Distill Ghosted Into a Very Odd Workplace Sitcom
It seems this is exactly what Lieberstein and FOX intend to do with the extra episode order, but can Ghosted just be Dunder Mifflin meets Ghostbusters with a little X-Files thrown in for good measure? Yes it can. Why not? That sounds kind of amazing, actually. The series has all the right ingredients to succeed as primarily a workplace sitcom, where it can more effectively (and hopefully humorously) play up the angle of how chasing ghosts, aliens, and monsters is a fundamentally strange job, but it’s still a job, and jobs come with a wide array of perks and hassles, not to mention co-workers who are, deep down, kind of a pain in the ass.
Ghosted has come close to making this transition in the first half of the season, and the episodes that have come closest have been the best of the bunch. But there’s still so much about the workplace that hasn’t been explored yet, like, outside of Max finding his wife, and Leroy becoming an LAPD detective again, what do any of the other characters actually want? And is there any chance Lennon Parham’s Deidre will be coming back anytime soon?
Mostly, though, after seven episodes, it doesn’t feel like we know these characters well enough yet Max and Leroy included for anything that happens to them to really matter. And that goes double for Captain Lafrey, Barry, and Annie, all of whom interact with one another on a regular basis but it still feels like something is missing these characters are all familiar with one another, but they don’t act like they know each other; not like the kind of co-workers who make a workplace comedy work well, anyway.
The order for additional episodes suggests FOX is confident enough in the show to give it more time to develop, and the change in showrunner indicates there is at least a plan in place to bring that change to fruition. From the outside, it seems like a step in the right direction. It’s difficult to say what a change in direction will do for the action element of the show, but that has been the weakest part of the series so far, so reconfiguring it or jettisoning it altogether will likely only be considered a positive.
Push The Bureau Underground Into the Foreground
So far, the actual offices of the Bureau Underground have enjoyed their fair share of screen time, as the setting played an important role in two of the better episodes as of late. ‘Lockdown’ and ‘Sam’ have been the closest the series has come to making it feel like actual people were employed at the Bureau and that there was a story about those people to be told within its weirdly labyrinthine corridors beneath an unassuming wire hanger company.
But where the series has had an issue is in the disconnect between the agents of the Bureau and the Bureau itself, neither of which feel fully realized yet. There’s no real sense of connection between the agents and the Bureau because the Bureau Underground feels largely unmoored from, well, everything. Right now it’s just a plot device rather than a place these characters go for most of the day. It’s a clandestine operation like the B.P.R.D. but the B.P.R.D. was more than just an organization that tangled with ghosts and demons and other paranormal baddies; it was also home for the likes of Hellboy and Abe Sapien.
Ghosted doesn’t have to build a dormitory set so Max, Leroy, and the others can move in. Nobody was living at Dunder Mifflin offices. In fact, most of the characters probably couldn’t wait to get out of there at the end of the day. But even then, that sentiment at least felt palpable; it was something the viewer could connect with, even if the connotation was largely negative. Good or bad, the office drones of The Office felt something about their environment. That goes a long way in making a series’ setting feel necessary, instead of an arbitrary place for its characters to meet.
Max & Leroy Don’t Have To Be Mulder & Scully
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: two agents run down what appears to be evidence of alien life on Earth, only one searches for a rational explanation while the other is ready to proclaim the incident as first contact with an extraterrestrial life form. The give and take of the skeptic and the true believer (along with aliens and a massive governmental conspiracy) helped make The X-Files into the pop cultural phenomenon that it still is today, and Ghosted isn’t wrong in trying to duplicate that dynamic, even if it’s winking at the audience while doing so. The thing is, Max and Leroy don’t work like Murder and Scully, and the show might want to think about separating them more often.
Again, Sam’ served as a good example of how switching things up and moving away from the buddy comedy dynamic to something more along the lines of an ensemble gives the show a chance to breathe and be funny, in a way that doesn’t rely as much on Leroy being the cool one and Max being the nerdy one. Spreading the episode’s duties among the entire cast and pairing Leroy with Annie and Max with Barry not to mention Leroy’s burgeoning friendship with another agent of the BU proved to be a fruitful shakeup to the norm.
Separating Max and Leroy might sound counterintuitive, considering they are The Team in this series, so maybe it’s just a matter of finding more creative ways to handle the episodes’ paranormal or sci-fi element. Too often, it falls on Leroy to shoot his way out of any given situation as was the case in Sam’ which often leaves Max (or anyone else for that matter) with precious little to do. With any luck, repositioning the series as a workplace comedy will see the characters with more on their plates, while also introducing more creative solutions to conflicts in each episode.
Ghosted isn’t a top-tier sitcom yet, but with the talent that’s involved it could be. Course correction is by no means unheard of with comedies, but it seems telling that the change is set to occur before the first season is over. If anything, it means the changes won’t be too drastic, and that the right ingredients are already there. Still, it’s likely that the outcome of Lieberstein’s adjustments will determine whether or not Ghosted gets a season 2 renewal.
Next: Ghosted Series Premiere Is Scattered But Shows Plenty of Potential
Ghosted will return January 7, 2018 on FOX.
