Why the Wholesome Comfort of CBS’s Ghosts Feels So Necessary Right Now
Photo Courtesy of CBS
In a television landscape that includes three different incarnations of AMC’s The Walking Dead at any given moment, and where The CW’s Supernatural ran for 15 seasons, it’s a rare thing to find a show that’s optimistic about death—or anything that might come after it. Even NBC’s The Good Place, one of the best series in recent memory about the hard work of faith and belief, also featured literal demons, thorny questions of moral philosophy, and the uncomfortable idea that any sort of afterlife necessarily becomes a kind of hell on a long enough timeline.
Perhaps this is why the CBS comedy Ghosts feels like such a necessary breath of fresh air. The series offers viewers a kinder, gentler version of the afterlife, one where our stories don’t necessarily end when we die, and in which we’re not doomed to be the worst versions of ourselves forever. In this world, we’re given the chance to not only atone for the things we did wrong, but grow from those mistakes, and only “cross over” (or “get sucked off” in the parlance of the show) when we’ve answered for our unfinished business—and maybe made some friends along the way.
In the most basic sense, the series follows young marrieds Samantha (Rose McIver) and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar), who inherit a Victorian-era estate in upstate New York upon the death of her aunt. While visiting it, Sam falls down a flight of stairs and when she wakes up after a three-week coma, she suddenly finds herself with the ability to see the spirits of those who have died on the property. Some are former residents of the house itself, some lived well before it was ever built, and still others were there before the country it exists in was ever formed.
The eponymous ghosts include Thorfinn (Devan Chandler), a Viking struck by lightning; Sasappis (Roman Zaragoza), a storyteller from the Lenape nation; Isaac (Brandon Scott Jones), a Revolutionary War officer who knew Alexander Hamilton; Hetty (Rebecca Wisocky), Sam’s ancestor and the original inhabitant of the house; Alberta (Danielle Pinnock) a Jazz Age singer; hippie Flower (Sheila Carrasco), Boy Scout leader Pete (Richie Moriarty); and Wall Street bro Trevor (Asher Grodman), who, for reasons the show reveals later, is forever without pants.
As Sam and Jay work to turn the house into a bed and breakfast, they—and we—get to know their new supernatural housemates, form genuine relationships with all of them, and learn about their stories. And though Jay cannot see the ghosts himself, he is surprisingly welcoming toward them from the series’ first episode. He thinks living in a haunted house is kind of cool rather than terrifying, and even tries to watch sports and play Dungeons and Dragons with several spirits. Perhaps more importantly, Jay never belittles Sam, assumes she is crazy, or gets jealous about her ability to see the dead, because Jay is a total Wife Guy and the sort of fantastic all-around partner that men everywhere would do well to emulate.