by Nelson
Last year for Christmas in July, my wife gifted me with a 10-disc DVD set of The Real Ghostbusters cartoon series. I love Ghostbusters, regardless of the format they’re in. Live action, cartoons, video games, toys…if there are four guys wearing proton packs and busting some heads in a spiritual sense, then I am totally on board for it. So this present was a complete success and yet another testament to the fact that I’ve doubtlessly got the best wife a man could ever ask for.
Since getting the set, I’ve tried to make a point to start most of my days with an episode of Ghostbusters. By and large, it’s been an amazingly nostalgic experience. It’s crazy how easily I can get drawn into the episodes and completely forget the fact that I don’t have to get in the car with my mother and let her drive me to school once the credits roll.
Now that I’ve finally reached the end of the last disc of the set, though, it’s time to reflect on some of the episodes that have stood out the most to me as an adult. No particular order ‘cause I don’t do lists, but these are the episodes that I loved the most this time around:
Dairy Farm
In this episode, the Ghostbusters are terribly overworked, and Ray suggests that they all enjoy a vacation on his cousin Sam’s farm. Peter doesn’t like the idea until he realizes that Cousin Sam is actually Cousin Samantha. Peter is instantly pleased with this development, but sadly, there won’t be much time for Venkman’s wily charms to lay claim to yet another young woman’s heart, as Samantha’s farm is haunted by its former inhabitants. The fun twist in this episode is that the ghosts just want to keep working the farm like they did when they were alive, which probably explains how Ray’s cousin has been able to single handedly run her farm up until this point. As a kid, I used to hate any episode that got the guys out of the city and out of their uniforms. As an adult, I get a kick out of getting to see the Ghostbusters doing non ghostbustery things and wearing normal clothes. It’s weird how our tastes get refined with age.
Three Men and an Egon
The Ghostbusters encounter some sort of time ghost in a clock store, and Egon gets caught in the crossfire. As a result, he begins to age backwards, regressing from man to infant in a few days. This is another one that I distinctly remember absolutely hating as a kid, probably because I couldn’t stand seeing Egon subjected to a fate right out of an R.L. Stine book. As an adult, though, this episode is a blast. I’m appalled that it took me making it to my 30s before I realized that a teenage Egon who listens to “Rap Shakespeare” and invents acne destroying helmets is right up there with the twelve funniest things ever conceived. There’s also a certain level of irony in seeing Louis tasked with taking care of a Baby Egon, given that Louis totally hooked up with Janine when Egon wasn’t looking in Ghostbusters II.
If I Were a Witch Man
This episode had so much going on that I couldn’t believe it somehow managed to all get resolved in the span of twenty minutes. Egon has a prophetic dream about a witch. The guys travel out of New York and learn about Egon’s witch fighting great great grandfather, Eli. Peter and Egon are forced to dress in drag and infiltrate an all-girls school. Egon gets possessed by a witch. Honestly, this really could have been the third movie. We’ve got some Spengler family history, some hilarious crossdressing hijinks, and the interesting revelation that the Spengler clan were all super fond of pompadours.
Robo-Buster
Janine’s lack of a love life is a common theme in the series. The series loves the gag of having Janine pine for a totally oblivious Egon. In this episode, though, Janine decides that if Egon isn’t buying what she’s selling, then she needs to move on. Unfortunately, she moves on to a character named Paul Smart, who is only interested in stealing the Ghostbuster’s ghost catching technology and using it for himself. So, after buttering Janine up and asking her on a date, Paul gets his hands on a ghost trap, and immediately cancels his date with Janine and leaves the scene. A few weeks go by, with Janine still fuming about her short lived romance, and then Paul re-emerges with Robo-Buster, the ultimate in ghost catching technology. Unlike the Ghostbusters “catch ‘em and store ‘em” business philosophy, Robo-Buster promises to be more efficient by catching and destroying spiritual entities. Matters get even more complicated when Robo-Buster demonstrates his effectiveness on Slimer. Robo-Buster is basically treated as an ED-209/Robocop hybrid, and Paul Smart is Dick Jones in the Old Man’s office. For her part in the episode, Janine is basically Murphy’s widow with just a dash of Lewis sprinkled in. It’s Robocop crossed with Ghostbusters, dammit. What’s not to love?
Live! From Al Capone’s Tomb!
This episode revolves entirely around Peter’s latest publicity stunt, hosting a live television special from the tomb of Al Capone. The whole thing is set up to be a sham, with Louis set to do a bad impersonation of the famous gangster when the clock strikes midnight, but things get complicated when the ghostly presence of Al Capone takes notice and teleports the Ghostbusters into the “spirit world” to deal with them. This winds up putting the guys in the middle of a full-on supernatural crime war between Capone and a rival set of gangster ghosts. I like the fact that Ghostbusters are mysteriously transported to a section of the afterlife that seems to only house 40s style gangsters. Additionally, Venkman’s characterization is just spot-on in this episode, even if you do have to deal with the less exciting vocal talents of Dave Coulier in the role.
Future Tense
When the Ghostbusters take care of a specter in an electronics store, the store gifts them with a huge TV entertainment system in lieu of a huge paycheck. Ray and Slimer are the only ones who are keen to take this deal, as they love watching late night movies like “The Incredible Radioactive Gerbil from Outer Space.” Unfortunately, the new TV set has a strange glitch that causes it to switch from regular programming to what proves to be prophetic visions of the Ghostbusters encountering one disaster after the other. Upon realizing that their shiny new TV keeps predicting doom for everyone, Ray and Slimer have got to convince the rest of the guys to believe them before it’s too late! The concept reminds me a lot of The Twilight Zone’s “A Most Unusual Camera,” except that we’re dealing with television set instead of a camera. It’s also worth noting that there are an awful lot of episodes that basically treat Ray and Slimer as the young sibling children of the somewhat unconventional Ghostbusters Family.
Mean Green Teen Machine
When the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles took the world by storm, a lot of kids threw down their proton packs, picked up nun chucks and sais, and never looked back. This is the episode of Ghostbusters that deals with that phenomena, as a totally tubular trio of pizza eating mutated reptiles ride a wave of slime into the Big Apple. Though they’re mostly just there to eat pizza, their antics quickly catch the attention of the Ghostbusters and put the two groups at odds. Things take an interesting twist when the Mean Green Teen Machines highjack Egon’s latest invention, a dream controlling device, and use it against the Ghostbusters. This episode doesn’t do much to hide the fact that it’s parodying the Ninja Turtles, and it also comes with the added bonus of getting to see Winston’s Star-Trek themed dream.
Camping it Up
Once again, the Ghostbusters are overworked and decide to go on a vacation. This time, though, they’re going camping. What’s interesting about this is that this is apparently a mandatory vacation for all employees. Even Janine comes along. I’ve heard of jobs that force you to attend team building exercises and things like that, but this just seems to be a standard camping trip. A mandatory standard camping trip. Maybe Janine just tagged along hoping that Egon would notice her pink shorts? Either way, I really loved this episode. From Egon’s wacky camping gadgets to Slimer eating the entire food supply by himself, everything relies almost entirely on the characters rather than supernatural tomfoolery, and I dig that. It’s a later episode in the series, so, by this point, you should absolutely love these characters and be totally game to spend twenty minutes watching them camp out in the woods. Oh and Bigfoot shows up, too. There’s that. Bigfoot’s presence, and the explanation behind it, wind up becoming the main plot of the episode, but these things are really just a distraction from the glory that is the Ghostbusters sitting around a campfire telling scary stories. Stupid me probably hated this one as a kid, too.
Ragnarok and Roll
Out of all the episodes I’ve looked at, this one is probably the only one you’re likely to find being mentioned elsewhere as one of the “stand out” episodes of the series, and for good reason. It’s one of the stand out episodes of the series. It does a masterful job of mirroring the live action films and wrapping a genuinely scary plot into an entertaining package that’s totally presentable to a younger audience. In this episode, a heartbroken young man named Jeremy dedicates his life to bringing the world to an end after his girlfriend, Cindy, dumps him. Jeremy manages to find a mystical old flute that, when played, awakens an ancient evil bent on consuming all of reality. It’s an interesting change of pace for the series, which usually pits the Ghostbusters up against one supernatural entity after the other. This time around, the big villain is a misguided human being who has to be convinced of the error of his ways rather than blasted with a proton stream, sucked into a trap, and put into a containment unit.
The truth is, I could keep going. There’s the episode where Peter finds himself playing a gameshow with The Devil, the one with the Boogeyman, the one with the Sandman……I didn’t even mention any of the Halloween specials for crying out loud. The beauty of The Real Ghosbusters is that, unlike a lot of its contemporaries, there was no real standard format for this show, no recurring villain coming up with one wacky scheme after another. Because of that, you never know what you’re in for from one episode to the next. From werechickens to towns made up entirely of warring factions of werewolves and vampires, this cartoon truly had no limits.
Doubtfire 