S01.E14: Ghostwriter

[Chit Chat]

On 2/25/2022 at 12:20 PM, Daff said:

Pete, Thor, and Sass died on the grounds of the property (the last two, before the mansion existed).

I finally just caught up on this show and wondered if I missed how Sass died.  He said in this episode that he wanted to be a storyteller, but just before he got his chance, he died.  They didn't say what happened though.  Please fill me in if I missed it!  Thanks in advance!

[ZuluQueenOfDwarves]

21 minutes ago, ChitChat said:

I finally just caught up on this show and wondered if I missed how Sass died.  He said in this episode that he wanted to be a storyteller, but just before he got his chance, he died.  They didn't say what happened though.  Please fill me in if I missed it!  Thanks in advance!

They’ve never said how he died in the show, but my headcanon is that he was separated from his family on the way to the harvest festival where he was going to debut his storytelling. Either it was too late in the year for him to hunt/gather enough food on his own or he died of exposure in the cold. Which is why he’s so obsessed with smelling food, even compared to the other ghosts—he died hungry. 

[kathyk24]

51 minutes ago, ChitChat said:

I finally just caught up on this show and wondered if I missed how Sass died.  He said in this episode that he wanted to be a storyteller, but just before he got his chance, he died.  They didn't say what happened though.  Please fill me in if I missed it!  Thanks in advance!

I think he died of an illness that the colonists brought over from Europe. We don't know how he and Hetty died. The writers haven't said what his special ability is either.

[KarenX]

On 1/30/2023 at 6:26 PM, ZuluQueenOfDwarves said:

Which is why he’s so obsessed with smelling food, even compared to the other ghosts—he died hungry.

Maybe Car Ghost died with the munchies, too.

Edited February 1, 2023 by KarenX

[Chit Chat]

3 hours ago, KarenX said:

Maybe Car Ghost died with the munchies, too.

It would be hell to be a ghost stuck in a car delivering food all day long!  Actually, it would be hell for any ghost to be able to smell food, but not to enjoy it!   It would be fun to see Sassapi's first experience discovering pizza!   

[LexieLily]

"I wish I was wearing underwear."
"We all do, Trevor." 

Considering Trevor's already hit on both Jay's wife AND his sister, I'm sure Jay also wishes Trevor was wearing underwear and pants, just sayin'. 

We still don't know how Sasappis died but now we know he died the week of the fall harvest before he got the chance to be a storyteller, so that's something. Hm. Is it just Sasappis, Hetty and Trevor that their manner of death are still unknown? I really, really want to know how Trevor died without pants and underwear - assuming it isn't the obvious :p.

I loved Sasappis (symbolically) passing on his eagle flower to Sam for her to be brave with the B&B website, and it was so, so sweet how Sam conspired with Jay and the other ghosts at the end to give Sasappis the floor to tell his story for the first time. Nice nod to Thor/Sass' history together as the oldest ghosts that it was Thor's words that convinced Sass to go along with it. Loved each ghost's reactions to the story (especially Hetty, Isaac and Thor, the three that have known Sass the longest) and Sam translating along for Jay the entire time. Loved how Jay was following along asking questions about the turtle. He so badly wants to be a part of the little family Sam/the ghosts have created, it's adorable.

You'd think Trevor would know how to get a file out of the trash can; poor Sass will learn in time there are very few good whooshes when it comes to messing with computer files and the trash-can folder. LOL.

Flower being into basketball was surprising - her getting high at halftime with the point guard and fouling out of every game was not so surprising :p - but as a fellow basketball fan myself I loved the shout-out of all the old-school player names. Way to represent, Flower *fist-pump*. But aw, Pete, being jealous that Jay has a real live friend :(. They both want to be buddies so much, I really hope it happens someday, somehow. 

I'm running out of ways to say how much I love this show, my God. Every single back-and-forth conversation between the ghosts is hilarious. Thor's version of basketball and Alberta's running commentary on Al Capone is hilarious! And I loved Thor's last line about how Sasappis' story was his favorite story that had nothing to do with killing Danes. Hee XD

On 2/25/2022 at 9:51 AM, tennisgurl said:

Hetty even gave her a pep talk and might be becoming a feminist! As long as that doesn't mean she supports woman handling money or riding bicycles. 

Considering the time period Hetty lived in, I can understand Hetty not supporting women going to college or working or handling money. Inferior female brains, y'know. But, ah, what do women riding bicycles have to do with anything?

Edited June 19, 2023 by LexieLily

[possibilities]

We do find out about Trevor's death. I forget which episode it is, but it's discussed  in detail, so you will not have to be in suspense too long. But I don't think we've learned what happened with Sass or Hetty yet.

[Annber03]

1 hour ago, LexieLily said:

I loved Sasappis (symbolically) passing on his eagle flower to Sam for her to be brave with the B&B website, and it was so, so sweet how Sam conspired with Jay and the other ghosts at the end to give Sasappis the floor to tell his story for the first time. Nice nod to Thor/Sass' history together as the oldest ghosts that it was Thor's words that convinced Sass to go along with it. Loved each ghost's reactions to the story (especially Hetty, Isaac and Thor, the three that have known Sass the longest) and Sam translating along for Jay the entire time. Loved how Jay was following along asking questions about the turtle. He so badly wants to be a part of the little family Sam/the ghosts have created, it's adorable.

That end scene, with Sasappis touching his feather and telling the ghosts his story, never, ever fails to give me a lump in my throat whenever I rewatch this episode :'). It's just so incredibly sweet and heartwarming and touching. 

(Fun fact for you, by the way - the actor playing Sasappis' father in this episode is also the real life father of the actor who plays Sasappis :D. Just one more reason why that ending is so moving and special.)

Thor and Sasappis' longtime friendship is the best, too. I really hope we get a glimpse into their early days together sometime, it'd be so fun to see how it all began for them. 

Quote

Flower being into basketball was surprising - her getting high at halftime with the point guard and fouling out of every game was not so surprising :p - but as a fellow basketball fan myself I loved the shout-out of all the old-school player names. Way to represent, Flower *fist-pump*. 

I had a feeling you'd enjoy that storyline :D. I love that backstory for her, too. I like that this show can reveal those kinds of aspects of these characters' pasts, and let us see them in a whole new light like that. 

Quote

Considering the time period Hetty lived in, I can understand Hetty not supporting women going to college or working or handling money. Inferior female brains, y'know. But, ah, what do women riding bicycles have to do with anything?

Maybe just too unladylike, given the way one rides a bike :p? 

[kathyk24]

2 hours ago, LexieLily said:

"I wish I was wearing underwear."
"We all do, Trevor." 

Considering Trevor's already hit on both Jay's wife AND his sister, I'm sure Jay also wishes Trevor was wearing underwear and pants, just sayin'. 

We still don't know how Sasappis died but now we know he died the week of the fall harvest before he got the chance to be a storyteller, so that's something. Hm. Is it just Sasappis, Hetty and Trevor that their manner of death are still unknown? I really, really want to know how Trevor died without pants and underwear - assuming it isn't the obvious :p.

I loved Sasappis (symbolically) passing on his eagle flower to Sam for her to be brave with the B&B website, and it was so, so sweet how Sam conspired with Jay and the other ghosts at the end to give Sasappis the floor to tell his story for the first time. Nice nod to Thor/Sass' history together as the oldest ghosts that it was Thor's words that convinced Sass to go along with it. Loved each ghost's reactions to the story (especially Hetty, Isaac and Thor, the three that have known Sass the longest) and Sam translating along for Jay the entire time. Loved how Jay was following along asking questions about the turtle. He so badly wants to be a part of the little family Sam/the ghosts have created, it's adorable.

You'd think Trevor would know how to get a file out of the trash can; poor Sass will learn in time there are very few good whooshes when it comes to messing with computer files and the trash-can folder. LOL.

Flower being into basketball was surprising - her getting high at halftime with the point guard and fouling out of every game was not so surprising :p - but as a fellow basketball fan myself I loved the shout-out of all the old-school player names. Way to represent, Flower *fist-pump*. But aw, Pete, being jealous that Jay has a real live friend :(. They both want to be buddies so much, I really hope it happens someday, somehow. 

I'm running out of ways to say how much I love this show, my God. Every single back-and-forth conversation between the ghosts is hilarious. Thor's version of basketball and Alberta's running commentary on Al Capone is hilarious! And I loved Thor's last line about how Sasappis' story was his favorite story that had nothing to do with killing Danes. Hee XD

Considering the time period Hetty lived in, I can understand Hetty not supporting women going to college or working or handling money. Inferior female brains, y'know. But, ah, what do women riding bicycles have to do with anything?

This is one of my favorite episodes I still have it on my DVR. It's nice watching Sassappis act like an elder instead of a younger man like he does with Jessica. Trevor's Pants is the name of the episode where we get his backstory. I'd like to see Flower watch basketball with Jay. She could tell him through Sam about the players from her era and Jay could introduce her to current players.

[KarenX]

23 hours ago, Annber03 said:

 

Quote

Considering the time period Hetty lived in, I can understand Hetty not supporting women going to college or working or handling money. Inferior female brains, y'know. But, ah, what do women riding bicycles have to do with anything?

Expand  

Maybe just too unladylike, given the way one rides a bike :p?

For sure! But there was this whole social campaign/moral panic to try to keep women from riding bicycles. It went beyond “unladylike” and straight into BS pretend “diseases” women would be damaged by, like Bicycle Face. 

I can see Hetty buying into it utterly. 
 

[shapeshifter]

16 hours ago, KarenX said:

For sure! But there was this whole social campaign/moral panic to try to keep women from riding bicycles. It went beyond “unladylike” and straight into BS pretend “diseases” women would be damaged by, like Bicycle Face. I can see Hetty buying into it utterly. 

— which all sounds like a cover story for those who thought women might "enjoy" their bicycle seats too much🙄😉
— as well as the freedom to go distances independently.
Okay. No time like the present to plug into Google Scholar the terms of:
          women history bicycle-riding
(https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=women+history+bicycle-riding&btnG=)

At the top of the results list is:

• Garvey, Ellen Gruber. "Reframing the bicycle: Advertising-supported magazines and scorching women." American Quarterly 47, no. 1 (1995): 66-101. https://www.rhsroughriders.org/ourpages/auto/2012/3/6/51181698/bicycles_advertising.pdf

Quote

WHEN THE SAFETY BICYCLE IN THE I890S MADE BICYCLING ACCESsible to women, wheelwomen found themselves riding through contested terrain...

...Both defense and attack took medicalized form: antibicyclers claimed that riding would ruin women's sexual health by promoting masturbation and would compromise gender definition as well, while probicyclers asserted that bicycling would strengthen women's bodies-and thereby make them more fit for motherhood. Such claims are familiar from a period in which many discourses were medicalized and issues as diverse as shoplifting and women's education were tied to reproductive health...
...
The Threat of the Mobile Woman

For women in particular, the new mobility the bicycle allowed offered freer movement in new spheres, outside the family and home- heady new freedoms that feminists celebrated. Suffragist and temper- ance leader Frances Willard called her bicycle an "implement of power" and "rejoiced ... in perceiving the impetus that this uncompro- mising but fascinating and illimitably capable machine would give to that blessed 'woman question.""5 Maria E. Ward's 1896 manual Bicycling for Ladies hints at a connection between cycling and suffrage by linking riding to both autonomy and responsible citizenship:

• Riding the wheel, our own powers are revealed to us .... You have conquered a new world, and exultingly you take possession of it.... You feel at once the keenest sense of responsibility.... You become alert, active, quick-sighted, and keenly alive as well to the rights of others as to what is due yourself.... To the many who wish to be actively at work in the world, the opportunity has come.16

The "New Woman on a bicycle ... exercised power .. . changing the conventions of courtship and chaperonage, of marriage and travel," Patricia Marks notes in her survey of the period.17 In fact to some, the bicycle in itself seemed to offer a transcendent solution to women's problems. As playwright Marguerite Merington wrote in "Woman and the Bicycle," an 1895 Scribner's article: "Now and again a complaint arises of the narrowness of woman's sphere. For such disorder of the soul the sufferer can do no better than to flatten her sphere to a circle, mount it, and take to the road."1I8 Similarly, for Willard, the bicycle was a means of access to a larger world, or was even that world itself: "I began to feel that myself plus the bicycle equaled myself plus the world, upon whose spinning wheel we must all learn to ride." She explains in her memoir of learning to ride that she took up bicycling at age fifty-three in part so her example would "help women to a wider world."19

Conservatives attacked women's bicycling in correspondingly hyper- bolic terms, as a force that would disrupt social roles by allowing women freedom of movement beyond family surveillance and outside traditional gender roles. Like other attacks on women's opportunities for autonomy in this period, this one took sexual form. One way conservative fear of the disruptive potential of women's riding was articulated was through medical discourse that attacked bicycling as both masculinizing and a threat to sexual purity. Probicycling forces also used medical discourse to endorse women's riding....

(https://www.rhsroughriders.org/ourpages/auto/2012/3/6/51181698/bicycles_advertising.pdf)

 

Edited June 20, 2023 by shapeshifter

[LexieLily]

Would Hetty be able to learn how to ride a bike if Sam had one? Is that doable for ghosts?

[shapeshifter]

1 hour ago, LexieLily said:

Would Hetty be able to learn how to ride a bike if Sam had one? Is that doable for ghosts?

Extrapolating from what we’ve seen of ghosts sitting on the couch and, in episode 2.2

Spoiler

Hetty sitting on the washing machine,

I would say: Yes!

[possibilities]

But they can't move things around, right? 

[LexieLily]

34 minutes ago, shapeshifter said:

Extrapolating from what we’ve seen of ghosts sitting on the couch and, in episode 2.2

  Reveal spoiler

Hetty sitting on the washing machine,

I would say: Yes!

I refuse to read that spoiler because I'm still binge-watching season one (I know, I'm behind XD), but, yeah, considering ghosts sit on couches and chairs and sleep in beds...?

Edited June 20, 2023 by LexieLily

[christie]

On 6/21/2023 at 12:40 AM, shapeshifter said:

Extrapolating from what we’ve seen of ghosts sitting on the couch and, in episode 2.2

  Hide contents

Hetty sitting on the washing machine,

I would say: Yes!

But would she be able to peddle? I have visions of her feet going right through the peddles.

[LexieLily]

6 hours ago, christie said:

But would she be able to peddle? I have visions of her feet going right through the peddles.

Oh, that's a good point. They can 'walk' on the floors of the mansion, though, and they do take their group walks outside each day. Maybe there's a subheading on bicycles in the non-existent death manual?

[possibilities]

They can sit on the couch, but they can't move it. I really don't think they could ride bicycles.

[Bruinsfan]

Presumably a ghost could ride the spare seat of a tandem bike, but a living person would have to be powering it.

[Mabinogia]

14 hours ago, Bruinsfan said:

Presumably a ghost could ride the spare seat of a tandem bike, but a living person would have to be powering it.

Aw, now you've got me wanting to see Jay zipping around on a tandem bike while Hetty (or other ghosts) are riding on the back going "weeeee" while Jay keeps checking with Sam to make sure the ghost is still there. 

[ZuluQueenOfDwarves]

I rewatched the whole show and the first time, I thought that Flower’s basketball references were over Pete’s head because they were from a different period, but I realized it’s entirely possible that Pete and Flower were born in the same year, or at least very close to each other. Someone born in the early forties would be in their late twenties in 1969 and their mid forties in 1985. So him not knowing the same stuff she does just means that Flower is superior in basketball knowledge. 

[Skooma]

On 1/30/2023 at 10:00 PM, kathyk24 said:

I think he died of an illness that the colonists brought over from Europe.

About Sass.  He died circa 1500 way before there were colonist in New York in general let alone the Hudson River Valley.