"Ghost Hunters"... can it be saved, or should we play TAPS?

Despite being the major trigger in the 'ghost hunting show' craze, it has become very apparent to me, having watched the show from the beginning, that the fifth season of "Ghost Hunters" has paled greatly in comparison to recent episodes of copycat shows like "Ghost Adventures" and relative newcomer "Ghost Lab".

First though, before I get into what's wrong, I do need to commend the show for the problems that *have* been fixed over time:

1) Psychics and demonologists. As TAPS doesn't normally believe in psychics, I'm not sure why they were on the first couple seasons; but their presence can really bring the credibility of a show down. Look at "Paranormal State."

2) The ridiculous subliminal crap in the first couple seasons. No, TAPS isn't really to blame for this; they've said in the past that they can't control Sci-Fi's editing. And being that Sci-Fi like to drown out TAPS's audio with horror movie music, I'll place the blame for this failed experiment on them.

3) Overabundance of drama instead of ghost hunting. This really, really spoiled the first couple seasons - the Willard Library episode especially. While I do realize that there were personality conflicts going on at the time, it just didn't seem appropriate to spend so much time focused on them.

Now, here's my list of suggestions as to how this show could be saved from its current plight. These are based on my own personal observations - if you have anything else to add (or argue), please do.

1) STOP THE SPINOFFS. "Ghost Hunters Academy" was a disaster, and I can actually say that I have never seen anyone that *didn't* agree with this opinion. (I checked. Good God, I checked.) Besides the fact that the college kids recruited for this show were incredibly hard to watch, they brought out the worst in Steve and Tango. It's unsettling to see the guys that have been the comic relief for the last few seasons of "Ghost Hunters" get so pissed off all the time, to the point where they just seem mean.

2) Whatever happened to investigating private homes? The most memorable episodes of seasons past were in the houses of ghost-troubled families. When's the last time we saw anything to match the torso sitting in the rocking chair, or the vibrating attic?

3) Stop with the "we can see it, but no one else can" stuff. This really made the last episode (the Hindenburg crash site) difficult to watch. I'm not bashing TAPS here, because I'm willing to believe that they DID see something; but I think this also ties in with the need for smaller, more private locations. When something is spotted a quarter mile across an aircraft hangar, we're not gonna see it, because their night vision cameras just aren't that powerful. Anything outside of a 20 foot range is blackness to us. In closer quarters, we'd see stuff all the time - the shadow in the bar a couple weeks ago was great proof of that. The Sci-Fi (I'm sorry, SYFY) cameramen also need to stop shooting directly at someone when they point and say "Look over there!" If they're looking at something, friggin' point the camera at it, not at Grant! If they were less focused on filming the living people and more on the possibility of a dead one, we might've actually seen the face Grant saw in that underground prison. (Actually, no, that's a bad example, because it was a completely unexpected incident; if the camera was already pointing at that hole before Grant looked there, it would've seemed staged. And James Randi worshippers would've been pleased that their holy leader blessed them with such wonderful evidence that ghosts don't exist.)

4) I could be wrong about this, so excuse my theorizing here... but I get the distinct feeling that SYFY is telling Kris what to wear in order to "sexy" the show up. I personally like Kris, and I would feel terrible if this were true.

Now, I like "Ghost Adventures" and "Ghost Lab" just as much as I like "Ghost Hunters", but they DID come around much later, and I'm willing to stay loyal to TAPS come what may. I would hate to see the popularity of another network's copycat idea drag down the show that originally sparked everyone's interest, all over problems that are easy to fix.

My biggest fear is that, since they've spent the last five of their twenty years in TAPS in a much larger public eye than before, Jason and Grant are getting tired of the constant "You faked this / you're a bunch of liars" bullshit. I mean, for example, people are just NOT WILLING to let the jacket pull from the Halloween episode go. Would YOU get excited over finding something new if you knew that no one was going to believe you, time after time after time? Probably not. (Remind me to post my "TAPS wouldn't fake evidence, and here's why" list. Not that the thicker people of the Internet would pay attention to reason.)

While I do know that there is a sixth season in the works, I'd hate to see Jason and Grant leave one day and let Steve and Tango take over. As much as I like Steve and Tango (and they've been missed over the past few episodes where they were away doing GHA), it wouldn't be Ghost Hunters without the two guys that started everything.

That's my two cents.