NEWS REPORTERS SUCK IN THE GHOSTBUSTERS UNIVERSE

Egon on the Rampage

Original Air date: December 8, 1987^[1]

Writer: Marc Scott Zicree

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 3 of 5)

Summary:  A group of TV news reporters are looking for a story to report or to create stop by the Ghostbusters' station.  They break into the firehouse and interrupt one of Egon’s experiments.  Egon decides to show them his experiment anyway.  The experiment is to see if instead of containing ghosts in their Containment Unit they can just send them back to the netherworld by opening a portal to it.  The reporters start randomly pressing buttons this allows a demon to escape the netherworld, steal Egon’s body, and send his soul to the other dimension. 

Demon in Egon's body causing it to hulk!

                Egon’s body hulks out then he begins attacking everything and runs loose in the city.  Looking at Egon’s notes on soul swapping the three remaining Ghostbusters have a limited time to fix this.  Peter goes to the alternate dimension to look for Egon’s spirit.  To Peter’s anger a reporter follows him, and while searching they find that the ghost Egon sent here in his experiment doesn’t like the place and wants to be put back in the trap.  Peter agrees if he can tell him where Egon’s soul went, the ghost points him in the right direction and then jumps in the trap.

Peter saving Egon's flat soul.

                Egon’s body is trashing the news studio, how ironic.  Ray and Winston, who had been following Egon in the Ecto-1 with the reporters, get Egon’s body to chase them.  While this is going on Peter finds a demon using Egon’s soul as a trampoline.  Peter blasts it away and collects Egon’s carpet shaped soul.  Peter calls Janine who brings them back with the device but the trampoline loving demon follows them back.  The Ecto-1 returns and Egon’s body runs into his soul restoring Egon. The demon who took his body ran into the monster who had been using the soul as a trampoline and both Egon’s tormentors went back into the other dimension.  Peter grabs the reporters’ microphone and ends their report.

Demon out, Egon is back!

My Take: Zicree wrote this episode to be a critique on the news media in the 1980s.  I really wish he focused on just making a Ghostbusters episode and left out the social commentary.  With less than half an hour to tell your story trying to mix in a social critique means you end up with a half-ass episode and half-ass commentary.  I was never able to take the critique seriously because it struck me as just a silly parody, and it took away from the whole Egon possession that should have been the substance of the episode.

                Now for my stray observations:

·         Boy, is Janine strong or what.

·         Of course Egon had notes on accidental soul switching!

·         How did the reporters get in the Ecto-1?

·         Now that I am thinking about it, opening up inter-dimensional gateways is always a bad idea.  When was the last time that went okay?  The Ghostbusters are always dealing from the fallout of these type of things they don’t need to create them.

·         Janine was a little out of character, she should have been more worried about Egon.

·         The Egon trampoline was funny.  But why was Egon's soul like that?

·         Egon’s was a little too easily fixed but that goes back to the original problem with the episode.  

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