Back in 2021 (2022? I’m not entirely clear on just how in advance the episodes were written before filming and then subsequent release) the writers of BBC Ghosts had a problem. You see Katy Winx ( actress of Mary, victim of witch trials) wanted to leave the show – I’m not too clear on the reason why, but for the sake of this post I guess it really doesn’t matter). Whatever the reason this presented a problem, because Mary wasn’t just some random background ghost, some one episode spectacular – she was a member of the main cast, a featured character since right from the first episode. So the question remained, how to write her out of the show without insulting both fans, Katy Winx and the character that she played.
The answer they arrived on was a soft, very mellow three episode arch wherein Mary would finally speak about her witch trial, stand up for herself and refuse to take the blame for what others have done anymore, and then finally move on from Button House and into whatever ever comes next. And they did this, first in the episode ‘Speak as ye choose’, in which Mary tells the others ghosts about her witch trial but the viewer doesn’t get to hear it because such things are so terrible that you shouldn’t make a joke of them. But that doesn’t matter because it’s not the point of the episode anyway, no the point of the episode was that after she finally speaks about this terrible thing that happened to her, that she’s been keeping inside all this time, she suddenly can’t stop telling her truth. And the rest of the episode, or at least her storyline in the episode , is devoted to her talking about Annie – a former ghost of Button House who was a great friend of Mary’s before she got ‘sucked off’ herself. She talks about how deeply the relationship affected her, and how Annie helped her find her voice before she moved on.
Then we have ‘The Hardest Word’ which while mostly about the other ghosts apologising to Alison for being their usual shitty shelves, has a nice little subplot where Mary – who didn’t do anything wrong – refuses to fall on her sword to help the others out of their predicament. Refuses to be the ‘sacrificial lamb’ for the crimes of others anymore.
And finally we have ‘Gone, Gone’ in which at the beginning of the episode Mary finally after years of waiting gets ‘sucked off’ up into a glowing light. And the rest of the episode is devoted to showing the other characters reaction to that.
And there we go, a short but sweet three story arch that explored – but never out right paused the story to explain it to the viewer – Mary finally overcoming her hang ups that had kept her stuck on earth, and moving on to whatever comes next.
Meanwhile across the Atlantic, it’s stated in many episodes, with many different storylines that this is explicitly how being “sucked off” works. With one highly egregious example involving one ghost reminding another of their ‘friend’ who got sucked off after he’d forgiven his brother. Look there’s nothing necessary wrong with this being a more explicit factor in the working of CBS Ghosts’ world, but I do think that it is a symptom of the lack of respect for the audience that I discussed in the last segment. And when taken to its logical extreme, that lack of respect, that desperate need to make everything one hundred percent clear to the view can become translated into a lack of respect for the characters.
For instance, let’s take a look at the friendship between Mary and Annie – the latter of which helped the former come out of her shell after the traumatic events of her death had left her quiet and overly docile. In one scene, in attempt to get Mary to join her in insulting the living states outright that in life they were both silenced, but death has freed them. They no longer have to be quiet or obedient, basically saying there’s no repercussions for being just as loud as they want now that they are dead already. You might, if you’re only half paying attention to anything I say here, be confused that I seem to have enjoyed this explicit statement of the situation both women found themselves in during life. However, I would make the argument that this explicit statement, unlike many of the CBS explicit statements, is not a sign of disrespect for the audience or the character. It is one character losing patience with an other, and finally expressing in words the hardships they both had to endure in life. You know what it’s not, a modern living person lecturing both ghosts about the hardships they had to endure and telling them it wasn’t right.
Which was exactly what happened in the CBS show when Hetty (Wife of a philandering Robber Baron) and her Irish Maid (his unwilling mistress) got locked in the ghost proof vault with Sam (Alison’s American counterpart). They came to a realisation that neither of them had wanted to start, or be in, a relationship with Elias (the robber baron in question). But instead of naturally coming to an understanding over this as two women who had been treated cruelly by their society, we are then forced to listen as Sam explains to them, and presumably the audience, how terribly this was. Worded in such a way that it feels like she actually thinks they’re both quite stupid and didn’t realise this for themselves.
Given this, I’m very, very glad – down right relived that the CBS version didn’t have a witch trial victim as one of their roster of ghosts. I shudder to think of the patronising, galling, bungle they would have made of a subject like that.
Wow, thank goodness I’ve got that off my chest I feel so much lighter now. And thank heavens I didn’t release this thing as a whole thing – it would take forever for someone to read this.
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