THE GHOSTBUSTERS ACT LIKE SEXIST JERKS AND PAY FOR IT

Til Death Do Us Part

Original Air date September 30, 1989   

                  

Writers: Pat Allee and Ben Hurst

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 1 of 5)

Summary: To the shock of all viewers Janine is actually granted a vacation!  The Ghostbusters are interviewing temporary replacements.  The first applicant is an older and not very attractive woman named Mrs. Attelmeyer.  Winston, Ray, and Peter acted like the woman had a contagious disease so Egon got to interview her. 

The kind of girl you like until you find out she is already dead.

                Egon was getting ready to hire her when he was then pulled aside by the other Ghostbusters and vetoed.  They insisted he hire the other applicant.  A beautiful woman named Dixie who all the Ghostbusters, except Egon, immediately fall for.  The woman is so incompetent she can’t find “D” on the computer.  The rest of the guys go out of their way to try to impress her but it seems she has eyes only for Egon.  It becomes immediately clear to the viewer that Dixie is a ghost. 

The Ghostbusters after victory.

                She corners Egon and kisses him; this causes her brother ghosts, who come off as southern “Bubbas” to show up and announce they have to be married.  They steal the packs so they Ghostbusters can’t resist.  Since Dixie is a ghost that means Egon must become one too.  Egon agrees so long as he gets his last request to bake his own wedding cake.  There is an explosion and Egon “dies” and Slimer emerges, impersonating his ghost.  Slimer then simply annoys Dixie and her brothers to the point they get frustrated and leave. 

My Take:  I don’t identify as a feminist.  It’s not that I don’t support equal rights I do.  I just don’t like labels that are political and lead people guess my position on issues before I have a chance to explain them.  I also find the label overly broad in scope.  For example when you have people from Sarah Palin to Jill Stein both calling themselves feminists despite having nothing in common in political thought, to me the label loses something.  I am also the person who rolls my eyes when I hear, “Game of Thrones is sexist in how it treats women!”  All I want to yell is “Do even watch the show?”

                 Nevertheless, I was so disgusted by the way the Ghostbusters were acting in the beginning of this episode that I can't ignore it.  It wasn’t just because they wanted to higher the attractive unqualified woman over the qualified unattractive one. It was how they were treating her as if she had some sort disease that they might catch.  I was like “what is their goddamn problem?” Now I will acknowledge that Mrs. Attelmeyer did have some traits where there could be legitimate objections to hiring her.  For example her tendency to bark orders at Egon, even though he was the one interviewing her.  I can see why a business might hire a less qualified person who can get along with their fellow employees over a more qualified person who personality might be a problem.  However they make clear the reason they want Egon to hire Dixie is so they can all try to date her.  This is also very inconsistent with the way these characters have been portrayed around women that age in the past.

                To be fair the episode does show that their behavior was wrong and they did pay for it when it turned out the new hire was a ghost looking to kill Egon, but from that point the episode got worse.  I am sorry those pathetic “Bubba” ghosts should not have troubled the Ghostbusters so much.  In addition this is the second episode in row where the Ghostbusters don’t bust the ghost, instead they just trick or bribe them in order to leave.  What is up with that?  You are supposed to be the Ghostbusters maybe you should act like it?

    

                Now for my stray observations:

•       Janine actually gets a vacation?  I thought she wasn’t allowed to leave.
•       Notice they fell apart without her.
•       Why were they Ghostbusters concerned with the particle throwers being aimed at them? They weren’t connected to any packs.

  

  Egon's mom!

•       Egon’s mother isn’t acting like the mother described by Egon in Ghostbusters II, the one who didn’t believe in toys.  She also looks too much like him.  With have seen through past episodes that Egon greatly resembles his father’s family’s ancestors.  So why does he resemble his mother so much?  Is this an inter-Spengler marriage?  I knew they were closeted Targaryens.

So much wrong with this episode.