What it lacks is a sense of urgency. Sidney Poindexter has a detailed back story, a complicated home environment, a unique obsession and an unusual set of powers, but he’s not by any stretch of the imagination a threat. Nobody is ever in any danger, and the closest thing we have to a fight scene in the second act is Poindexter flailing uselessly at Danny, unable to land a punch.

The set-up is rather clever, and offers a great deal of potential. Danny is growing more and more frustrated at being picked on, and is starting to enjoy exploiting his new powers for what Tucker refers to as ‘Ghostly Get-Back.’ But in doing so, he has awakened the wrath of the Ghost of Locker 724, who has no cause to assume that Danny is one of the good guys. And there is no doubt, once Danny forces Dash to slam himself headfirst into his locker, dunk his head into a bucket of dirty water and throw a tray of food at Paulina, that our Ghost Boy has lost perspective. It’s almost a relief to see Poindexter enter the fray, before somebody gets really hurt.

Unfortunately, once the body-switch took place the story lost all focus. Instead of continuing his role as unlikely champion of downtrodden students (but using Danny’s powers instead of his own) Sidney just wandered into a lukewarm rehash of the “I just want to be popular!” plot from Attack of the Killer Garage Sale. The constant peppering of antique slang got old very quickly, and the “Save the Frogs” subplot hung awkwardly off to the side, trying desperately to get noticed. Compared to the seamless intertwining of plots in such episodes as One of a Kind and Maternal Instincts, this combination was a clunker.

I believe the show missed a great opportunity with Sidney Poindexter. Despite his nerdish behavior and unfortunate physical appearance, he really is a character of great potential. What viewer, having survived middle school, cannot identify with a teen who is so despised among his peers that he literally died of bullying? What viewer could not then sympathize with or even admire such a victim, who developed pinpoint-accurate powers of telekinesis and clairvoyance and then haunted the school where he died, defending others as miserable as he? And yet, Sidney was written for us to laugh at, not for us to pity or admire.

It’s easy to discount Sidney’s ghostly abilities because he is portrayed so crudely, but he actually has a quite remarkable skill set. After all, he managed to fight off a bully AND tie two shoes simultaneously—all from within his own locker. And Danny, however inexperienced at using Sidney’s powers, was able to locate Sam and Tucker on the football field and write them a message. What’s remarkable is that Sidney is apparently unable to use his powers in the mirror world, where he still casts himself in the role of helpless victim. I believe that the mirror “school” is Sidney’s personal purgatory, a mere figment of his own imagination. The students there have no ghost powers; but then, in that world, neither does he. But it seems that he escaped this trap, perhaps by virtue of ‘defeating’ the halfa, and in later episodes we see him functioning as a normal denizen of the Ghost Zone.

By: bluemoonalto

Rating: None given

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