However, this isn’t quite true. As the frustrating cliffhanger ending of Ghosts season 4 proves, the fate of Sam and Jay is pivotal to the overarching story of the series, since the human characters facilitate all of the many misadventures the ghosts go on. The ghosts can’t get up to much on their own, as evidenced by the many demands they lay at Sam and Jay’s feet. As such, plots like Elias stealing Jay’s soul are important, even if Sam and Jay may sometimes seem like supporting characters in their own show.
BBC’s Ghosts Was Inspired By Friends As A House-Sharing Sitcom
The Show’s Creators Admitted Friends Was A Major Influence
Speaking at the Seriencamp Conference recently, BBC Studios International Scripted Formats producer Charles Harrison broke down the premise of the original British version of Ghosts. The BBC series from 2019 is almost identical to the CBS show in terms of its setup, with both shows following a young couple who inherit a palatial family estate from a distant relative. After the two shows’s heroines, BBC’s Allison and CBS’s Sam, suffer near-death experiences, they gain the ability to see, hear, and speak to the dead.
Harrison noted that the show’s setup tapped into “Something very deep in the English psyche,” saying “For the last 20 years in the UK, all of our television has been about aspiring to own a home.” In a novel twist on this idea, Harrison added that, in Ghosts, finally securing this aspirational home means “You’re never alone – and you end up with a flat-share comedy.” Harrison went on to note that the show is indebted to Friends, and this is surprisingly indicative of the reason Sam and Jay can’t have a child while the series is still ongoing.
BBC’s Ghosts Ended With The Heroes Having Children
Most Hang Out Shows Wrap Up Once The Main Characters Pair Off
In almost every case, hang-out shows typically end soon after the main characters have children. The reasoning behind this is pretty easy to discern. Sam and Jay can’t focus on Sass’s Ghosts season 4 romance, Thor’s latest drama, or Flower and Trevor’s new dispute when they are looking after a baby. It takes a while in some cases, as evidenced by Friends and How I Met Your Mother, but the main characters pursuing parenthood fundamentally means that these shows are no longer about mismatched young characters navigating personal and professional struggles together.
From The Big Bang Theory to Seinfeld to New Girl to Ghosts, even the most conceptual hang-out shows can’t survive the main characters leaving their friends behind to raise kids. There might seem to be some major existential differences between Ghosts and Friends but, on the contrary, the show is even more of a classic hang-out than many of its predecessors. Since the ghosts mostly can’t leave the mansion, the main characters are literally always in the same location in every episode. The time they spend together defines the show’s action, and a child’s arrival would complicate matters immensely.
Sam and Jay Can’t Have A Child In CBS’s Ghosts
The Couple’s Time Is Already Occupied With The Ghosts
Similarly, New Girl’s heroes didn’t have children until a flashforward in the finale, save for Cece and Schmidt. Even their child’s arrival was fast-tracked by a time jump before the final season. Ghosts is a more obvious instance of children derailing the hang-out show than most, since the ghosts demanding Sam and Jay’s time would just be poor form if they were raising a kid. The ghosts are already demanding a lot from the couple, and this mostly works because they are more entertaining than Sam and Jay alone.
CBS’s Ghosts Can Borrow The Original Show’s Ending
Sam and Jay Should Have A Child To End The Series
However, this necessarily means that they also move out of the show’s country house setting and bid goodbye to the ghosts as a result. As such, Ghosts should end with Sam and Jay having a child, as this would be a sweet way to show that they aren’t leaving the ghosts behind for no reason. Instead, as the couple head off on a big new existential adventure, they could bring with them everything they learned from their time with the ghosts.
The show’s main couple should move on in the series finale by taking a brave new step
Sam and Jay raising a child in Woodstone Mansion would be about as impractical as Schmidt and Cece raising their daughter in their shared loft, or the characters from Friends still splitting the same pair of apartments while raising numerous children. Thus, after a few more spirits have left Ghosts, the show’s main couple should move on in the series finale by taking a brave new step. This would allow Ghosts to overcome a limitation that is otherwise baked into the show’s DNA.
