Ghosts S01e06 | Openh264

Fans of Ghosts who enjoy meta-humor, and anyone who’s ever cursed a bad video codec. Skip if: You prefer the historical ghosts over digital ones — or don’t know what H.264 is.

Rating: ★★★★☆ (4/5) The Premise After a lightning storm causes a power surge at Woodstone Mansion, Sam’s laptop starts acting strangely. When she tries to stream a vintage horror movie for movie night with the ghosts, a corrupted video codec (the “OpenH264” of the title) accidentally projects a ghost from the digital realm into the house — a sentient compression artifact named “Artie,” who speaks in blocky pixel glitches and can only be seen when the video bitrate drops. What Works This episode leans into the show’s creative absurdity. Artie (guest-starring Brett Goldstein with a robotic monotone) is a hilarious one-off antagonist, constantly trying to “optimize” the ghosts’ afterlife by deleting “redundant data” — like Flower’s memories of the ’60s or Thorfinn’s storm stories. The B-plot, where Jay tries to fix the laptop by following a sketchy online tutorial, is peak physical comedy.