GHOST BUMMERS

Jessie

Season 3 (2013)

I grew up with the Disney Channel and am a big fan of its original shows like Flash Forward and Lizzie McQuire.  I fully embraced my role as an old curmudgeon, however, when watching this episode of Jessie.  Jessie is one of the Disney Channel’s current shows, one of countless many that all seem the same to me and all feature tweens who all sound like they’re shouting all of their lines.  Even the colors were squint-inducing bright.  I found myself sympathizing with the bitchy adult antagonist character who hated all of the kids and couldn’t remember any of their names.

In this scenario I am the lady in pink.  Rotten kids!

But amidst the shouting and bratty kids this episode wasn’t without its charms.  The premise of the show seems to be that the very Emma Stoneish Jessie is a nanny for a bunch of kids at a posh Manhattan apartment building.  In this episode evil spirits invade the kids’ Halloween party to prepare the opening of a portal that will usher in a demon-lord.  If that sounds familiar it's because the entire episode is a loving tribute to the movie Ghostbusters.  We get the possessed gatekeeper residents, the rooftop showdown with the demon, a Slimer-like poltergeist and some of the characters even don proton packs and jumpsuits at the end to fend off the malevolent spirits.

All of the above was great fun, as were the party scenes and lavish costumes seen throughout the episode (one extra dressed as a box of chocolates kept having trouble keeping the bow on his head).  A glimpsed game of Pin the Tail on the Werewolf particularly pleased me.

Kids these days!  They love their tan jumpsuits and wigs.

The weirdest aspect of the episode was its obsession with bowel movements.  Sadly, “obsession” doesn’t even begin to cover it.  There are several references to one character who “farts on pillows.”  Another little girl vows to eat her underwear and then implies she can’t because she peed (at least I hope it was peed) in them after being scared by a ghost.  There’s even a joke at the very end about a “haunted colon.”

Call me old-fashioned but all of this makes me grateful that I grew up during an earlier, gentler, less gassy era of Disney Channel programming.

Recurring Themes: The “it was all a dream!” ending counts as a Haunting with a Logical Explanation.

Halloween Quotient: 4

See It, Skip It, Own It?

The bad kid acting is grating but this is a fun homage to Ghostbusters and escapist Halloween fare that’s worth seeing (once).