Ghosts S4E13 “Ghostfellas” — Postcards from the Other Side

There’s a kind of heartbreak in how long it takes Pete to realize he was a “useful idiot.”

Not because the insult is wrong, but because it’s only now—decades into death—that he finally allows himself to see it.

This episode moves with a certain silliness on the surface: a long-lost sauce recipe, a mob entanglement, a box of blackmail materials retrieved from storage. But beneath that, something quieter stirs. Pete, for the first time in a long time, begins to reckon with the blind spots of his life—and chooses to stop letting other people define what he was.

What stands out isn’t the threat of mob retaliation or Carol’s chaotic return. It’s the postcards. Dozens of them, handwritten and sincere—little thank-yous from clients who once trusted Pete with their honeymoons, their bucket lists, their dream trips. He may have been naive. But he was also kind. And in a world that so often favors cleverness over care, that kindness mattered.

Carol, for all her flaws, didn’t throw them out. She kept them, right alongside the mafia dirt, as if she knew Pete might one day need proof that he did good. Her presence in this episode is bizarrely tender—less a villain than a strange sort of archivist, preserving the parts of Pete’s life even he had forgotten.

Elsewhere in the manor, relationships keep shifting. Hetty and Trevor inch closer again. Flower, in her unmoored way, sets off a new round of roommate reshuffling. It’s a house in motion—small currents pulling people toward and away from each other, season by season, scene by scene.

There’s a kitchen confrontation late in the episode that plays like farce—blackmail, double-cross, sauce jokes. It resolves in a typically sitcom way, with tension diffused through absurdity. But what follows is quieter and more lasting: the moment Pete finally sees the postcards.

Stacked one after another, they form a record of his real impact—trips planned, memories made, strangers who remembered his name. Proof that he wasn’t just a patsy in someone else’s scheme, but someone who offered care, however modest, and was met with gratitude in return.

He holds the postcards in silence.

And in that moment, Pete isn’t just the upbeat camp counselor anymore. He’s someone who sees his life more clearly. Someone who can say: I helped people. I mattered.

And that shift, however small, feels like a kind of liberation.

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