The following contains spoilers for Ghosts, Season 2, Episode 19, "Ghost Father of the Bride," now airing on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
Wedding episodes in sitcoms are as ubiquitous as crying scenes in This Is Us. And like nearly every sitcom in television history, Ghosts, a show known for intentionally hitting and subverting sitcom tropes, summons a bride and groom to walk down the aisle. And like most episodes of Ghosts, the main plot is supplemented by an outlandish B story, this time involving the mystery of a forgotten character.
"Ghost Father of the Bride" is an uneven episode that shows the series can do a unique spin on a tired topic but still needs to work a little harder to subvert and not fall directly into tropes as they did in a two-episode slump earlier in the season. There are many clever twists in the episode, yet also an inertia in action and several overly sitcom-like plot cheats in both the A and B storylines.
Ghosts Offer Its Take On The Classic Sitcom Wedding
Ghosts has experimented with its style and dipped its toe into cringe or discomfort comedy more in Season 2, usually when Jay and Sam are caught in a web of ghost-based lies. They don't lean as hard into it as other shows do, but it's an unpleasant diversion from form. Still, one thing Ghosts does consistently well, and better than its peers, is managing large group scenes. These usually work best with the occasional interjection from Jay, who cannot see or hear any of the ghosts and can only go off of Sam's reactions. Utkarsh Ambudkar as Jay, with casual charm and sly comedic delivery, is the quiet MVP of the series.
The wedding coming together takes oodles of suspension of disbelief, but it is a sitcom, after all. If you wanted down-the-middle believability, you'd probably be watching The Wire instead. As such, a show about a gaggle of period ghosts cutely haunting an upstate manor can be forgiven for stretching the bounds of reasonable possibility. What the wedding does for the show as a whole is further flesh out Pete, who shows a darker side of himself and becomes a bit more human than a live-action, less churchy Ned Flanders.
Ghosts Brings Back A Not So Memorable Character
The B plot featuring headless Crash's not-so-welcome return reminds the audience that they don't always want answers. In the pilot episode, Crash was balancing his head on top of his neck until Thor bumped into him, and his head went missing. His headless body was featured briefly in an episode later that season. When he went missing in the first season and was never seen or heard from again, many viewers wondered what had happened to him. Now that he's been given an entire B story plotline, most would agree that losing him early was probably the right move. The character isn't particularly entertaining, likable, or fleshed out. Crash proclaims, "Everybody loves the Crash," but less accurate words are rarely spoken.
As for Pete, one glaring cheat of the show is not having him "sucked off" to heaven despite having done everything he needs to do as far as the show's lore is concerned. In a previous episode, the ghost of Hetty's husband wanted to take Pete back to hell with him as a trophy because of how pure his soul is. He has since (mostly) forgiven his wife for cheating on him, knows a grandson that bears his name is enamored with him, and has now walked his daughter down the aisle. Granted, no one watching the show wants to part ways with Pete, but a slight flash of real anger in a flashback may hold a clue to a part of Pete he keeps tamped down, like the "Hurricane Neddy" episode of The Simpsons. If that's the case, it would be nice to see more breadcrumbs dropped. Otherwise, as much as we love Pete, the character not getting sucked off feels like cheating.
New episodes of Ghosts air Thursdays at 8:30 pm on CBS and stream on Paramount+