The fall portion of a TV season is usually when the most popular shows on network television are back after summer hiatuses, but the WGA writers strike and ongoing SAG-AFTRA actors strike mean lots of reruns in the 2023 TV schedule. Fortunately for fans of Ghosts, CBS decided to air repeats of the spooky comedy's two Halloween episodes, which I for one consider two of the series' most memorable. In fact, revisiting "Halloween 2: The Ghost of Hetty's Past" had me flashing back to my interview with co-showrunner Joe Wiseman, and some of his words haunt me during the wait for Season 3.
First things first! I spoke with Joe Wiseman back in the fall of 2022 before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes, and he hyped the Halloween episode that would be very big for Hetty. He also spoke about my favorite running joke of the episode: Randy the pickle guy, played by Darrin Baker. Randy originally seemed like just comic relief with his pride about being able to pickle anything, but turned out to be "integral to the plot," as Joe Wiseman said. Jay – who still can't see the ghosts – needed to infiltrate Liam Neeson's Halloween party, and Randy was the key. The co-showrunner said at the time:
He's the only one who knows where Liam Neeson’s house is when they need to go to Liam Neeson's house to retrieve the feather duster that was present for the seance. I can't believe I'm saying these sentences.
Liam Neeson himself didn't appear in the episode, but his Halloween party seemed to be the place to be in the world of Ghosts. At the very least, there didn't seem to be any Gilded Age-era spirits floating around the mansion to cause any trouble!
Then again, Sam wasn't present to spot any ghosts who were spending their afterlives spying on Liam Neeson, and I think the episode was even funnier that the movie star didn't actually show up. The co-showrunner named one of the standout moments of the episode:
One of my favorite moments is when the pickle guy realizes that one of the cornichons at Liam Neeson's house is not his, and this is the betrayal. He's like, 'This is how I learned.'
Now, those aren't the words from Joe Wiseman that had me flashing back to October 2022 in October 2023, but they inspired me in our interview to ask if Randy and his ability to pickle anything could be back, even after he was betrayed by Liam Neeson going somewhere else to satisfy his pickle needs. Wiseman said:
That's a great idea. I would love to, I'd love to. We're still writing the back quarter of the season, so I would love to see him again. Yeah, he was fun.
As fans know, Darrin Baker did not reprise his role as Randy the pickle guy in the back quarter of Season 2, so we still have not seen him nor learned about what he has pickled since last Halloween. And I am haunted by that... which, when it comes to Ghosts, is more silly than scary. The show was renewed for Season 3, even if the strikes have delayed any new episodes from being produced for the 2023-2024 TV schedule at the time of writing.
So, even though Randy the pickle guy did not return with any new produce before the end of Season 2, I have hopes based on what Joe Wiseman told me well ahead of Season 3. Of course, Ghosts has a major Season 2 finale cliffhanger to resolve that I can admit is a much higher priority than Darrin Baker delivering more laughs as the show's resident pickler (ideally on rollerblades), and the delayed start to Season 3 likely means fewer than the 22 episodes of Season 2.
CBS is keeping a strong Ghosts presence in primetime as 2023 winds down, even if that doesn't involve new episodes of Sam, Jay, and their creepy old mansion full of the most hilarious ghosts on television. Beginning on November 16, encore episodes will air weekly at 8:30 p.m. ET on Thursdays, ahead of the British version of Ghosts at 9 p.m. You can also revisit every episode of the American version so far streaming with a Paramount+ subscription now.
