There were a number of memories that came flooding back to me, despite it being 24 years since I even saw the episodes in full. In fact, other than the look of the Slime Monster-and that it talks, repeating lines like “You laughin’ at me?,” “I’m burning mad! I’m steaming mad!,” and “Slime, anyone?”-I didn’t even realize until I went back to rewatch the episodes how much I did remember, at least deep in my subconscious. There was also the subplot about this being the week of Jamal (Sheldon Turnipseed), Alex (David López), and Lenni’s (Blaze Berdahl) middle school graduation and prom, but that is definitely not the thing people remember about this episode. This particular arc in Ghostwriter-the whole series was made up of four-episode mystery arcs (with the series premiere consisting of five)-followed youngest Ghostwriter team member Casey (Lateaka Vinson) as she embarked on writing a scary story for a Gooey Gus the Slime Monster contest, all while the team taught each other (and “viewers like you,” the young PBS audience) about suspense and atmosphere. I’m not sure if that’s still the case, as I cannot remember the last time I’ve spoken to a child.) As the arc originally aired on PBS between January 22 and February 12, 1995, I would’ve been six years old, the perfect age to be haunted in my dreams for the first time ever by something that sounded like a generic mobster named Smitty and looked like this: If you look at any discourse about Ghostwriter online, you’ll almost immediately be “greeted” by either the memory or the image of the Slime Monster from the final original Ghostwriter arc ever, the four-part “Attack of the Slime Monster.” I’ve never been afraid to share how the Slime Monster (which is actually called “Gooey Gus”- the goo is actually grape bubble gum) traumatized me as a youth, because as it turns out, it did the same for a lot of Millennials. The announcement naturally turned into people discussing the original series and a trip down memory lane. When Apple TV+ announced its new programming, one series really stuck out-besides Dickinson and The Morning Show-and that was the Ghostwriter “reboot.” As someone who has written about knowing how to differentiate between reboots and revivals, I use quotes for reboot, even though that is actually what it is, because Apple TV+ bills it as a “reinvention”… and its approach to telling the Ghostwriter story looks absolutely nothing like the original Ghostwriter:
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