Over (But I’m Not Over Them)

Great title, Nick! Thanks, Nick! Wow guys… season five. We’re in the home stretch now. Ghosts season five. The last season!!! I’ll admit to y’all now, this post is gonna be shorter than my usual ones. There are a lot of things that I don’t want to spoil this season! It’s a ton of very important reveals to everyone’s stories, so I’m gonna have to leave y’all on a little bit of a cliffhanger this time!

I do want to talk about this season, but really I’ve gotta keep my lips shut. Just know that my favorite episodes are the last two because…. UGH. Really, what I’ll be talking about this week is more of a drabble about the American version of Ghosts! For my own ease, I’ll be referring to the British version as BBC and the American version as CBS.

I don’t like the CBS version very much. While it is nice to be able to tune into the show like I used to, it’s just not the same. First, I’ll talk about the cast size.

There are just way too many cooks in this kitchen. I get it, big house and big history, but it’s way too many characters for what it’s supposed to be. I mean, there are multiple occasions of ghosts appearing for just on episode. One! In a show about dead people who shouldn’t be able to leave their property! The cast of main ghosts is already big enough. In looking for photos of them, it’s difficult to find clips of the show where they’re all together, but there’s only promo pictures! Also, they usually don’t have all the ghosts on set because there’s too many of them! They don’t feel realistic either.

They’re all way too modern for the time they’re supposed to be from. Genuinely an issue I have is that they don’t lean into the fact that they’re dead people from certain eras. Usually their timelines are used for one joke each, then they go to basically a sitcom without a laugh track, or hands. It’s like the writers don’t know what to do with the ghosts sometimes. There are multiple occasions of the ghosts just standing in a line saying quirky quips as Sam, CBS’s Allison, talks to a real person and looks mildly dismayed.

Look how bright everything is! This doesn’t look like a show about dead people. If you cut out the title it’d all look like a weird costume party. The show is funny don’t get me wrong, but it’s just not as charming. The cinematography is so bright and stiff, same with the costuming. These characters rarely have any growth, and when they thought one of the ghosts moved on they brought her back because she was a fan favorite! Ridiculous! They’re scared to do anything too major to their characters. Also, the show about dead people somehow managed to bury their gays.

If you aren’t familiar with that phrase, burying your gays is a homophobic writing tactic where a character is killed off shortly after they were on screen because they don’t want to have a queer character develop. Their Captain caricature, the one with the ruffled collar(his name is Isaac), has a whole plot line where he’d going to get married to a man! Then he falls in love with a living stripper! Then the stripper dies, but oh whoopty doo the dead stripper actually has a ghost power that lets him permanently leave the place he died! They don’t really bring back the ghost that Isaac was going to marry, and they just leave him. He’s a stereotype of a queer man and I don’t like him very much. It’s like they saw the jokes about the Captain being queer and thought “oh that means we can have a gay punching bag” rather than a complex man dealing with his internalized queerness! They joke about Isaac forcing himself to marry a woman if he never met Sam! Boo! Gross!

I need to calm down, I’m ranting a bit too much. Next week I’ll delve more into my thoughts on the Captain’s character. I needed to talk about my issues with CBS for a moment. So sorry for the long post this week! I’ll wrap it up there. Have such a good week, go see Mama Mia and tell me how it is because I won’t be able to go this weekend sadly. ByeBye!!