Main cast: Barry Bostwick (Tony Lynch), Dayle Haddon (Debby Hunt), M Emmet Walsh (Detective Underhill), Madeleine Sherwood (Vivian), Willem Dafoe (Jeffrey Hunt), and Page Fletcher (The Hitchhiker)
Director: Carl Schenkel

Interesting, it seems like this show is getting cast members of higher caliber to show up in its episodes. Just take a look at this one: Barry Bostwick, M Emmet Walsh, Willem Dafoe, and of course Page Fletcher’s beautiful rear end. No matter how many episodes of this show that I’ve watched, that last one still remains a thing of beauty.

Poor Jeffrey Hunt. The author is dead, apparently having killed himself because he’d tried so hard only to remain in obscurity. They pull out his car from the sea in the opening scene of Ghostwriter, and his widow Debby is appropriately distraught. Wait a minute, there’s no body though, only pages of a small diary with the pages scribbled with only “Dear Debby”, “Dear Tony” (that’s Jeffrey’s agent), “Dear Debby and Tony”, et cetera.

The plot thickens. Debby and Tony are having an affair, with him carrying her in his arms and then spinning her round and round as sappy saxophone music plays in the background. This happens in a super-orange sunset, and the whole thing is just like soft porn, except sorry folks, the black nightie thing she is wearing stays on. Oh don’t worry, she’d take everything off later. Willem Dafoe, as everyone that has seen his movies will know, doesn’t have the words “nudity” and “clause” in his contracts, but sadly, one has to watch those other movies to see his full monty.

Then, Debby finds Jeffrey’s typewriter working on its own, and ooh, look, Jeffrey’s alive. That’s right, he has faked his death because he thinks this will finally get him the recognition he craves. Too bad, his wife and his agent have started to get used to having him out of their lives, plus having him as a tragic dead writer guy can bring in more money for them than he ever could when he was alive.

This episode is pretty silly, and indeed, story line has always been a weakness for The Hitchhiker, and this one is no different. However, this episode manages to strike a nice balance of ludicrous nonsense and trashy camp to make the whole thing enjoyable in a guilty pleasure kind of way. Willem Dafoe acts like he’s just learned to speak English two days ago, but he is of course solid as the menacing cray cray type. The rest of the main cast just react to him, but they do so in a way to helps make this episode a pretty fun one to watch.

Is this one good? Probably not in the great big world out there, but in the ecosystem of this show, it’s actually one of the better episodes out there!