, "See? THIS is how we wanted to be photographed after our big Love Announcement, not frolicking around Hawaii half-naked." Which I sort of understand -- everyone secretly wants one of those hilarious pictures that people in soap operas happen to have on their desks/mantels/computers, where it's an unguarded, loving moment that is supposed to look candid but fails because no one in real life ACTUALLY manages to get such a perfect close-range photo of themselves laughing gorgeously into each others' smiling eyes under flattering lighting. 

But this is not that photo. This one sort of seems to say, "God, I hope Us Weekly is watching. Should I close my eyes and rest my head lovingly on his shoulder? Yes. But I can't walk very far that way so they'd better get the shot fast, and God, I hope Ross doesn't do that brow-furrow thing while I'm looking so peaceful because it will kind of ruin the moment if he looks like he just smelled a dead seagull." Or, "Okay, I thought a bird on my shoulder would be very Sleeping Beauty In The Forest With Nature, but it's impossible to keep a straight face with this f'ing parrot's nails digging into my shoulder while it caws the words 'Sister Act 2! Sister Act 2!' into my ear, so at what point does the damn bird wrangler peel this thing off me?!?"

None of which diminishes my affection for Lady Lo.Hew. Instead, it cracks me up. I just wish she'd worn something other than what Melinda Gordon would've put on to run to the market, and then the antiques store, and then the family of the little boy she's trying to cross over, and then the hospital, and then the school, and then the underground tunnels, and then home for dinner, and then back to the family -- all while everyone else is wearing a heavy winter coat.

Regular readers know that I have many, many secret shames, but one of the least secret and MOST shameful is that I regularly watch The Ghost Whisperer. I can hear you laughing, but I promise you there is nothing  more soothing on an early Sunday evening than a TiVoed episode of Jennifer Love Hewitt bouncing around sending people into the light, and a glass of wine.  The show is formulaic, but actually kind of addictive: J Lo Hew is refreshingly non-scrawny and her boobs and her hair and her fake eyelashes and her endless supply of fantastic nightgowns are seriously entertaining.  Plus, the dude who plays her husband is super hot. Anyway, it's definitely not operating at levels of Heroes-like watchability, but it's worth it for J. Lo Hew's outfits alone, because they are INSANE. She has worn nightgowns as dresses, giant peplums on tiny coats, and vintage ball gown after vintage ball gown (during the day, of course, like, while at the grocery store). This past week was the show's season finale, and we were treated to some truly awesome (in all senses of the word) costumes.  For example, this seems fine, right?

Kind of boobtacular, and a whole lot like a nightgown and not really something I would wear to a meeting with Julian Sands about Mysterious, Possibly Psychic Child Survivors of Terrible Disasters (that's the back of Julian's head there, and, yes, he needs a new agent. Julian, yours was the first manjunk I ever saw on the big screen, in A Room With a View, and a classier and more romantic introduction to cinematic male anatomy probably does not exist. I loved you deeply, and still have pretty much that entire movie memorized. What are you doing on CBS Friday nights? I guess I should be glad you're just a troubled (para?)psychologist here, and not an evil lunatic like you were on 24).

But then she stands up:

Erm, sorry about the quality of that picture. My kitchen window is not actually part of her outfit. ALTHOUGH SHE'D HAVE ROOM FOR IT UNDER THAT SKIRT. Also, why does Julian have so many clocks?

Anyway, just when you're thinking that this Ghost Whisperer will be the most sartorially heinous of all Ghost Whisperers, this happens:

Oh my god, she's so cute! Like That Girl, if Marlo Thomas could talk to the dead!  At last, the Wardrobe Bitches have forgiven her for that time she played Audrey Hepburn and put her in something that works on her curvaceous bod. NOW I can concentrate on the show:  are they going to kill off Jim, J Lo Hew's dreamy and constantly supportive husband, whose scenes are all conveniently set just post-shower, while he is wet and shirtless? Please God, no!

But then something worse than the death of the man-candy occurs. And I have placed it after the jump, so as to spare your delicate retinas.

Apparently, in Hollywood, there's a party for people who didn't get invited to the Academy Awards, and they get all dolled up in their finery and congregate to watch the telecast together. It's like the Red Carpet, Jr. Which is both sweet and maybe a little sad, like it's the overflow audience for a talk show that just missed the cut, except with better clothes. Still, these parties probably had a killer open bar, and who are we to imply that anyone should refuse it?

Certainly not when they look as divine as Jennifer Love Hewitt did.

This is a woman who's historically had a lot of trouble dressing the boobs and the hips without making herself look ten pounds heavier than she is. So we're thrilled to see how this dress skims her in all the right ways, putting a little cleavage -- okay, a lot of cleavage -- on display and giving herself graceful, clean lines everywhere else. She's even got a soft, romantic updo and her bangs are out of her face, an elegant change from the everyday for her.

Whatever Ross McCall is doing for her, he obviously does well, and so we hope he keeps doing it. Maybe he's The Fug Whisperer -- he sees her fug when she can't, and he helps it cross over into the light so that it leaves her alone and she can get on with her life without worrying that a possessed peasant top is going to throw itself at her and bind her to it for an entire afternoon.

Whatever it is, well played, both of you. Just don't go any further with the Mystic Tan.