The Ghost Gang (Inky, Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde)
Okay so. the ghost gang were set up to be super intresting in ghostly adventures because in the first episode Blinky manages to weasel their way out of being eaten by pac man by agreeing to help him in his fight against Betrayus and the ghost army by giving insider info and stuff. Good start. Their motivations are established, they want their bodies to be returned so they can be alive again, and Pac and the President can do that for them as long as they continue working as double agents.This has a lot of potential. Early season one sets up their dynamic well. They all want to do the right thing but are struggling with various character flaws preventing their true redemption:
Clyde wants to be a good person but is easily bullied and bossed around by others, who override any objections he may have and force him to get involved in the plot no matter what side that may be.
Pinky is doing all of this for purely selfish reasons: She is in love with Pac. She will sabatoge and harrass any of the ghosts to get her way. This is also how Pac cements his teamship with them, by falsely professing his love for her so she'll sabatoge his execution.
This can also backfire against Pac though, as Pinky is also easily jealous against any other girl who shows even remote interest in him, and can be easily mislead into believing pac is cheating on her even if it's a misunderstanding. It's a whole thing and is very annoying
Inky is indifferent to both sides, he just wants to be on the winning team, and wants to do the least work. He also ends up being the most vocal against working with pac, but mostly because he is indifferent at best to Pinky's love life and is most likely to be accidentally eaten by Pac, as it quickly becomes a running joke in the show.
Blinky seems to be the most logical in this regard, judging which stance he should take based on the opinions and status of the rest of the ghost gang, pac and co, or betrayus and the other villains, and what would work best in the moment. He will argue with the other ghost gang members if there's room for discussion/debate, but will submit if there is any true urgency to the situation or if Pinky yells loud enough. They never actually settle into a concrete flaw for him though. Early episodes seem to think his problem is that he is perfectly fine with working for Betrayus if it benefits him, but this is diminished in later episodes due to the fact they greatly reduced his role in season 2.
So early on, this worked great. Pinky got an episode where she and pac's friend Cyli had to work together to save him and Pinky learned to be less selfish, good development. The ghost gang as a whole have an episode where they have to give up a chance of getting their bodies back in order to save Pac.
But the thing is, the writers just can't commit to it. They're the GHOST gang, so they can't ever have their bodies back lest they become functionally unrecognizable to the brand (which may play into why we never actually learn much about their lives before they died). And if they get redeemed without ever being offered their bodies, people will get mad that they aren't being rewarded for their loyalty. So they're stuck always having to tow the line, getting occasional episodes where they inch closer to their much needed developments, but never actually being able to reach them. Clyde needs to learn to stand up for what's morally right, but is never put into a position where he does so on purpose and is rewarded for it. Inky has an episode where his morals vs his selfish desires literally splits him into two beings, but this is not fully explored at all and so Inky is never actually confronted about his flakiness.
Blinky has at least three or four character flaws that could be explored but the writers just kinda stop paying attention to him at all. Pinky needs to get over herself and reach a state where not being romantically involved with pac is acceptable for her, but she only ever gets as far as reluctantly accepting cyli as being pacs platonic friend and then continuing to be passive aggressive towards her anyways.
As it went on, they became less and less involved, and more of the episodes had them just warning Pac about things he was already aware of, and many attempts to help him further being more or less unsuccessful.
It gets so, so bad in season 2. They make a Blinky centric episode where they imply he may have known Pac's missing parents before the war and yet it's never actually acknowledged. It could have been such a great development considering how much the ghost gang had begun to stagnate at that point. It also makes it clear that Blinky has clear moral boundaries that he refuses to cross, which is ALSO a really good development. But... the episode was actually just a vague Kung Fu Panda ripoff where Pac learns to use his roundness or whatever, and the episode wasn't actually supposed to be a Blinky development episode at all, and so NOTHING that happens in the episode is EVER mentioned again.
By the mid point of season 2, the ghost gang is imploding. Clyde has devolved into useless comic relief, with none of the intelligence he exhibited in the first season and his pacifistic nature treated as nothing but a gag. Blinky starts going several episodes without getting a single line, having exactly one line of dialogue in exactly three episodes and having more than one line of dialogue in another three episodes out of this 26 EPISODE SEASON. As an indirect result of Blinky's lack of dialogue, Inky is forced to juggle both his own as well as Blinky's roles, making his character inconsistent.
Pinky in particular gets it VERY bad, because, since she was the one to have dedicated episodic character arcs, she starts straight up regressing. She finds out Betrayus and co plan to psychologically torment Pac by pretending to be his missing parents and she says nothing because Pac had the audacity to be happy during the holidays which meant he MUST be seeing someone else behind her back. In the very last episode of the series, she sabotages a budding relationship between Pac and Elli and does not even admit it when Pac is severely depressed. CLYDE ends up the one revealing the scheme, and that can't even be boiled down to his own character arc about doing the right thing because HE DID IT BY ACCIDENT!!!! Inky and Blinky have no significant role in this episode because both of their last lines were in the halloween/christmas episodes respectively so all they do is kind of look on and be there.
And then the show got cancelled.
There is so much miscellaneous complaints that I could go on for ages about. The episode where they split up two for two that should have been major since they usually act as one unit but it barely gets glanced over because it was done solely to avoid having to make new models for inky and blinky in the 8bit world if they weren't even going to do anything that episode. The episode where Pac forces the ghost gang to get involved with his school life drama and never gets called out for it despite the fact that he literally threatened to eat them over something that was out of their jurisdiction. The fact that the Wizard of Oz parody episode gave it's version of Blinky a more complete arc than the show proper did.
When people think about problems related to PMATGA they usually instantly think of the fart jokes and the fact that it was cancelled before getting a proper ending but. Man I am so angry about what happened to the ghost gang they really deserved better. Like the way it was shaping up towards the end it seemed to be approaching the idea of the ghost gang never getting their bodies back at all. Which would have been sad since the early episodes leaned heavily into their redemption which just gives the whole thing just an air of tragedy to it.
Like man, the ghost gang are like four out of five of the original Pac Man characters. You'd think they'd actually focus on them.
The first two episodes are actually pretty good as far as ghost gang goes so. I'd recommend that. You get to see them wearing little executioner hoods. They feel bad about having to go betray their new friends. It's fun.
Look what they did to the Ghost Gang!
They were screwed over!
They were fine imo
I don't know them
Neutral
Voting ended onJul 18, 2023
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