My Best Friend Is Invisible/TV episode

"My Best Friend Is Invisible" is the second episode of the third season of Goosebumps TV series, and the forty-sixth episode overall. It premiered on Fox during the Fox Kids block on September 8th, 1997.

Cast

 * Jon Davey as Sammy Jacobs
 * Dalene Irvine as Roxanne
 * Darcy Weir as Brent Green
 * Ted Simonett as Norman Jacobs
 * Arlene Mazerolle as Beverly Jacobs
 * Vickie Papavs as "Teacher"
 * K. Trevor Wilson as "Kid #1"
 * Kamil Orzechowski as "Kid #2"

Plot
At night in a dark house, Sam and his friend Roxanne are looking in on Sam's parents who are doing experiments in the basement of their house. The two sneak out and check out Hedge House, a house in the neighborhood believed to be haunted. Sam has reservation on exploring this house, but Roxanne is insistent they check it out to catch a ghost on camera for a school project. Once they enter, Sam doesn't see a glove drawing a smiley face on a dusty mirror behind him. Sam and Roxanne move deeper into the house and hear strange noises coming from all over. The two see a squeaky cart rolling towards them with a note on it that says “I’m ready for my close up.” Sam and Roxanne head into a room where Roxanne see another notes that says “Boo” but Sam sees a horrible clown face floating down at him.

Back at Sam's house, Roxanne has the clown mask Sam saw at the house, and teases him with it. Sam goes to sleep that night, but it awoken by noises in his house. Thinking it is his parents, Sam explores the house to see windows open and things moving by themselves. A door opens to his parents’ lab in the basement, and Sam finds his father inside. His father says that he left the windows in the house open, and is working on an experiment to “see things that are hard to see.” When Sam heads back to his room, his room is in shambles, and he calls Roxanne to say that he thinks something followed him home from Hedge House.

The next day, Sam is in his living room with his parents asleep on the couch, and when lightning flashes, they suddenly disappear. Sam tries to find them, but strange things are happening in the house and he runs to his bedroom to hide. He locks the door but sees things moving in his room. His closets doors open and a floating toy disappears into it. Sam goes to follow but see the floating clown mask again. He wakes up to find himself back in his room, but one of his toys moves. Sam stops the toy, but a voice tells him that they were playing with that. Sam talks to voice, and it reveals it is the ghost of the Hedge House, and it wants to be friends with Sam. Sam brings over Roxanne the next day to show off “Brent,” the ghost, to her, but Brent doesn't show himself. Roxanne gets mad and leaves. When Sam argues with Roxanne at school, he is called to the board to complete math work, and Brent appears to try to “help” Sam, but gets all of answers wrong. Sam blames it on a ghost. At lunch, two kids make fun of Sam for his ghost comment and Brent throws food at the bullies, getting Sam in even more trouble with the bullies. Sam tells Brent that they are not friends, and Brent say he is, in fact, is Sam's worst nightmare.

Later, Roxanne wishes to go back to Hedge House for the project, where Brent finally reveals himself to Roxanne. The two flee and Sam heads back to his house where Brent follows. Sam tells his parents a ghost is in the house, but they are concerned that something else has found its way into their home. Sam and Brent fight in Sam's room, and his parents run in with the device they have been working on. They shine it into a corner of Sam's room and show a person, not a ghost, is behind everything. His parents tell him Brent is a human, one of the last ones that hasn't been sent to a space colony when Sam's race of people landed on the planet two years ago. Sam and his parents turn around to reveal faces on the back of their heads, and laugh as they tell Brent not to worry.

Differences from the Book

 * Simon and Brutus are absent.
 * Brent does not mention why he does not make himself known to Roxanne; nor does Sammy offer Brent to be friends with Roxanne instead.
 * In the book, the aliens have tentacles and slimy skin. In the television adaptation, they look like humans and faces in the back of their heads.
 * The episode goes into more detail on Brent being one of the last humans on Earth. It states that the aliens invaded Earth and took most humans elsewhere and Brent was turned invisible so he could hide. The book did not go into detail on this.
 * The book ends with Brent being sent to a zoo as humans are an endangered species, while the episode ends the Sammy and his parents ganging up on Brent.
 * Sammy is just called Sam.
 * In the book, Sammy and Roxanne visit Hedge House much later, and Brent appears for the first time in Sammy's house. The episode starts with them visiting Hedge House and it turns out Brent was hiding out there, and he follows Sammy home.
 * In the book, Brent is up front about being an invisible person while in the episode he claims to be a ghost at first.
 * The episode does not feature the track meet.
 * The episode adds in a part where Brent messing with a bully.
 * The part where Roxanne tells everyone at school that Sammy is talking about an invisible boy is removed.

Home media
"My Best Friend Is Invisible" was released on DVD on September 6, 2005. The DVD also features the episode "An Old Story".

Trivia

 * This is the only Season 3 episode that originally aired with the Season 2 theme. Later, when the episode ran in syndication, the theme was corrected.
 * The media playing on the television when Sam wakes up is the Goosebumps episode, The Scarecrow Walks at Midnight.
 * Sammy has two Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures sitting on his shelf. They can be seen during the scene where Sammy and Brent first met in his room.
 * Hedge House was first Freddy and Cara's house and then Jeff and Kim's house with the inside redressed.