IF YOU CAN’T BEAT THEM, JOIN THEM TO BEAT THEM?

Ghosts R Us

Original Air date: September 13, 1986

Writers: Len Janson and Chuck Menville

Director: Richard Raynis

Main Cast:

•      Lorenzo Music as Peter Venkman
•       Frank Welker as Raymond Stantz
•       Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler
•        Arsenio Hall as Winston Zeddemore
•       Laura Summer as Janine Melnitz
•      Frank Welker as Slimer

(Rating 3 of 5)

Summary: The Ghostbusters head to a chocolate factory that is being haunted by three ghosts.  When they arrive chocolate is being thrown about everywhere.  The workers are in a panic but they are happy to see the Ghostbusters show up.  Their pet ghost, Slimer, tries to eat most the chocolate and the Ghostbusters head into the factory to battle with the ghosts.  Inside the factory they find the ghost trio named Slug, Sledge, and Zunk.  The three battle the Ghostbusters but are beaten and trapped.

                After they return home from their mission they find Janine and each Ghostbuster gives her a box of chocolates that they got as a gift from the factory.  But when she opens them she finds they are empty because Slimer ate them all.  They get mad at Slimer and Peter threatens him by saying that if he screws up again then he is toast. Ray places the ghosts in the Containment Unit and they all go to bed.

Who are you going to call? The Ghostbusters are here!

                Slimer who decides to sneak a snack (or lots of snacks) but in order to avoid an awoken Winston he hides near the Containment Unit.  And sure enough he accidentally shuts it off.  Slimer manages to turn it back on again but enough time has elapsed for the recent entries to escape.  Slimer not wanting to be kicked out of the Ghostbusters’ firehouse never mentions the incident to the Ghostbusters.

                Now that they’re free the ghost family decides on revenge.  Slug comes up with a plan; he and Sledge take human form and decide to create their own ghost hunting company.  Zunk creates a bunch of hauntings that his ‘parents’ come to stop.  So it seems with every new haunting the new group called Ghosts R Us beat out the Ghostbusters.  With this they steal the faith of the city and threatened to put the Ghostbusters out of business. 

Ghosts R US

                The Ghostbusters are suspicious but as far as they can tell they seem to be legitimate ghost containing business.  Then they get a radio message from Janine who informs them that the containment unit is down three ghosts.  The Ghostbusters then know that their new competition is in reality their former prisoners and that Slimer is the one who probably released them.

                While the Ghostbusters are figuring this out Slug and his family go to the abandoned toy factory to recruit Slug’s old ally Turlock who they view as a powerful ghost who can help them challenge the Ghostbusters.  It turns out Turlock was chased out of by an even more powerful ghost who animates all the toys into a new body and threatens the ghost family.

                The Ghostbusters arrive to see the ghost family take off, and the Toy Ghost emerge.  With readings that are already off the scale, the Ghostbusters follow the ghosts to the Brooklyn Bridge.  They decided to split up and Egon and Ray took Ecto-2 out of the back and try to attack the Toy Ghost with it.  Peter drives Ecto-1 along the side of the bridge in a move that I don’t think is even physically possible, terrifying poor Winston, gets ahead of the Ghost family and they are caught when the just plan run into the trap.  In the battle with the Toy Ghost Ecto-2 is heavily damaged but Egon programs it to self-destruct.  Slimer making up for his earlier error slimes the bridge cables that the Toy Ghost is trying to climb.  The Toy Ghost slips and falls in the water, and in its fall it knocks over Ecto-2 that then explodes in the water destroying the Toy Ghost.   

Evil Toy Ghost

My Take: Not bad for a first episode.  I usually hate first episodes because they typically use their time to introduce all the characters, but when you base your show on a movie there is no need to do that.  It is also a good concept to address: wouldn’t most ghost who were imprisoned by the Ghostbusters want revenge for their imprisonment? Slug and his family trying a very unique way; drive them out of business by making them appear irrelevant.

Victory for the Ghostbusters

                Now for so my stray observations:

•       Nice title, it’s clearly a play on Toys “R” Us, a place I was very much interested in when these episodes came out.
•       The normally destructive Ghostbusters.  When hunting the three ghosts at the chocolate factory Peter aims his particle blaster into one of the factory’s machines and manages to blow it up!  They got the ghost though so all’s well.
•        Slimer has somehow developed the ability not to have food pass through his body immediately after he eats it.  That’s good because he be an awful messy pet ghost have around if not otherwise.  How does he dispose of the food? Does it help him develop more slime?
•       Watching Slimer trying to sneak food around reminded me of when I was a little kid—back when this show was playing to be exact—and I would sneak a snack at night against my parents’ wishes.
•       With the Containment Unit goes down why aren’t there alarms in other places in the firehouse besides a containment room itself?  With all those angry ghosts in there you would think that they would want to know about it being down before it exploded.
•       Although Ghosts Are Us can beat the Ghostbusters to fake jobs that they created, shouldn’t the Ghostbusters still have some legitimate jobs to do?
•        Egon’s PKE meter was able to do a great analysis of the ghost in the beginning of the episode, yet when he sees them posing as Ghosts R Us he was only able to determine that they had a ghost in their trap not that the two were ghost themselves. Why?  Maybe some ghosts have the power to avoid or partially conceal their ghost signatures.
•        I love the fact that it was Janine who noticed that there are some ghosts missing from the Containment Unit, it was during the middle of the day!  Don’t they check that thing first thing in the morning?
•       When the ghost family looks for Turlock they refer to him as a Class 7 ghost and know how powerful that makes him.  So the ghosts use Ghostbusters classifications to define themselves?
•        The Ecto-1 scene was very funny.  The look on Winston’s face in response to Peter’s crazy driving made the whole scene.
•       “So Egon have you gotten your Pilot’s license yet?” Ray.  Egon, “No.” Then proceeds to fly Ecto-2.
•        Having watched this as a kid I know sometimes Ecto-2 get destroyed.  But how many times do they have to rebuild it?
•        It was the ending of this episode that prevented it from being a four.  I was going to make it a four up to that point, but the ending was just really weak.  We have this Toy Ghost who was supposed to be over the charts powerful and yet they managed to destroy him just by setting Ecto-2 to explode nearby.  This doesn’t make any sense.  Ghosts are mostly invulnerable to traditional weaponry.  Since they’re already dead you can’t shoot, stab, burn etc. Why would an explosion destroy a very powerful ghost?  If that’s the case if they are having a mass escape from the Containment Unit again maybe they should put a big bomb along the side of it as a precautionary.  I can’t give points when you ignore the rules of your own pre-established universe.

Although the episode could use improvement it was not a bad start to the series.