[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Ghosts Season 5 Episode 5, “T-Daddy.”
Ghosts digs deeper into the growing relationship between pantless spirit Trevor (Asher Grodman) and his living daughter, Abby (Gideon Adlon), in the latest episode, “T-Daddy.”
As viewers will recall, the previous week’s episode revolved around the ways in which he manipulated her into getting a job at Mahesh amid financial struggles and personal challenges. Now, Abby is fully aware of her biological dad’s presence on the property, and his unrelenting generosity is a little misplaced at the start of the installment when he buys her a fancy car (a Porsche to be exact) as a treat.
While Sam (Rose McIver) ultimately cozies up to the vehicle, Abby admits that school is something she’d like to pursue if she had the funding. The unfortunate aspect is that Sam overheard Abby say this while driving in the aforementioned convertible car, and is under the impression that Abby wants to study finance, following in Trevor’s footsteps.
In actuality, Abby wishes to study French poetry in Paris, and while Trevor is initially resistant when he learns the truth, she convinces him to fund her academic future, knowing it’s a bad investment, because she wants to live her life. It’s a touching sentiment, and ultimately, Trevor wants what’s best for his daughter, and he agrees to fulfill her dream by sending her abroad.
That means the fancy new car had to go back to the dealership, much to Sam’s dismay. Below, Grodman discusses Trevor’s change of heart regarding Abby’s future, reveals what it was like to have the fancy car on set, and teases whether we’ll see more of the father-daughter duo as Ghosts unfolds in the Q&A below.
Bertrand Calmeau / CBS
How was it having that car on set?
Asher: It’s nice. It is that kind of thing where I’m not a car person, and then you get in there, [and it’s like], “Well, this is very nice.” It’s always so fun. This ghost, who has no access to anything, but because of his job, has more money than Sam and Jay combined, and is able to buy a Porsche and send his daughter to Europe, it’s just a funny twist.
Trevor worries about Abby’s aimlessness. How was it imposing his go-getter outlook on his daughter as she considers going back to school?
Well, it’s funny cause on some level, everything he’s saying is antithetical to who he is. This is a guy who had all the parties that he wanted, he had all the sex that he wanted, and he was hanging out with all the celebrities that he wanted. I mean, he really lived a life. It’s appropriate for the age of the ’90s, especially in New York. Every door was open to him. He got every “yes” that he ever wanted. And so, for this guy to turn around and be like, “Well, you should really have some direction to your life,” like his whole life wasn’t a party… There is something hypocritical about what he’s saying.
I think that’s why he turns so quickly when he is confronted with the way she sees the situation, because I think he recognizes that’s what I would be doing too. And there is a nice layer in this guy who lived his life as a bit of a womanizer, right? One of my favorite things about the Abby-Trevor dynamic is a sense in Trevor that I love to lean into, which is that it’s better that he wasn’t there [when she was growing up]. The juxtaposition of this guy now having to figure out how to relate to a young woman in a way that he’s never had to before is a lot of fun to play. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, so he falls into all the fatherhood tropes.
Abby isn’t in love with the fancy car Trevor buys her, and so he offers to pay for her schooling. Do you think that’s because he believes she’ll follow in his footsteps or to fend off the aimless path she’s leading?
I would imagine with Trevor, it’s a mix of both, because in my sense, Trevor absolutely thinks that the way he lived his life and the life he lived, the choices he made were absolutely the right choices. I think he looks back at life, and he’s like, “I nailed that.” The only downfall was that it ended too soon. So, I do think that he would feel that his path is the right path. He probably wouldn’t be able to handle his daughter living the same rowdy life he did, but it would not be surprising to me if Trevor were like, “Man, go out and party and have a blast.” So, even in chasing that finance world, finance for Trevor was not as rigid. I think he thinks it’s a good thing for many reasons. The difference here is that he has to contend with someone wanting something that he didn’t want.
Will Trevor have to keep working, now that he’s agreed to bankroll Abby’s experience? Or does he have enough to cover it and more?
Trevor loves working. The ghosts kind of have two desires, I think, throughout the show. One of them is to get sucked off, but Trevor, I think, more so than others, he’s really yearning to be alive again. You never expect it from someone like Trevor. We get these episodes that go a little deeper. All of our episodes have a little bit of an emotional turn on them, but the Trevor ones, I feel, tend to go a little deeper because of his proximity to life. It is a comedy about death, and so Trevor, with his desire to get her life in proximity to his, at its core, we’re bridging the gap between life and death, which is like the unbridgeable thing. It’s a thing that our show can do that not a lot of [others] can.
Now that Abby’s going off to school, do you think she’ll return to Woodstone anytime soon?
I think the door is always open.
Ghosts, Season 5, Thursdays, 8:30/7:30c, CBS