Can’t Miss Episode of the Week: ‘Ghosts’ Hippie Bank Robbery Is a Blast
Welcome to our weekly column Can’t Miss Episode of the Week! Every Saturday we’ll be spotlighting a different episode of television from that week that we thought was exceptional and a must-see. Check back to see if your favorite show got the nod — or to learn about a new one! Spoilers ahead.
CBS’ new supernatural sitcom Ghosts is a delight. This American adaptation of the British series follows a couple, Sam (Rose McIver, iZombie) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who inherit a mansion and decide to turn it into a Bed & Breakfast. But ever since Sam had a near death experience, she can now see ghosts, and this house happens to be chock full of them. The episodes often do deep dives into the lives of these quirky spirits, but this one about Flower (Sheila Carrasco), Woodstone Mansion’s resident hippie, is a blast and my favorite one yet.
Flower is all about peace, and love, and…bank robberies? The episode opens with a colorful scene where she and her fellow hippies from her commune are doing just that. It’s an incredibly fun twist on a character we thought we had figured out. Sam is just as stunned, and when she has the opportunity to freelance for a local magazine, she knows this is the story she needs to pitch. When Flower forbids her from writing it, she hints that there’s more to the story, and it’s a tantalizing hook.
This episode is firing on all cylinders, and just as entertaining is the b-plot. We spend so much time at the mansion that we forget that Sam sees ghosts wherever she goes. When she visits the magazine’s offices, she runs into the spirits of a paperboy and a Native American from the Lenape tribe who died around the same time as Sasappis (Roman Zaragoza), also a Lenape ghost at the mansion. It’s pretty amusing how casual Sam acts when she encounters these new ghosts. Seeing dead people is just part of her daily life now; she’s used to it. And of course, Sasappis just happened to have a huge crush on this other Lenape ghost, Shiki (Crystle Lightning), when he was alive. So while Sam is trying to find out Flower’s big secret, she’s also passing messages between Sasappis and Shiki, and trying to explain to her new editor why it looks like she’s talking to herself.
The great unsung hero of this episode is Jay. He has all the best lines as he tries to keep up with the drama going on inside the house even though he can’t see the ghosts. This show has such goofy, but also witty, writing and Ambudkar’s delivery is perfect. He suggests Sam ask revolutionary war ghost Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones) and Prohibition-era ghost Alberta (Danielle Pinnock) to get Flower to talk. When the ghosts agree to this plan, Sam promptly walks out of the room, leaving Jay to call out asking if anyone’s going to let him know how the conversation ended. He also helps Sasappis draft messages for Shiki (through Sam of course), impressing Wall Street bro ghost Trevor (Asher Grodman) with his mastery over the casual text message. When Sam finally agrees that Jay’s more understated approach is better than her attempt to tell Shiki of Sasappis’ undying love, Jay has a lot of questions about how ghosts have “physical” relationships, and Sasappis tries to stop Sam from leaving so that he can tell Jay about “ghost sex.” Jay somehow forming relationships with people he can’t hear or see is hilarious.
The answer to how Flower’s story ends winds up being the perfectly sweet capper to a great episode. Flower finally admits that since the commune couldn’t decide where to donate the money they stole, she and her boyfriend Ira (Adam Bernett) took the money for themselves, but since she got mauled by a bear right after that, she’s spent eternity feeling bad about it. When she tells Sam that her plan was to use the money to start a fair-trade coffee shop, Sam realizes that’s the coffee chain she and Jay have been frequenting, and it’s the place Jay brings home coffee from at the beginning of the episode. Ira used the money to complete Flower’s dream, and has been donating the profits to charity ever since. So, Sam gets her big story published, Flower learns that her most selfish act helped people after all, and Daisy’s Coffee Shop gets some “badass” local acclaim.
(CBS)
Other observations we thought made this episode stand out:
- Isaac’s flirty little comments about Jay are adorable. His line to Sam that Jay’s “mind is as sharp as his jawline” made me laugh out loud.
- Jay may not be able to hear the ghosts’ reply to whatever Sam says, but he accurately predicts that they did not take well Sam’s description of Shiki not returning Sasappi’s declaration of love as “ghosting.”
Ghosts, Thursdays, 9/8c, CBS
