SPOILER ALERT! This post contains details from the two-part midseason finale of CBS‘ Ghosts.
There was yet another Christmas possession inside Woodstone Mansion this year, but Sam (Rose McIver) came out the other side of this one feeling a little more irritable than usual.
After years of dealing with the antics of the spirits inside her bed and breakfast, she’s not particularly inclined to forgive Thorfinn (Devan Chandler Long) for helping Flower (Sheila Carrasco) possess her as some sort of weird holiday gift that nearly jeopardizes Sam’s big interview about her book, which is made all the more frustrating by the fact that Flower doesn’t even remember once it’s all over.
Though it’s somewhat cathartic to see Sam, a perennial pushover, stick up for herself, ultimately the frustration gives way after a reminder of all the positives effects she and the ghosts have had on each other.
Watch on Deadline
While the first part of the Ghosts Season 5 Christmas special sees Sam at odds with the ghosts, they’re back in her good graces by the end of part two thanks to Carol (Caroline Aaron), who pays Sam a visit to show her what her life might look like if she had never fallen down the stairs and developed the ability to see the spirits that haunt the property.
“Obviously, she’s had a huge effect on them, as they have had on her and Jay,” showrunner Joe Port tells Deadline.
In the interview below, he and showrunner Joe Wiseman explain why now felt like a good time to remind Sam and Jay (Utkarsh Ambudkar) that life with the ghosts isn’t all bad and what to expect from the remainder of Season 5. They also discuss the upcoming shoot for their comedy pilot Eternally Yours.
DEADLINE: It’s funny, I asked you at the beginning of the season if Sam might be getting fed up with the ghosts, and of course now I realize you had this story up your sleeve. When did you start to think maybe Sam needed a reminder of how much the ghosts have positively affected her?
JOE WISEMAN: It’s been a lot of years where Sam and Jay bend over backwards and are put in a lot of very difficult positions and make a lot of sacrifices. So, I thought it was time, and, to me, it felt very satisfying when Sam is like, ‘No, I’m not forgiving you.’ Even Alberta is kind of like, ‘Yeah, let’s just get to the part where you forgive us and we move on.’ She’s like, ‘No, that’s enough.’ And I personally was kind of like, ‘Good for her.’ It’s been a long journey. The second episode was a nice way to reflect back on all the positive things that the ghosts and Sam and Jay have done together, and how they’ve affected each other, and it was a nice way to sort of — not do a clip show, because it’s not a clip show — but to remind people all the positive effects that came out of the situation with Sam.
DEADLINE: How was it for you both to reflect on the series in that manner and kind of see how far you’ve come in five seasons?
JOE PORT: It was really fun. It was hard to try to whittle it down to what the things are that would be changed in the world where Sam had never gotten the power to see ghosts and what would remain the same. But, obviously, she’s had a huge effect on them, as they have had on her and Jay. Just to go back to what Wiseman was saying, it did seem like time to have them push back a little bit like you were saying, Katie, at the beginning of the season. It’s getting to be a lot, what the ghosts do to them and ask of them. Sam is a bit of a people pleaser, and so I think she was slower than Jay to come to the pushback, but it really served us well in this episode, and it was really fun to bring back Caroline Aaron.
DEADLINE: We’ve talked before about this idea that part of the conceit of the sitcom is the characters do, in some ways, fall back into old habits quite easily. With this kind of watershed moment for this group, how might it impact the dynamic moving forward?
WISEMAN: I know, it’s tough. When you do a TV show, you want to make incremental changes. You don’t want to usually have huge sort of, like, every episode, the characters are profoundly changed. But they learn little lessons…I think it’s healthy that Sam stood up to them, but the point of the episode also is like, yes, they’re annoying, whatever, but we actually love each other and have a positive effect on each other. So it’s not going to be a completely different series going forward. I think there’s going to be a similar dynamic of the ghosts making demands and putting them still in difficult positions, but they do have a little bit — I think we have another episode where Jay kind of stands up to the ghosts, and has a passionate sort of, like, ‘This is enough.’ So we will see a little bit more of that from them.
PORT: I think that this Christmas episode is a good milepost of exactly how the characters have changed over the course of five seasons. That’s basically the point of it, the effect they’ve had on each other. And yes, you tend to have characters reset in sitcoms, but these characters have had a lot of growth and change. Isaac has changed a lot, and Hetty has become more modern with the times, and the ghosts have affected each other, and Sam has helped them affect each other. She’s played a role in changing them, too.
DEADLINE: I love that, at the end of all this, Flower doesn’t even remember possessing Sam. How much fun has it been to have Utkarsh and Rose doing all of these impersonations throughout the seasons and what intrigued you about Flower being the next ghost to possess Sam?
PORT: Well, in Season 2, we did an episode called ‘Dumb Deaths’ where Sam, at the end of the episode, is called into action to play a version of Flower. She did one line as Flower, and we were like, ‘Geez, that was really spot on.’ So in our back of our heads, we always wanted her to have to reprise Flower, but get to see it more fully fleshed out. It’s a testament to Rose McIver, what just an incredible mimic and impressionist she is, and we were very happy that she got nominated for a Critic’s Choice this year for Best Lead Actress in a Comedy, because it’s nice to see people finally recognizing that — and Utkarsh, too. I mean, he hasn’t had as many opportunities to do it, but the time he did Hetty is still one of my favorite episodes.
DEADLINE: At the end of Part Two, Patience tells Trevor she’s ready for him to meet the ‘Others.’ What can we expect to come from that?
WISEMAN: Well, we’re going to meet the Others. At the end of the second Christmas episode, we see sort of a silhouette of them entering. So we’re going to basically continue from that point forward. So we’re going to meet the Others, and there will be a number of stories that kind of ripple out from that.
PORT: Yeah, we wanted to do something really fun. We’re going to be off the air for, I think, two months following the Christmas episodes. I don’t think we come back till February 26, so if I have that date correct [editor’s note: that is the correct date], somewhere around then. So we wanted to really have a fun cliffhanger to end the fall part of the season.
DEADLINE: What else should fans be excited for in the back half of the season?
WISEMAN: There’s a lot of fun stuff. We’re gonna have another St. Patrick’s Day/St. Hetty’s Day episode, as we established last year, that her power is enacted every St Patrick’s Day where the livings can see Hetty. So we’re gonna have another episode. That’ll probably be another perennial [one]. You know how we do a Halloween episode. We’re doing the double Christmas [episode again]. So I think we’re going to do a St Patrick’s episode pretty much every year, and they’ll get one this season. Boy, there’s a lot of other stuff we set up last season — that Trevor had a job, and Jay has to pretend to be Michael Jackson. So, we’re going to see him having to come back and reprise that role. We’re gonna see Kyle again in the second half of the season. Kyle’s the other living who can see the ghosts, who comes to babysit them every now and then.
PORT: Then, as we head down the stretch, I mean, there’s going to be some really big stakes for the ghosts and for the livings. I think Sam and Jay, even though they were really tested by the ghosts and had that pushback that you were pointing at in the Christmas episodes, are going to see, I think, some of the positives and upsides of having these particular ghosts as allies as we head down stretch here.
DEADLINE: In terms of bringing up some of these callbacks, when do you decide it feels like the right time to do it?
PORT: We definitely don’t want things to sit too long. It’s like cooking a meal, I guess, a little. We have so many different story lines going on in different characters that you don’t want to just focus on one in particular for too long, but you also don’t want to not return to them. So, this ‘Other’ thing was something of a throwaway line in Season 3, I think the beginning of Season 3, when Patience was there for a few episodes and then bid everyone adieu in the Halloween episode. I think we were like, ‘Okay, now it’s time. It’s been, like, a year and a half. Let’s meet them.’ It’s just something exciting that we wanted to follow up on, absolutely, but there’s no formula.
WISEMAN: It’s sort of like a felt thing, and sometimes it’s a practical thing. Sometimes it’s come down to actor availability. There are things we’ve wanted to do that we’ve had to put off for a little bit. It mostly all comes out of talking in the room and feeling when it feels right to bring something back up again. Because, you know, after you do so many episodes, you have a lot of threads that are out there, a lot of things that have been mentioned.
PORT: Being a 22-episode network show, we film for a very long time, so we can usually wait out a lot of these other shows if someone’s not available.
DEADLINE: You also begin filming on the Eternally Yours pilot soon. What are you looking forward to about that?
WISEMAN: I mean, that has been a long time [in the] making for Joe and I. Eternally Yours is a pilot that we sold to CBS. was it 10 or 11 years ago? Joe? Something like in 2015, and we wrote it, and it was well received, but it wasn’t shot. It was just sort of like, ‘Okay, they really liked it.’ It was because of that, when Ghosts came to CBS, they were like, ‘Hey, Joe and Joe wrote that other supernatural comedy, maybe they’ll be interested in Ghosts.’ And we were, immediately, and did that. Now, because of the success of ghosts, EY is getting sort of looked at again. So it’s just been a long term passion project, and I’m just looking forward to seeing it brought to life. We’ve been auditioning people, and seeing the words read is really, it’s always very fun…So it’s all just coming to life, which is very satisfying.
PORT: Yeah, we did a podcast table read of it on this Dead Pilots Society podcast. That was like six years ago. They’ve done, like, hundreds of them, [and ours is] the first one to get shot, and hopefully it’ll get on. That would be a cool occurrence, especially, I think, being about the undead. It won’t go away.