Even under the best circumstances, it can be challenging to live and work with a relative. Now, imagine that relative is an uptight ghost from the 1800s who thinks she knows everything and whose business-management style could be described as Basic human decency? I don’t know her. So, yeah, Sam having to deal with Hetty hovering as she attempts to get used to her new role as Freddie’s boss is … stressful, to say the very least. But in true Ghosts fashion, what begins as an amusing confrontation between the two Woodstone women as they try to assert their individual business acumen turns into a moment of growth and vulnerability between two family members. Things may start off with jokes about crushing employee morale, but they will end with heartwarming tears, believe you me.
Sam and Jay’s new assistant, Freddie, is really proving his worth installing a brand-spanking-new reservation-booking system for the website and a security camera for the front desk (sure to cause ghost problems at some point!) just in time for the Ulster County Jam Fest, a local celebration of both jams and jam bands. The B&B is booked and busy, baby — with, as Hetty notes succinctly, “colorfully dressed middle-age people†— and so much of it running smoothly is thanks to Freddie. Sam is not only grateful for his work, but has really taken a liking to him, which of course means she can’t help herself but pry into his personal life. She wants to hear all about Freddie’s girlfriend and why he’s annoyed at her for not refilling their Brita pitcher. Give her the deets! This camaraderie between boss and employee is appalling to Hetty, whose repeated objections to the kind way Sam speaks to Freddie only wind up pushing Sam to pry further. Hetty warns that this kind of personal relationship will only lead to problems, and that all employees should “be kept hungry and afraid.†Sam tries to remind her that times have changed, and also, she wants to be a nice boss! It turns out that both of them are a little bit right. Well, not the part about keeping your employees hungry and afraid, but yes, in general, boundaries are a good thing.
Things come to a head once Sam’s advice to Freddie about communicating with his girlfriend about the Brita backfires: Freddie and his girlfriend break up, and he arrives at work the next day a man destroyed. Hetty points to this as evidence that Sam should just butt out. Sam tries to remind Hetty that Freddie is a human and perhaps empathy is the better way to handle this. When Sam starts going on about human decency, that’s when Hetty has had enough. She’s ready to force her great-great-however-many-greats-granddaughter into being the tough, formidable boss she knows Sam can be. And that’s when she enlists Trevor’s help.
Finally! Some recognition of Upstate New York’s hottest secret supernatural couple! Hetty and Trevor get some one-on-one time for seemingly the first time since their surprise hookup, and the conversation mostly consists of both of them agreeing it was a terrible mistake, they should never do it again, and most importantly, they can never tell anyone. Obviously, this means they both were into it, it will for sure happen again, and everyone is going to find out. But until then, we get Hetty teasing Trevor with some provocative word choice (you know, things about riding men hard, etc.) and the two teaming up for a little scheming. While it sounds like they are great at whatever sexual escapades they get up to, Hetty and Trevor are no dream team when it comes to shenanigans.
Hetty’s big plan is to have Trevor mess with the reservation system so that rooms get double-booked, and it causes so much chaos that Sam has no choice but to finally reprimand Freddie and, if all goes well, fire him. And it works: Freddie may claim innocence, but when angry jam aficionados start demanding the room they reserved, Sam really lays into her assistant for bringing his personal problems to work and not paying attention to what he’s doing. Freddie quits at the same moment Sam fires him, and Hetty has never felt such a high (she says it’s better than cocaine, in case you were wondering). But it doesn’t take long to figure out the truth, especially when Trevor has done things like change the maximum room booking from four to 69 and input a reservation for a Mr. Seymour Butts. Hilarious? Obviously. In any way a stealth move? Not at all.
It’s got Trevor written all over it, and he wastes zero time explaining that it was all at Hetty’s bidding. When Hetty sees how upset Sam is — understandably, by the way, since the woman messed with the Arondekars’ livelihood — she realizes she might have overdone it a bit. Hetty is not one to admit she’s in the wrong, but instead does something equally surprising: She gets vulnerable with Sam. She opens up about how she didn’t care enough to raise her kids while she was alive and then since dying, has spent literally hundreds of years watching first them, followed by various progeny, make choices without being able to give any kind of advice. Sam is her second chance to have that kind of relationship with a person she views as a daughter.
Sam is moved and also is able to admit that the way she reacted to Hetty’s constant pushing was colored a bit by her relationship with her own mother. We’ve seen how contentious that relationship could get, and Sam readily admits that because of how much her mother criticized her, she would wind up always doing the opposite of whatever her mother said, regardless if the advice was actually bad or not. Maybe this is a second chance for Sam, too. I mean, Sam’s still going to adhere to child-labor laws and whatnot, and I doubt Hetty will ever come around on basic human decency in the workplace, but at least now both Sam and Hetty are a little bit open to hearing what the other has to say. They’re both holding back tears and damn it if I’m not wishing there was some way for ghosts and livings to hug. They need a hug!
With all this ghost growth — this week it was Hetty, last week it was Thor, and don’t forget Isaac’s Ghostmas revelation about the guilt he was carrying over his wife — should we be nervous that there could come a time when it would be impossible to believe a ghost hasn’t cleared up enough unfinished business to finally, mercifully get sucked off? Or am I thinking way too hard about fictional ghost rules? What can I say? I’m a double Pete, Sas rising and I won’t apologize for it!!
It’s not the biggest priority now anyway, since by the end of the episode, everyone has a more urgent problem on their hands. Not surprisingly, Freddie is hired back (again). In an effort to figure out just what went wrong with the booking system, he goes to his handy-dandy security footage to see who was near the computer around the time the website was messed with. No one’s there, which is strange to Freddie, although not so strange to Sam and Jay — but Freddie doesn’t stop there: When he zooms in on the footage, he sees the keys on the laptop moving on their own. Something tells me Freddie’s not just going to let that go.
Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun
• With Freddie back, it means Sas and car ghost Jessica can do like all flirty ghosts do and talk about smelling stuff while making out. It’s nice for Sas, who, as several ghosts point out, could really use a little experience outside of marking how many times a woman has said hi to him on a tree. Once he realizes that a pitfall of dating a car ghost is that she could be dating ghosts all over town without him knowing, he spirals with jealousy (one of the ghosts she mentions seeing a lot is a firefighter who died while doing a charity car wash, so, like, the jealousy is warranted). But after a chat with Pete about the importance of trust in relationships, Sas and Jessica make amends. Good for him!
• Sas apologizes to Jessica by admitting that even though he’s 500 years old, dating is new to him, and she responds, “If you think mentioning that you’re super-old is feeding into my daddy issues right now, then … you’re right. It is. I like it. It’s super hot.†A perfect line reading from Nichole Sakura.
• Oh, Pete! When he first tries to have a heart-to-heart with Sas, Sas tells him that he’s not really in the mood. “I’m sorry, is it 1971 and are you Carol on our wedding night? In retrospect, the signs were there.â€
• Early in Ghosts’ run, Jay asked point-blank about ghosts having sex and, as Sas explained then, we learned that ghosts can indeed have sex, but they can never finish, so it’s eternally frustrating. Trevor and Hetty don’t seem frustrated — they seem very, very satisfied. I wonder if we’ll ever get some sort of explanation or if we’ll just ignore that little bit of info. You’d think Jay would have that at the top of his Ghost Notes, though.
• Was just thinking about the Teen Ghost who hibernates in the attic and has a wild crush on Trevor — man, is she going to be pissed when she wakes up and learns about him hooking up with Hetty. It should be great.
• The enduring Isaac Higgintoot/Alexander Hamilton rivalry gets another shout-out when he sees a distraught, disheveled Freddie: “He looks like Hamilton after a night at the whore house, which he frequented. No songs in the musical about that.â€