YMMV / Ghosts (US)

• Alternate Character Interpretation:
  • Is Isaac's hatred of Alexander Hamilton solely due to personal jealousy and minor slights (Hamilton always got Isaac's name wrong whenever they met), or does he also disagree with Hamilton politically? Isaac never discusses his political views past wishing for independence from the crown, and while he finds Patrick Henry uptight and George Washington to be boring, the only other founding father Isaac has mentioned having a personal beef with is Benjamin Franklin, who basically used Isaac as a pack mule while refusing him entry to the Free Masons. Seeing as Isaac has not as of yet to mentioned his feelings about people like Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr, James Madison, and John and Sam Adams, it is possible that Isaac's politics are in line with Jefferson and the future Democratic-Republican Party, making Hamilton the natural enemy of Isaac's beliefs.
  • A major reveal about Isaac's backstory was that his wife loved him enough to dress him in his best uniform as he was dying, proving she didn't resent him for being unable to have sex with her or leaving her unable to be with someone who would actually be interested. It's possible she was just that forgiving a person, but another option is that she herself was asexual, and married Isaac to avoid getting roped into sex. She might have also been a closet lesbian and thus completely understood the situation Isaac was in. Alternatively, given their apparent mutual affection, it's plausible that, yeah, she knew Isaac didn't love her the way a husband should love his wife—but they did still love each other, and their marriage was still fulfilling in its own way.
  • It's not clear how recently Sass discovered his Ghost Power. It's bad enough he broke Jay's trust but given how potentially useful it could have been to all the ghosts, he'd be an even bigger dick if he'd been hiding it for years or centuries.
  • While Nancy is usually portrayed as annoying but ultimately a decent person, it is notable that Flower was trapped in a well for months in part because of a miscount she made, and during that time she hooked up with Flower's boyfriend. It is possible to see this as sinister, rather than an accident.
• Same could be said for Stephanie since she didn’t tell anyone about Ralph going to heaven since she immediately fell sleep afterwards annoyed by him ascending and waited until her next wake up day to tell the main ghosts. Also Crash was noted to be sketchy by certain viewers when he showed up for his mandatory appearance because he spends a lot time roaming the property and could easily heard Flower in the well although some fans have a theory he pushed her in (While she was chasing a butterfly) as revenge for ripping off his head back in Season 2.
• Aluminum Christmas Trees: Pete's "Take It" approach, while treated in the show as part of his Extreme Doormat status, actually is a technique taught in Customer Service jobs. When an angry customer starts yelling at you about things beyond your control, you have to remember that it's not personal, and remain calm and rational. As Thorfinn demonstrated, this is easier said than done.
• Catharsis Factor:
  • A minor example. While the ghosts all generally good natured and likable, they all still bother Sam with constant demands and act anywhere from somewhat reasonable to insufferably annoying. This makes it feel pretty good when Alberta is put into the same position as Sam and ends up calling all the other ghosts out for how annoying they can be while calling Sam a saint.
  • On the other hand, if you're one of the people annoyed that Sam is always seen as right (at least in the first season) and the ghosts are always seen as wrong, it might a be little cathartic when the ghosts make Sam apologize before they help her with the Farnsby's (though the ghost case wasn't exactly airtight that time).
• Crosses the Line Twice:
  • Any of the ghosts' zingers that involve Deliberate Values Dissonance.
  • "The Owl:"
    • Hetty recalls a time where she consoled the family of a child who perished in one of her factories... By telling them there was now an opening for their second child.
    • Sam using Flower's mugshot for the latter's memorial service because she couldn't find any other pictures of her online. Tasteful? No. Hilarious? Yes.
• Fanon: Ghosts fanfic writers seem to unanimously agree that Sass was lying when he said that ghost can't finish after sex.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • To the original British version due to their similar concepts and the fact that the people behind the original executive produced this version. It's common to see an overlap with fans who would watch and like both versions, with many wishing for a crossover.
    • However, a few fans of the original UK sitcom hate the remake, leading to a Fandom Rivalry instead. They're a minority, but a vocal one.
  • Also to iZombie, with similar sounding concepts involving the dead and Rose McIver starring in both series.
  • As well as Drunk History due to both being history themed comedies both distributed by Paramount.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • In "Trevor's Pants" it revealed that when Trevor died, his office friends didn't even try to save his life. In "The Christmas Spirit" someone dies and becomes a ghost, but then they are resuscitated despite having become a ghost. This means Trevor probably could have been saved if he had gotten help.
  • Several moments become this after "Whodunnit" reveal that it was Hetty's son Thomas who murdered Alberta and Hetty knew the whole time.
    • Hetty telling Alberta that she died of a heart attack in "Hello" and "Alberta's Fan" now seems like Hetty was trying to gaslight Alberta into dropping the matter.
    • Alberta's request in "Hello" that Sam exact revenge on the descendant of her murderer. Sam would have to kill herself.
    • Hetty's claim that she knows what works and what doesn't when it comes to childcare in "Halloween" and her admittance that she wasn't a very good mother to her children in "The Family Business". The latter is particularly damning as she wishes she could have given her children advice and then it shows a flashback where she attempts to advise Thomas.
    • Episodes with a focus on Hetty and Alberta's friendship can be a bit harder to watch now that we know just how long Hetty had been lying to Alberta (particularly "Viking Funeral" and "Weekend From Hell").
  • A Real Life example: Hetty and some partygoers talk about the booming stock market and how 1929 will be a great year in “Whodunnit”. Come October 29th 1929, the stock market crashed which signaled the start of The Great Depression.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: During season one, Sasappis tells Sam he was really an accountant who died at a costume party while dressed as a Native American before telling her that he's kidding. Two years later, such a situation actually happens when Carol dies in costume at a Halloween party, meaning her ghost is now stuck in her costume.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Thorfinn spent his life pillaging villages and always suggests killing as the way to solve problems. On the other hand, he was left behind to die by his Viking friends and has spent a thousand years trapped in the same area during which he suffered from night terrors every night, had no one to talk to for the first five hundred years, and spent the majority of the first several years watching his own corpse rot away and his bones get swallowed by the earth. Not to mention he never saw his wife again and didn't see his son again for a thousand years.
  • Hetty is probably the most generally unpleasant of the ghosts given that she is elitist, racist, has regressive views on women, and has no respect for other people's opinions. However, this is mostly to be expected considering the time she lived in, and it is difficult not to feel bad for her when she speaks of her husband Elias' many affairs. As "The Family Business" reveals, she is also very regretful about relying on others to raise her children for her and not being able to help them or other Woodstones in death.
  • Trevor was a douchey Wall Street type in life and has continued his perverted antics well after his death. On the other hand, the real reason his ghostly form is without pants or underwear is that a temp-worker was up for a promotion, but the other office leads wanted to make him run to the city pants-less first, so Trevor secretly gave him money for a cab and his pants and boxers so he wouldn't get sick or hurt doing the run. Then on top of that, his supposed friends didn't even try to help him when he died then tied a big rock to his corpse and chucked it into a lake. Also, while he often ruins it with his perviness, he does seem genuinely very broken up about never finding true love in life.
  • Stephanie is very mean and uncaring and intentionally pulls a prank on Sam that invokes a painful memory for her. However, most people probably wouldn't adjust well after being hacked to pieces by a chainsaw murderer on prom night and then having to spend years stuck in the same place. It probably doesn't help that, as a teenage ghost, she spends months at a time sleeping, meaning she has likely spent very little time awake since her death.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Thorfinn's Viking "friends" crossed it by leaving him to die.
  • Elias Woodstone, Hetty's husband, crosses it either:
    • By having his goons murder the strikers at his mill when he was alive.
    • By promising to use his ghost power to ruin every event Sam and Jay host by forcing everyone to have sex with each other. This is an in-universe example as well since after Elias promises this, he is Dragged Of To Hell.
  • Trevor's office "friends" crossed it by letting him die and then hiding his corpse in the lake.
  • Thomas Woodstone, Hetty's son, crossed it by murdering Alberta.
• Nightmare Fuel: According to "Holes Are Bad", the ghosts got stuck in a hole in 1895 and couldn't climb out, so they walked through the dirt to the basement of the house. One of the ghosts, a woman named Patience, got separated when Isaac sneezed and got lost. She's been blindly wandering through the dirt ever since.
• The Scrappy: Jenkins, one of the red-coat ghosts, is not well-liked by the fans for not really having a personality besides wanting to break up Nigel and Isaac.
• Special Effects Failure:
  • Pete's arrow can appear to be floating around his neck rather than going through it as it is apparently held up by a collar resting on Richie Moriarty's shoulders rather than secured on Moriarty's neck.
  • When Sam's mom finally gets sucked off, the light appearing above her seems to just flick on like an ordinary lamp.
• Squick: Jay eating strip club sushi that the other night was on top of a stripper at a bachelor party.
• Tear Jerker:
  • "The Baby Bjorn" reveals that Thorfinn had an infant son named Bjorn back in the old country. Due to Thorfinn's death, he never saw his son again until Sam learned that, after growing up, Bjorn went off to the New World to look for his father and died during his quest. He and Thorfinn were only hundreds of feet away for over a thousand years, each without knowing the other was within shouting distance.
  • In "A Date to Remember", Flower confesses to Thorfinn that the last time she was committed to one person, he died just before the wedding. A flashback shows her at his deathbed keeping him company. She has had commitment issues ever since.
  • “Holes Are Bad” reveals that Hetty died when she was about to be arrested for Elias’s crimes, so she committed suicide by strangling herself with telephone wire. When Sam and Isaac approach her over this, she laments that she didn’t show her son Thomas proper love when she was alive.
• The Woobie:
  • Sasappis was a humble Lenape man with dreams of becoming a storyteller before his untimely death. Over the next 500 years as a ghost, Sass had the misfortune of watching his people forced out of their homes and his culture be desecrated by the English colonizers. In the present day, he does his best to keep from showing how much the years have bothered him, but every so often, something slips through the cracks, and you see just how much the years have weighed on him.
  • Flower, despite being very peaceful and optimistic, had a very hard life. During her time in law school, her fiancé died, giving her commitment issues for the rest of her life. She then became indoctrinated into a cult and refused her brother Rob's help when he came to rescue her. Unfortunately, due to mistakenly believing Rob had been killed at war, Flower never spoke to him again even after escaping the cult. Finally, after taking the money her hippie commune stole to use for a better cause, Flower was eaten alive by a bear in front of her then boyfriend and spent years believing that the money was never used for a good cause because of her.
  • Pete, in life, was a simple travel agent, scout master, and family man. Unfortunately, an accident while teaching his troop archery cost him his life and trapped him at Woodstone in death, unable to see his wife and child and unaware that he had a grandchild. Things don't get much better for him after death, as his ghost friends take advantage of his good nature all the time. Worse yet, he later found out that his wife had been cheating on him with his best friend.
  • While alive, the basement ghosts were infected with cholera and locked into the pest house to die. Death wasn't the end of their suffering either, as they became ghosts and discovered that they were still suffering from cholera even as ghosts. After centuries of their affliction, they congregate in the basement of Woodstone due to being sensitive to sunlight. Even worse, since the main ghosts find them gross and creepy, they tend to get ignored at best and insulted at worst.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Jay in "The Silent Partner". The conflict of the episode is that Sam and Jay want to borrow Issac's $10,000 dollars to keep paying the crew building Jay's restaurant. At first, Trevor talks Issac into saying no and then just as he is about to change his mind, he walks in on Sam and Jay taking it anyway, but Trevor moved it into a brokerage firm first and ended up turning it into $187,000. Since Issac is sore about them trying to take the money behind his back, he still doesn't want them to use it, but Sam tries to talk him into it by promising to make Issac a partner and letting him have input in the restaurant. When Jay hears Issac's terrible ideas (which included naming the restaurant after himself) however, Jay reaches a Rage Breaking Point and loudly claims that they shouldn't even be negotiating with Issac because he isn't even a real person, leading to Issac using his ghost powers on Jay and Sam to claim Jay is only thinking about himself. While Jay obviously shouldn't have said that since it was a low blow, especially considering Issac already has a chip on his shoulder about the lack of respect he was shown in life and death, when one looks at it from Jay's perspective, it makes sense why he snapped. Seeing as Issac, being a ghost who can't eat or touch things and can't leave the property grounds, doesn't really need $10,000 dollars much less $187,000, wouldn't notice if it was gone, and can't even spend it without Sam's help (a fact that Issac, Hetty and Nigel all agree on two episodes ago by tactlessly pointing out in front of Sam that if she dies, he wouldn't have the money anymore) and this restaurant is Jay's life goal and Jay has put up with a lot from the ghosts even in just the past few weeks alone (in the episodes leading up to this one, Jay was attacked by an owl twice, was essentially brainwashed twice and nearly a third time, and had to dig up the spot where Flower was mauled to death by the bear) it's hard to fault Jay for being at the end of his patience.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • All the ghosts in "Dinner Party". When Sam has an important dinner with the Farnsbys, she asks the ghost to stay away and not disrupt it. Despite going out of her way to accommodate the ghosts' wishes, they instead do the opposite of the one thing Sam asked them to do and crash the dinner party and turn it into complete chaos. First with Hetty inviting herself Alberta, Isaac, and Thor to the party anyway where they talk directly to Sam despite knowing that she can't respond to them in front of other people, then Trevor, Pete, and Flower loudly storm the party in protest then Alberta begins to loudly sing in the middle of the party for no reason. While Sam definitely shouldn't have used being alive as a comeback against them, she is the only one made to apologize despite how utterly ridiculous the ghosts behaved. They may have saved Sam and Jay from the Farnsbys' extortion attempt in the end, but that doesn't change the fact that they couldn't do this one thing for Sam when she has already done so much for them.
  • Sasappis in "The Tree" with him choosing to make Sam look obnoxious & ignorant, regardless of endangering Sam’s & Jay’s livelihood and their business all over a secret that he used a tree to mark how many times Shiki, his crush, said "Hi" to him.
  • Eric and by extension Sam and Jay in "He Sees Dead People". Basically, after Sam and Jay got him and Jay's sister Bela together during "The Christmas Spirit", things started off fine, but Eric started to worry that Bela was getting bored with him, so he started to pretend to see ghosts to be more interesting. Sam and Jay are of course angry when they find out but agree to keep his secret only if he fakes losing the ability to see ghosts and stops lying to her. When Bela sees through the lie, Sam and Jay convince her to give Eric a second chance, with Sam even coming clean about a lie she had been telling Jay when they first got together. However, given that Eric has been lying to Bela for months by that point, going so far as to make up entire conversations between him and fake ghosts, even on her birthday, it is very hard to justify Eric as being a good guy (even Sam's lie to Jay, while a bit creepy, was far more harmless). Add in the Extreme Doormat lengths Eric went to please Bela back in "The Christmas Spirit", and he comes off as a creepy weirdo obsessed with Bela to the point he'll do anything to please her.

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