The competitive nature of the McGee family comes out in both halves of today’s episode of The Ghost and Molly McGee, whether it be as simple as a board game and chores, or who sells the most candy during volunteer week.
Game Night
It’s family chore day, and with Scratch as part of the family now, he too gets assigned a chore from the McGee family chore wheel. While Molly gets closets and the rest of the family gets seemingly easy chores, Scratch’s spin lands him in the gross downstairs bathroom, easily the worst task on the chore board.
Trying to get out of it, he summons himself back to the ghost council where they are banishing another ghost to the Flow of Failed Phantoms (a well placed reminder of the stakes of the show) and is quickly sent back to the human realm.
He arrives just in time for Molly to find a board game hidden in the back of the closet that they thought was lost in the move. Mega City. The McGees would hold a family game night once a week where they would play, and the game holds a special place in the family. Pete even says it’s what inspired him to become a city planner. Scratch, seeing the opportunity to get out of cleaning the bathroom, coaxes the family into playing again. Mom just wants the chores to get done, but the family says it's just because she’s not good at the game, as the family win tallies on the game box so clearly show, as there is not a single tally for her.
Scratch quickly realizes how competitive the family can be while mom is outside and the situation escalates when she is ready to make her famous chili. The game sits at a tie, and the rest of the family sneaks to the basement to start a game and break the tie. Scratch however, has concocted a scheme to cheat and ensure he doesn’t have to clean the bathroom by making the game interesting. Whoever wins gets out of chore day. Pete doesn’t like the odds, but Scratch puts on the pressure and gets him to wager the chores, much to the chagrin of Mom.
Spoiler alert, Scratch wins (by cheating) and the family goes into the downstairs bathroom to start cleaning while he indulges in Mom’s chili.
Speaking of Mom, she was very upset when she saw Scratch win (by cheating), so she wants a rematch, now betting that if Scratch wins he’ll never have to do a chore again, but if he loses, he’ll have to clean the bathrooms….FOREVER. And since he’s dead, that’s quite a long time.
The two go head to head, and it turns out that Sharon (Mom) is the most competitive of them all, having won board game tournaments throughout her life, and the big reveal that she hid the game so she wouldn’t have to go easy on the rest of her family, but now that that cat is out of the bag, she is getting ready to revive family game night while Scratch heads to the bathrooms for the rest of his afterlife.
The Don’t-Gooder
Molly is leading many of the volunteer efforts during Brighton’s volunteer week, but Andrea Davenport seems to be right behind her at every project with her phone and social media claiming that she has been the one doing all the work.
Molly doesn’t mind, as the reason for her efforts are not views and followers, but the sense of doing something good. At the cleaning of the Brighton Bark Park however, it seems to start weighing on her as she was looking forward to all the puppy kisses…. That went to Andrea. She also won the Volunteer of the Week during Volunteer Week award. Scratch is incensed, but it isn’t until Andrea uses her word, “enhappify,” on the local news, claiming it (and trademarking it) as her own.
The next day at school, it is revealed that school needs a new marquee, and the way to get it is by selling specialty nougat bars throughout the town, and the person who sells the most will get an award. Molly sets out to sell the most and win, and Scratch (without Molly’s approval) also tries to sabotage Andrea’s efforts to make sure Molly wins. After a short musical number, the award is awarded….to Andrea?! But how? Scratch knows something is up because there’s no way she could have sold that many. So the pair go to catch the charity cheater, the don’t-gooder.
Molly is ready to break and enter the house, but Scratch can travel through walls, so he takes the lead instead and discovers thousands of nougat bars that Andrea has purchased on her own. While still technically selling the most nougat, Molly is ready to out her for buying everything on her own just so she can win the award.
The new marquee is installed at the school and there is an unveiling, but Molly gets Darryl to hack the marquee and on her signal, will upload the pictures of the nougat in her garage to out her as a fraud.
Molly greets Andrea while she is trying to get the attention of her parents when she realizes that was why Andrea was doing this altogether. She was trying to prove she is a good salesman like her parents, and also win awards and appear on social media and the local news just to get their attention.
Too bad Darryl has already uploaded the pictures though, and Molly now has to craft an excuse to cover for Andrea, which she does. Andrea gets a text message from her parents applauding her efforts (even though they are present for the unveiling) and she smiles, thanking Molly.
Molly runs home and hugs her own parents realizing that’s all she needed, not awards or credit. A nice heartfelt moment while we previously endured 6 minutes of Molly having a comedic breakdown into madness where Scratch is the voice of reason.
This episode of The Ghost and Molly McGee is now available on Disney Channel and the DisneyNOW app. You can also catch up with previous episodes on Disney+.