(Note: I'm shifting style a bit and offering more commentary and less recap. Let me know if I should switch back.)

It was pretty disorienting to see a good, old-fashioned Ghost Hunters fake-plumbing opening, with Jay and Grant pretending that, A., they have a camera crew follow them around while they fix air conditioners, and that B., they fix air conditioners. I mean, does Roto Rooter even do that? Never mind, rhetorical question. Kris Williams calls them up to let them know that they have a case at the Otesaga Resort Hotel in Cooperstown, but I'm still too distracted by the mechanics of this bit of nonsense to care. Which bit do they shoot first, Jay and Grant's, or Kris in the office? Do they memorize the script, or is it written down somewhere in that cramped little room? These are all questions which are, honestly, somewhat more interesting to me than the episode itself.

This investigation was notable largely for TAPS members claiming to see things the cameras couldn't. Nearly everyone on the team saw strange, shadowy figures running back and forth down the hallway of the fifth floor, but not a single one of them appeared on camera. One even supposedly popped up behind Amy Bruni when she was giving an interview about how she wasn't sure if the cameras were going to catch anything! Normally, these mysterious shadow figures appear just off camera, but in this case we get a full camera view of… nothing. They show us nothing on the laser grid to indicate any shadow, and other than the hunters' breathless narration, we get no indication that anything is going on whatsoever.

Oh, did I mention the laser grid? Of course, since GHI has started using a laser and a diffraction grating to make ghosts visible, GH couldn't be left out. However, their "grid" is, if anything, shoddier than the one on GHI and could easily roll out of place– basically a souped-up laser pointer. It seems to turn itself off quite easily (unless that's really the ghosts shutting it down on a regular basis).

We also get a new member: K. J. McCormick, apparently an old friend of Jay and Grant's. A little research reveals that he's got one year of an English degree and has a background in construction and real estate. According to Jay and Grant, he's been ghost hunting with TAPS for a while on the side. K. J. seems to occupy a vaguely Brian-shaped role, being quite happy to use the word "dude" the way I use "um". Plus, he seemed perfectly willing to see invisible shadow figures with the rest of them.

Another notable moment came when Kris and Amy did another reprise of the flashlight trick. At this point I'm not sure what's going on with the flashlights. Are they simply putting the flashlights down, waiting for one or both to turn on through vibration or temperature change, and then recording dialogue to match? Or is it more innocent: they cut out any non-performing flashlight segments? I guess there's the possibility that something spooky is involved, but if that's the case, why stick with flashlights? Certainly there are easier and more verifiable ways of registering a slight pressure. Why not put down a recording scale? Oh, that's right. TV.

Some of the directorial and editing choices in this episode bordered on the surreal. For example, as Kris crouches outside of room 585, listening to noises from the inside, we keep getting a shot of a cord running under the door. What is this shot supposed to represent? I kept thinking that Kris was going to enter the room and discover an ice machine or something attached to the cord, but the cord goes unexplained.

While chasing one of the shadow figures into room 590, Britt is standing halfway inside a closet when he hears a strange sound from behind him. Amy Bruni identifies it during analysis as her own name. That's not what I heard; instead I got a mechanical sound with two clicks. EVPs are, of course, extremely subjective, which is why they're useless as evidence.

Ghost Hunters is back. Strangely, they remain the SyFy Channel's flagship series. They've added a laser grid, a real estate salesman, and a lot of invisible shadows. What new drama awaits us for the rest of the season? Will we see another Collargate? More professional wrestlers? (We already know that they're going to have some Real Housewives.) Will we get more strange shots of cords running under doors? I don't know, but I'm strangely happy that we're back with the TAPS team we know, love, and love to hate.

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