Ghostfacers Review

By John Keegan

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I need to preface my comments on this episode by pointing out that I’m a true fan of Ghost Hunters, much like Eric Kripke and most of the production staff for Supernatural. It’s the best show of its niche genre, and I’ve met members of TAPS on occasion over the past few years. I’m also a paranormal investigator, and I’ve seen the kind of people that would put together a show like “Ghostfacers” all too often.


I’m also a huge fan of The X-Files, and this episode reminded me greatly of the seventh season episode “X-Cops”. That episode was filmed as if it were an episode of Cops, with the focus off of Mulder and Scully beyond their interaction with the police officers at the forefront of the story. It was one of the best episodes of that season for that series.

“X-Cops” worked because, by then, the series was already winding down and there was little reason not to challenge the format. Not only that, but Cops was still enormously popular and in the public awareness, much like The X-Files at the time. “X-Cops” was a clever sweeps stunt that happened to work creatively as well.

As popular as Ghost Hunters might be relative to the rest of the Sci-Fi Channel lineup, it’s still less watched than Supernatural itself. So the crossover potential wasn’t there to the same degree. Also, unlike The X-Files, Supernatural is constantly fighting for its life. It may have been given a fourth season, but with the writers’ strike taking away several episodes this season, every hour feels like a precious commodity.

For all of these reasons, this episode had a lot to overcome: the limited appeal of the target audience, the expectations of fans wanting resolution to already truncated plot threads, and the difficulty of challenging returning favorites CSI and Grey’s Anatomy. Conceptually, the story worked as a sequel to the first season episode “Hell Hounds”, and there were plenty of laughs, as one would expect of a Ben Edlund script.

Unfortunately, anyone with a casual interest in Supernatural, without the patience to wait around an entire act for the Brothers Winchester to appear, would have tuned in to what would have seemed to be a horrible “reality TV” special. I wouldn’t blame anyone for changing the channel in such a case.

Also, there’s precious little running around on Ghost Hunters; the format and direction of the show keeps the handheld nature of the footage bearable. It’s simply not suitable for a show like Supernatural with a more frenetic directorial style. So all the action is less Steadycam than Handycam, and while it’s amusing at first, it gets old very quickly. Even as a diehard fan of both Supernatural and Ghost Hunters, I found the format tedious.

There was some interesting commentary by the end about the validity of homosexual love as a motivator, rather than just a topic of comedy and ridicule. In many respects, Corbett’s interest was played in roughly the same manner as it would have been in a more conventional sense, even if it was played up as a bit chiding in the end. It was a surprising direction for such an episode to take, and it gave what would have been a completely disposable story a bit more depth.

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