How ruffles ignited a feud between Isaac Higgintoot and Alexander Hamilton on ‘Ghosts’
A man with curled hair wearing a brown suit and ruffled shirt stands behind a man in a dark suit and ruffled shirt.
The feud between Isaac Higgintoot (Brandon Scott Jones), left, and Alexander Hamilton (Nat Faxon) comes to the fore in Thursday’s episode of “Ghosts,” titled “Alexander Hamilton and the Ruffle Kerfuffle.”
Alexander Hamilton: founding father, prolific writer, super invested in the U.S. currency … ruffle thief?
If Thursday’s episode of the CBS comedy “Ghosts” is to be believed, history’s true rivalry wasn’t between Hamilton and his dueling partner, Aaron Burr. It was between Hamilton and an otherwise forgotten fighter for the American Revolution: Isaac Higgintoot (Brandon Scott Jones), who is one of the titular ghosts now “living” in an upstate New York manor, where the show is set.
The offense? Hamilton (played by Nat Faxon) took the stylish new shirt ruffle that Isaac had ordered from the haberdashery. And Isaac’s lack of an appropriate neck accessory made him the laughingstock of a dinner party at John Jay’s house the night they were meant to sign the Declaration of Independence.
Isaac’s perhaps one-sided feud with the man who became the face of the $10 bill has been part of “Ghosts” lore for all of the show’s four seasons. And it’s not super surprising that he holds a grudge; being a paranormal confined to the same acreage for more than 200 years gives you a lot of time to ruminate. But the impetus for the disagreement wasn’t made clear until this episode, aptly titled “Alexander Hamilton and the Ruffle Kerfuffle,” which is written by John Blickstead and Trey Kollmer and directed by Richie Keen.
To get to the bottom of this ghost’s story, The Times spoke with Jones, Faxon and “Ghosts” showrunners Joe Port and Joe Wiseman.
“Ghosts” has toyed with depicting actual people from history before — Neil Crone, who played Benjamin Franklin in an earlier episode, also appears here — but this is the first time the show has given a real person from history a major storyline. Because the public perception of Hamilton is so positive, especially after Lin-Manuel Miranda’s blockbuster biographical musical, Port and Wiseman say that if they were going to do this story, they had to dirty him up a little bit.
Although there’s one small “Hamilton” reference for the Hamilfans, Port says that the “idea with this episode was to do a ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ version of a founding-father story.”
