Thor’s a daddy! While at a yard sale at the Farnsby house, Sam sees a Viking ghost who turns out to be Thor’s son Bjorn. Bjorn traveled there looking for his father and died on the Farnsby property. Thor and Bjorn have been just two houses away (or two ship lengths, if you only speak Viking) for 1,000 years and never realized it. And now, thanks to Sam’s ghost powers and well-placed windows in both the Farnsby house and Woodstone mansion, we’ll get a father-and-son reunion! Isn’t that just the sweetest thing?
The thing is that we’re talking about Thor here — nothing is ever that sweet (he’s more interested in how many skulls of Danes Bjorn had outside his door than learning any pertinent info about his son), and everything is always at least a little bit complicated. While Thor’s excited to see his son after so long — when he left, Bjorn was a little kid who couldn’t even say “father” yet — he learns some information that chills him to the core: Bjorn married and had children with a Dane. Did you just do a spit take? Jump up out of your seat? At the very least, you had to have let out an Isaac Higgintoot–approved gasp, right? A Dane! The Viking’s mortal enemy! Thor deems it the ultimate betrayal. Bjorn isn’t his son. Thor has no son.
Thor is a messy Viking who lives for drama, and we love him for that. Flower and Isaac try to reason with him, because refusing to see your son who’s been waiting to see you for 1,000 actual years is truly the dumbest, but Thor only agrees to go up to the window where he can yell across at Bjorn (in a window at the Farnsby house), so that he can inform his son that he is officially disowned. But then, Bjorn calls Thor “father,” and Thor’s cold Viking heart melts. (Do ghosts have hearts? Add it to the list of Ghost Questions.) He is moved! He loves his dead ghost son! And he wisely realizes that children aren’t born with hate in their hearts — they are taught to hate. Thor wasn’t around to teach Bjorn to hate the Danes, and that’s on him. Now, he has literally all the time in the world to teach him why he should hate the Danes.
Okay, so maybe “wisely” wasn’t the right word here, and that one is on me. Regardless, what a lovely little surprise for Thor’s afterlife. Granted, it’s less lovely of a surprise for Sam, who has to listen to Thor screaming out her bedroom window to catch up with his son, especially since Thor decides to have these chats just as she’s going to bed, but they can talk about boundaries at a later date. For now, Thor gets to be a dad!
Much less heartwarming is what Sam and Jay have to endure at the Farnsby house while trying to reunite the Vikings. In a classic sitcom mix-up, Jay and Henry think they’re talking about the same thing, but they are definitely not, and it leads to some — let’s call them awkward interactions. You see, when Jay picks up an upside-down-pineapple statue, because he knows Sam is super into fruit art, Henry’s surprised by his interest — an upside-down pineapple is a symbol to let people know you’re down with swinging. It doesn’t help that Jay goes on about how Sam got really into it while in college. Henry assumes the Arondekars are swingers, and hijinks ensue! Those hijinks can be categorized as “Wednesday-afternoon group undressing.” Jay and Sam get out unscathed, but those poor kids have really struck out when it comes to neighbor relations. Will Jay ever make a friend other than Pete? (Sorry, Pete!)
Thanks to the other story line in “The Baby Bjorn,” we’ve been reminded just how important friendship is — to some, it’s much more important than wealth. Not to Hetty, of course, but to many other non–robber baronesses. Apparently, a few centuries ago, the ghosts came up with their own type of currency, since they have no use for money, and they landed on … back rubs. Now that we know these ghosts go hard for back rubs, I hope we see these going on in the background — the more awkward, the better! But sure, back rubs.
As Isaac explains, due to Hetty’s “shrewd bargaining and a general disdain for physical touch, which leads her to never cash them in, Hetty has amassed a vast wealth of back rubs.” It bugs Trevor, the most recent ghost and, therefore, the one with the least amount of back rubs, more than anyone, but Hetty has no time for complaints from new money! Trevor hatches a plan in which he’ll make another type of currency to rival Hetty’s and he’ll be back in the game. Naturally, it all blows up in his face.
Trevor decides to start buying and selling TV Time. Okay, so it’s more the former — he easily gets most of his fellow ghosts to sell him their TV Time for a few back rubs until he has a monopoly on the TV for the next month. Not surprisingly, he’ll be watching The Cutting Edge on repeat the whole time. Hetty — who is dying (I know, I know) to watch the next episode of her favorite show, Bodices and Barons — won’t stand for it. (The baron was throwing some spicy glances toward the chambermaid last week, so I get it.) As much as it disgusts her, she gets the other ghosts to join her in a “coalition” (she refuses to say the word union) and refuse to watch TV, making TV Time a worthless currency. “The power belongs to the people,” she exclaims before almost barfing.
Later, Hetty finds Trevor alone on the couch firing up his tenth “Toe pick!” and has a pretty lovely heart-to-heart with him. She asks what he really wanted from his life — if he had made all the money in the world and hadn’t died with no pants on. His answer includes owning a skyscraper and marrying Tara Reid … and watching The Cutting Edge with her — after they have sex, of course. Hetty points out that it seems like money was only important to him if he could share it with the people he loved. It’s very sweet and also gets Trevor to return all of the TV Time he’d collected back to its owners.
Oh Trevor, you sweet, pantsless dummy. Hetty was playing you the entire time! All she wanted was for Trevor to give up his monopoly by any means necessary. She starts buying up that TV Time from everyone else for back rubs. She doesn’t care about friendship! She only cares about her sweet, sweet ghost currency. And Bodices and Barons, of course. Hetty will always be, as Sass calls her, the “top dog” at Woodstone. And Trevor, try as he might with all of his bluster and big-game talk, will always be a lovable softy.
Ghouls Just Want to Have Fun
• Isaac trying to cheer Thor up when Thor calls his son a traitor: “Well, you know, so was Benedict Arnold, but he was still a delightful dinner-party guest.”
• Alberta uses her TV Time solely to watch Jason Momoa content, many times in slo-mo, and I respect that. Pete calls it “slo-Momoa,” and I don’t respect that. No one does. Not even Pete after he says it aloud.
• Good on Ghosts for setting up that “the Farnsbys are swingers” reveal back in season one: In last season’s finale, when Sam’s at their house, you may have spotted an upside-down-pineapple print framed on the wall.
• I get that a warm “shaft” of light coming in through the window feels great, but … couldn’t the ghosts go outside to get a little sunshine? Why are they wasting precious back rubs on this?!
• Please, Ghosts, I am begging you, show us a clip of Bodices and Barons.
• “Who? What? Where? When? Why? How many heads? These are the tools of your trade!”
