Halloween 3: The Guest Who Wouldn't Leave

There are times when a show's producers must hire actors who can portray annoying characters to advance the plot, create conflict, and raise the stakes. Great care must be taken when this happens, for an audience can only take so much annoyance before finding the show insufferable.

Unfortunately, the producers hired three guest actors for this episode, two of which were completely insufferable, and one of which is going to come back for a future episode. It would helpful if in the course of the episode if there were a redeeming arc or sympathetic quality written about these characters, but this was either overlooked or, more plausibly, impossible due to the time constraints of a 30-minute show.

Such problems are not mine to concern myself with, however: it's on the writers to write themselves out of the corners they have written themselves into. The end result of this error is the same: it made me care far less about the entire conceit of the plot, and took me out of the show. It made me wonder about the state of supervision at CBS, and you know you've failed as a TV show when I am thinking about that rather than the intended entertainment set before me.

Okay I liked the episode, but it feels like there was so little attention paid to the details which make the environment of Woodstone seem more realistic. Other reviewers have already mentioned The Situation in the Kitchen, but also: who was hosting the party while Sam & Jay were otherwise occupied? They don't have enough money to hire hosts or catering staff. And when there was so many living characters shouting and screaming at the foot of the stairs, why were the rest of the party guests totally disregarding all the screaming (as if they were extras told to disregard the main actors)? True, Ghosts is a comedic fantasy, but one still expects the living roles to act realistically.