STRANGE WAY TO TAKE A VACATION

Transcendental Tourists

Original Air date September 9, 1989  

      

Writers: Len Janson and Chuck Menville

Director: Charles Grosvenor

Main Cast:

• Dave Coulier as Peter Venkman
• Frank Welker as Raymond Stantz
• Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler
• Buster Jones as Winston Zeddemore
• Kath Soucie as Janine Melnitz
• Frank Welker as Slimer
• Rodger Bumpass as Louis Tully

(Rating 3 of 5)

Summary: A ghost family shows up in South Dakota for their once a century vacation.  They find the place overrun with people so they decide to scare them away.  At this point Winston, Peter, and Slimer have arrived for their vacation.  They see people leaving in hurry but Ghostbusters aren’t afraid. They go ahead anyway figuring they would just ignore any ghosts as they weren’t being paid to care. 

Want to hunt fish not ghosts!

When the ghost family find out they are here they try to scare them away.  The ghosts don’t succeed at scaring them but they do succeed in annoying them to the point they grab their proton packs to declare war.  As the two Ghostbusters and the ghost family were about to go at it Slimer and the youngest member of the ghost family, Scabitha, fly in the middle and announced they were had become friends and didn’t want them to fight.   

Slimer's new friend. 

So the two groups made peace and spent the rest of their vacation together a ghost family with some Ghostbusters. 

My Take: This episode is proof that the Ghostbusters don’t attack random ghosts, just ones that cause harm, and this episode also proves that if you do cause harm maybe the Ghostbusters will get over it if you help them have a cool vacation. 

                Now for my stray observations:

• The Ghost Family is surprised to learn there are human in their normal vacation spot.  Don’t they realize this use to be a mining town?  It must have been a lot nosier in 1889.  The events in Deadwood were only ten years before that. Not to mention Native peoples in previous centuries.
• Scabathia sounds like Lil in Rugrats!   
• I like how Peter and Winston just decided to ignore the ghosts at first.  After all they weren’t on the job.  And as it turns out some ghosts are nice.
• The Mt. Rushmore singing scene was funny. 

The Ghostbusters always have an interesting vacation.