JANINE ACTUALLY GETS A DAY OFF!

Janine's Day Off

Original Air date September 14, 1987^[1]

Writers: Michael Reaves and Steve Perry

Director: Dale Schott

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 5 of 5)

Summary: The episode begins when Janine is taking a woman named Lois, who is from a temp agency, on a tour of the Firehouse explaining to the temp the details of her job.  She lets Lois know that if she has any problems to find Ray or Winston not Peter.  She doesn’t say Egon because he is going with her to have a meal with her family.  At the moment Egon is working with Winston on their inter-dimensional portal that is going to be the cause of this episode’s problems when Slimer accidentally turns it on.

Now look at this annoying little magic imps.

                The dinner with the Melnitz family goes as expected.  Egon has no social skills and Melnitzs really aren’t much better.  Egon gets hit in the face with a water gun from Janine’s younger brother or nephew.  Egon also takes some things from his plate to study in his lab.  It’s hard to say who Janine is more embarrassed by.

Oh, this is embarrassing for Peter.

                At the Firehouse Peter is trying to make the moves on Lois when they get attacked by magical Imps.  The Imps are more of a nuisance than a problem but Peter decides to impress Lois with his ghost catching abilities. He blasts the imps but that causes them to multiple into more imps, Peter ups the power and blasts again but the multiplication increases as well.  As the imps continue to cause problems, the three Ghostbusters decide they need to call Egon. 

Yeah, these guys are getting annoying.

Egon and Janine are relieved to be called away from her family.  By the time they arrive however Peter had decided to reverse the polarity on his proton pack.  This ends up merging the imps into one giant demon who then goes on a rampage.  The Ghostbusters chase after him, while Lois, who was hiding in the basement accidentally turns on the inter-dimensional machine letting more other dimensional ghosts on the loose.  The new ghosts get a proton pack and start chasing Janine and Lois.

Now Peter has really screwed up.

Janine finds the proton pack that Peter had altered the polarity on and used it to cancel out the ghost’s blasts from their proton pack.  The ghosts get scared and surrender.

And we're not going to get paid for this.

The Ghostbusters lure monster to the Power Plant where Peter and Winston distracted it while Ray and Egon work on powering a proton pack through the power grid making it strong enough to effect the monster.  Once they fully powered up they were able to blast and trap it.

Well we only have the receptionist to deal with, how hard can that be?

When they got back they found Janine letting them know that she was going to take another day off to make up for her lost day off and Lois was quitting.  The Ghostbusters were left by themselves to fix the firehouse.

My Take: I really enjoyed the episode.  Egon and Janine going to meet her family was great.  In some ways it became clearer to me why she likes Egon despite his social inabilities.  Her family doesn’t have a lot of social skills.  For example when the boy starts squirting Egon his parents don’t do a thing to correct him.  Janine’s standards for social skills must be low.

                I love the way Janine is handled in this episode.  She comes off in this episode much better than either “Janine’s Genie” or “Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster.”   As I stated in those reviews while I don’t expect Janine to be an expert Ghostbuster on par with guys I do expect her to be competent.   In this episode she clearly is when she leads Lois to safety by seeking out the altered pack and using it to defeat the invaders. This is how I want her to be written.

                Now for my stray observations:

·         So finally Janine gets a day off.  That is so rare they normally work her morning, noon, and night.  Her leaving was such a big deal though they had to get a temp to cover her responsibilities for one day!  What will they do tomorrow?

·         Inter-dimensional gateway, has that ever been a good idea on this show?

·         Poor Peter! You try to impress a girl and look what happens you make a bigger monster.

·         Door locks? No let’s have anyone go near the Inter-dimensional portal if they want to.

·         What happened to the ghosts who surrendered to Janine? Containment Unit or back to the portal?

Best Janine episode yet.

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[1] Listed original air dates for entire syndicated season may not be correct.