Whether intentional or not, Ghosts Season 4, Episode 6, “The Primary Source,” delivers a powerful message that’s especially relevant today. Even though it’s not what they’re looking for, the publishers love Isaac’s story, and they’re willing to take the risk on it. The only problem is that to verify the contents within the manuscript, they need proof of Sam’s sources. And considering her source is the man himself in phantom form, it doesn’t exactly pass the authentication process.
Still, Isaac reveals that he buried a diary while he was alive, and if they merely dig it up and present it, the authentication should be legitimate. However, Isaac’s entries have nothing to do with the war and everything to do with how he doesn’t understand the purpose of sandwiches. Being great at calligraphy, Jay gets an idea to forge what’s inside, but Sam blows their cover when she reveals what they’re doing to the authenticator.
In truth, Ghosts is fiction, and they probably could’ve gotten away with this, but the fact that the writers don’t allow them to underscores the importance of authenticity.
Ghosts Season 4, Episode 6, “The Primary Source” Stands on the Right Side of History
I often think about the ending of Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch—how a single painting holds so much meaning and the vitality of human beings expressing their love for the creations that matter to them.
“For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.” – The Goldfinch
Journalism, in a sense, is immortalization. Art, fiction, non-fiction, reviews, recaps, features, editorials—everything we, as human beings, put out there memorializes something that’s made us feel and feel deeply. In today’s political climate within America, the Department of Education, among other crucial rights pertaining to true freedom, is under attack. Book bans have writers and readers heartbroken, rallying, and furious. The future of libraries and archives isn’t safe. Additionally, AI has contributed to creative theft since its rise, leaving countless writers out of jobs and fighting to prove their worth. What a human being can achieve in writing or through any creative medium can never be replicated by a robot with no soul or life experience. And yet…some people want to tell us otherwise.
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That’s largely why I had such a visceral reaction to the events in Ghosts Season 4, Episode 6, “The Primary Source.” This is fiction, after all, and it’s a comedy, too. It bears repeating that Sam, Jay, Isaac, and everyone involved could’ve gotten away with forging the diary, and it probably would’ve been acceptable within the show’s universe. However, the detail that sticks out is that Ghosts demonstrates to its audience how crucial authenticity is. It is a gift to step into a library and trace something back to its original creation. It is a gift to still have access to your library’s archive online as an alumni. These details aren’t matters we grasp the importance of when we’re forced to write our first research paper in school, yet when all that freedom is threatened, the treasure trove of archival preservation becomes something so indescribably precious to think about.
Sam isn’t lying about the contents of the manuscript. She does have the true source right beside her. But the world doesn’t know that, and to sell this as non-fiction, we need citations we could hinge on. We need material that hasn’t aged, even while time has gone by. We need tangible evidence that is unvarnished and verified, not forged. With how the state of the world is at this moment, the amount of false content out there is proliferating at rapid speed. Stolen words make up entire books and articles because human experiences are minimized and boxed to feed an algorithm for monetary gain and nothing more.
Yet, years from now, a piece of fiction like Ghosts Season 4, Episode 6, “The Primary Source,” can stand as a paradigm of what it means to tell authentic stories. Of how it’s essential to not only search for validation but it’s imperative to cite the sources that drive our inherently human need to preserve legacies.
Ghosts CBS is now streaming on Paramount Plus.
