Review: GhostForce “Scream Scratch; Creepop”


OVERVIEW (SPOILERS)

While working on new tech, the team must fight a furry ghost, and later a beat box based ghost.

OUR TAKE

We finally reach the halfway point of the season only a couple days after Halloween, with there continuing to be very slight nudges towards developing the world and characters. This week, we have Miss Jones working on a device to finally make use of the powers of the ghosts they captured in previous episodes…kind of like what the kids already do occasionally with the ghosts they use for special attacks, but I guess now they’ll start using some of the more diverse powers they’ve obtained from ghosts in the past dozen episodes. We only get a brief look at this new weapon in action, and I don’t think it even uses any of those ghosts, but I guess it’s a sign that we’ll see it more later as things ramp up, at least hopefully. This isn’t a very sophisticated show, you may be shocked to learn, so if the main goal of the series is to sell toys and merchandise, giving each of the kids powered up forms based on ghosts they’ve fought would be a pretty easy way to generate a bunch of new and different designs to collect. At least, that’s the ten year old in me thinking about what toys would definitely grab me back in the day.

Oh yeah, there are a couple episodes to talk about. The first one is kind of an Andy episode, since it starts out with him taking care of a teacher’s dog and that going awry, with him being guilty about messing that out during the ghost fight. So it’s kind of like a similar episode not too long ago that is also about learning to let go of mistakes and just try to do better next time. And speaking of episodes with a repeated premise, the other half focuses on Mike and his crush on Charlie as she narrowly avoids the ghost and becomes a big liability for everyone trying to focus, including Mike. Essentially, we’ve seen both of these types of stories before, along with a few others that have had multiple iterations, and with another half of the season left to watch, I imagine we’re likely going to see more of those. I mean, look, I know this isn’t exactly meant to be an Emmy award winner or anything, but I have definitely seen formulaic kids shows about monster of the week fights turn into more than this.