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Ghosts Recap: An Egregious Misrepresentation of History

Season 2 Episode 7 Editor’s Rating5 stars *****

Photo: Bertrand Calmeau/CBS Oh, my sweet Pete. He is too good for this world! And for the afterlife, as it were. This week, the kindest Pinecone Troop leader is being forced to confront what all of our ghosts have or will have to at some point: their legacy and the fact that it is, for the most part, wildly out of their own control. Alberta’s been dealing with it as she attempts to solve the mystery of her murder, allowing her status as a onetime rat to be made public. Flower’s run-in with it had a happy ending; after Sam exposed her bank-robbing past, she learned that the money she stole was put to good use in her honor. Isaac is constantly lamenting his lack of a legacy and the way his rival Alexander Hamilton’s legacy looms large. And now ol’ Pete Martino has to face it head-on, too.

There’s only so much you can do to shore up how you’ll be remembered and not to draw the ire of Isaac Higgintoot, but that song from the musical about his rival, “Who Lives, Who Dies, Who Tells Your Story,” is right: The people telling your story are usually the ones who get to define it. I say usually because most people don’t become ghosts left to roam the place where they died for all eternity, and most ghosts who are left to that fate don’t have a living person around who can course-correct on their behalf. What an elite group our ghosts are part of!

Unfortunately for Pete, the people telling his story are the creative team behind the hit TV series Dumb Deaths. There is nobody having more fun coming up with fake TV shows to populate their own TV show than the writers over at Ghosts. Their OG fake show, It’s Getting Hot in Here, even gets a shout-out in this episode (most of the crew on Dumb Deaths worked on Hot in Here; “We walk amongst the gods!” superfan Thor yells when he learns this fun fact). Add Dumb Deaths to the list. The premise is … well, you get it. It’s a show I might have dabbled in prior to watching Ghosts. Now I can’t stop thinking about how there could be ghosts hanging out in my living room and how highly offended they might get over a show making fun of people — er, spirits — just like them. Ghosts has really ruined that for me. But it’s given me so much — like, for instance, a Revolutionary War captain flagging down a Viking to ask him to settle a dispute with his British soldier boyfriend over who was right about the Stamp Act, truly a gift of a story line. So we’re even, I guess.

And in all fairness, Flower’s death is pretty dumb. We get to watch it alongside Thor, Sas, and Alberta at the opening of the episode, and there’s really no redeeming aspect to it. The girl was high and wanted to hug a bear. There’s no denying — dumb. Still, when Flower first hears Paula’s pitch to Jay and Sam about filming at the location where that death happened, she pushes Sam to say “no,” regardless of how much good the $10,000 paycheck could do. Flower doesn’t want to be a joke. It’s Pete who steps in and reminds Flower that this could be one of the few ways they can actually help Jay and Sam, who do so much for them. I mean, Pete knows that he arguably has the dumbest death out of all of them, and he says he’d be more than happy to have his story broadcast to the world in order to help them pay some bills.

Well, Pete has a chance to prove he means it. Before they know it, Paula is announcing that the network nixed the “hippie hugs bear” story — too many animal-related deaths this season — and it found a second dumb death on the property that will work for the episode. Out of a production van steps a Pete doppelgänger; they’re doing “troop leader gets shot with an arrow by a little girl.” The concept is funny on its own, but friends, what a treat this is: Actor Pete is played by none other than Mathew Baynton. If you’re a Ghosts completist, as I hope you are, then you’ll immediately recognize Baynton from the U.K. version of the show. Baynton is not only one of the creators of the series, but he stars as one of its ghosts: Thomas Thorne, a lovelorn Romantic poet who died in 1824. Not surprisingly, he’s very game to play with his U.S. counterparts. Actor Pete is what one might call “Method”? Overzealous? A touch psychotic? Actor Pete really wants to dig into the part, regardless of the fact that it’s just five lines on a ridiculous show called Dumb Deaths. You never know, J.J. Abrams could be watching!

Actor Pete cannot fathom why this man would be so stupid as to hand out deadly weapons to children ahead of giving the safety speech. What kind of troop leader would do that? Furthermore, a man who makes his living sending other people on vacations must be miserable, right? Poor Pete has to stand there while another man dressed up in his Pinecone Troop uniform and his signature ’80s glasses trashes his life. It hurts! It hurts especially because, more than anything else, Pete prides himself on being a great, kind leader and teacher for his troop. Keep in mind, too, that he recently learned his marriage was built on lies — the Pinecones are all he has! He tries to let the whole thing slide, but then Actor Pete tosses in a new twist: Pete must have had a drinking problem. There is no other explanation for the stupidity of it all.

Pete’s upset and Sam and Jay want to help, but Paula doesn’t take notes from the people who own the location. Plus they signed a contract — they can’t even call the thing off in protest. In a last-ditch effort, they decide to find someone who was there that day who can speak to the accuracy of the portrayal — someone aside from Thor, that is, even though it’s very sweet that he wants to defend Pete’s honor. The fact that a ghost was there remains wholly unhelpful.

They find Jennifer, one of the former Pinecones who was there that fateful, surely traumatic day. Well, not surely — definitely. Both Thor and Sas confirm the whole thing was extremely traumatic; Thor says he didn’t sleep for a while after witnessing Pete’s death (and he has “chopped heads off and [drank] from open necks,” so you know it was bad). Jennifer seems well adjusted, though, when she turns up at Woodstone, willing to help Mr. Martino out any way she can. It’s pretty lovely, honestly. Also lovely? Pete still remembers her favorite flavor Ring Pop. Peeeeeeeete. I still can’t believe Alberta won’t hit that.

The first thing Jennifer does when she gets a look at Actor Pete is confirm that Pete was not a drinker. It’s a win for #TeamPete. But then, as Actor Pete looks for anything else to grasp on to to make his performance shine — he does know he could always go back to the character basics and be a “bumbling cuckold whose only friends are little children,” which is harsh but sort of true — Jennifer mentions that Pete was a little off that day. Normally, he would never hand out the arrows before the safety demonstration, but that day, she says, he seemed distracted. He was muttering something about doughnut holes. And there it is. Pete remembers (and we see via flashback to 1985) that he had a big fight with his wife about how she ate all the doughnut holes that morning even though she doesn’t like doughnuts. Don’t even get Pete started on how doughnut holes and doughnuts are “all doughnut material.” Well, folks, just when you thought Pete’s death couldn’t get any dumber, it does. It really, really does.

Now, Actor Pete wants to play the character as a sugar fiend who can’t find a fix, and he thinks it would be more authentic if he peed himself when he gets hit with the arrow. The producer and director agree. Poor Pete — the guy can’t win. But then something pretty wonderful happens: His fellow ghosts refuse to let Pete be humiliated like this. Sure, Thor using his ghost power to fry a battery stops the production for only about five seconds, but it’s the thought that counts. And the fact that Flower is in the right place at the right time for a props guy carrying the arrow to walk through her and get so high that he sends the arrow sailing … right into Jay’s ass. Sam and Jay use it to leverage a change in story content, and Dumb Deaths goes back to retelling Flower’s story (with her approval, of course).

More important, as soon as that arrow hits Jay, Jennifer flies into action. She knows exactly how to take care of the wound, and it’s all because of her time with Mr. Martino and the Pinecones. See? Pete was a great teacher. He did make a difference in his troopers’ lives. His legacy is a wholesome and important one. Anyone else have something in their eye? No? Just me? Fine, if that’s how you want to play it!

Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun

• Isaac and Nigel realize they still have a lot of issues to iron out, mostly over the fact that, you know, one is a rebel soldier and one fought to keep the monarchy in America. Even their cute little walks together become an issue when Isaac declares “no ambulation without representation.” Sam teaches Isaac about the ways of Love Actually and how today the U.S. and the U.K. have “the Special Relationship,” and it seems to work … at least for a little while.

• Oh God, I would 100 percent watch Dumb Deaths producer Paula’s other big hit, World’s Hottest Dentists. Inject that shit directly into my eyeballs.

• I know it’s early, but is Rebecca Wisocky the MVP of the season? Should we just call it now? The runner in which she follows around Paula the Producer because she admires how much power she has and how much fear she instills made me laugh every time. Even in the smallest bits, Wisocky has been killing it.

• One other stipulation of Sam and Jay not suing the production is that Sam would play Flower in the reenactment. Anyone else get some real iZombie vibes seeing Rose McIver take on a new personality?

• Baynton’s pleading that Pete’s big secret was a pill addiction was so subtle and great. He’s got to be in the running for an Emmys guest nomination, right?

• “Why would I say howdy? Is this a western? Am I Jonathan Wayne?” I mean, for that line-reading alone.

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