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Ghosts Recap: A Cult Classic

Season 2 Episode 3 Editor’s Rating3 stars ***

Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS

This week on Ghosts, The Other Two’s Drew Tarver joins the party — though his character Micah’s whole deal is less about “joining the party” and more about “tricking people into joining his cult and then moving that cult into the Woodstone Mansion.” That’s no fun for the people Micah’s messing with; for us, the audience, it’s pretty entertaining.

It seems poor Jay is a little lonely these days. How could he not be? He and Sam left behind all of their friends in the city and Sam inherited eight new ones that Jay can neither see nor hear. I’m forever amused by the sight gag of switching between Sam’s and Jay’s POVs, showing us Sam chatting with a bunch of ghosts around her and then realizing Jay is just watching his wife laugh it up all by herself. That trick is used here, but instead of its being just for the joke, this time it’s used as a nice reminder of how isolating the whole situation must be for ol’ Jay. It’s no wonder he’s so excited to make a few living, visible buddies while playing a pickup basketball game. It’s unfortunate that those buddies turn out to be a cult. That’s the worst when that happens, isn’t it?

By the time the ghosts let Sam know something’s really off about Jay’s friends — when Trevor says they need to get them out of the mansion even though some of them are superhot, you know something’s wrong — it’s too late. Jay has already been won over by Micah’s basketball metaphors about how to live your life, so he’s more than happy to give the guy a grand tour of the mansion. (Micah is very interested in how many people it fits.) Not only has he agreed to take a few boxes of the vitamin patch Micah swears by, but he’s also wearing the patch. Jay’s “patched in!” as they say, and he walks away from Sam, disregarding her and the ghosts’ warnings.

Jay has always seemed like the skeptical, risk-averse one compared with Sam, so his falling for what Micah’s selling just because he’s lonely feels like a real stretch here. Thankfully, Ghosts doesn’t wait too long to have Jay figure it all out. Micah’s leading his group — who consider themselves less a company and more a collective since they live and work together (red flag! red flag!) — in some yoga stretches outside when Jay comes over to get some more info. Trevor and Hetty are there taking in the view. Even though these people are in a cult, Trevor doesn’t think they should be judging the “nines and tens” in the group, which is just a perfect joke. Hetty has taken a shine to Micah, who reminds her of a stable boy who used to work on the property. Unfortunately for those two horndogs, once Jay hears Micah talking about the vitamin patches giving people eternal life and how he considers himself “742 years young,” Jay is onboard with kicking these crazies out.

Micah tries to put one over on them and tells Jay that when he signed for the boxes of patches, he also signed a contract that said they are allowed to live there “for no longer than 1 trillion years.” This contract wouldn’t hold up in court, but it would take a few months to get it thrown out and Micah refuses to leave regardless, so Sam and Jay need to come up with another plan. Sam tries to get the cult to give up the fight by pointing out how terrible eternal life would be anyway — something the ghosts know all too well. According to the undead, even sunsets get boring after a few decades, let alone centuries. Sadly, these cultists are dummies and this type of existential thinking has no effect on them.

All of this clears the way for Woodstone’s resident cult expert to really shine. Yes, duh! Flower knows all about the inner workings of cults because she was famously in one! Initially, she suggests Sam should sleep with Micah because “nothing breaks up a cult faster than an outsider sleeping with the leader.” That’s like Cults 101. Everyone laughs it off as another of Flower’s silly ideas, but in the end, it actually works.

Don’t worry: Sam doesn’t actually sleep with Micah; this isn’t that kind of show. But she isn’t above lying about sleeping with Micah. And with the final punch of Horny Hetty’s knowledge of the moles on Micah’s butt cheeks (when Trevor asks how she would know that, her response is a quick “no further questions” — Rebecca Wisocky is such an MVP), the rest of the cult is up in arms that Micah would do this. He saves face by claiming it was all a test, but he still wants to get the hell out of Woodstone Mansion before Sam and Jay can ruin the sweet cult thing he has going on even more.

It’s a silly plot, even for Ghosts, but it does give Flower some lovely moments. This show is so great at revealing new layers to the ghosts, who could so obviously become walking stereotypes, and reminding us that these supernatural beings were alive once and remain flawed people with a whole lot of feelings. Last week, we witnessed some spectacular character development with Alberta, and this week it’s Flower’s turn. Not only does she get to save the day but she opens up about the guilt she feels for turning away her brother, Rob, when came to rescue her from the cult. They never spoke again, which meant she wasn’t able to try to stop him from going to Vietnam, where, she learned, he soon died.

It’s a sad story, for sure, but here’s the thing: Flower, as we know and love, is not the smartest little ghostie around. As she’s pouring her heart out to Trevor and Alberta, she tells them her brother was MIA, which she believes means “murdered in action.” Trevor has to explain to her that it actually means “missing in action” and that there’s a chance Rob could still be alive. Look at Trev being empathetic and endearing and wildly misogynistic in one episode! Layers, babe!

Sam winds up tracking down Rob and writes to him, pretending to be someone who was in the cult with Flower, informing him that Flower’s greatest regret was never having made amends with her brother. He writes back saying that he always thought his sister had died hating him and that this letter brought him peace. He calls his sister “the kindest person I ever met” and regrets not telling her how much he loved her. Goddamn, Rob, making us well up like that! It’s a heartbreakingly sweet tearjerker. Or, as Flower puts it, the whole thing is very, very “groovy.”

Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun

• Pete and Sas get a little subplot in which Sas tells Pete that his “endless cheeriness” is annoying and he wishes he would stop. And so, for just a few hours, Pete becomes Dark Pete, and we are blessed with the moment when Dark Pete greets Sas with “Welcome to another day in hell, bitch.” We are not worthy of Richie Moriarty’s perfect line reading. We also get a nice moment in which Sas admits that living for eternity has perhaps gotten to him — and a lot of the other ghosts — and that Pete’s still having hope and optimism for each day isn’t necessarily the worst thing. Dark Pete is gone!

• I know Pete’s busy learning how to be a “joyless, sulking void,” but I’m surprised he doesn’t have more to say about Jay’s new friends. That’s his guy they’re taking advantage of!

• The reveal that Thor is deeply into Friends brings me such joy. I hope his references to the show become a running gag during the season. And you know what? He’s dead-on about Ross messing that whole thing up by lying about reading Rachel’s letter.

• “Nobody ever talks about a cult being in the wrong.”

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