THE GHOSTBUSTERS GO ON VACATION AND FORGET HOW TO THINK

Guess What's Coming to Dinner

Original Air date October 27, 1990

Writer: Jules Dennis

Director: Raymond Jafelice

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:  When the Ghostbusters are on vacation a family of ghosts moves in and redecorates.  They throw out all the Ghostbusters' equipment out because they don’t understand why someone would have so many leaf blowers.

Using a leaf blower!

                When the Ghostbusters get back they get in an argument with the ghost about who owns the place, but there is little the Ghostbusters can do because they left all their equipment at home.  Since the dad ghost told them they threw away their stuff, the Ghostbusters go to the junk yard to find it.  When they get back the Containment Unit is starting to come apart and ghosts are getting out.

When you start letting things out of the Containment Unit.

                After a final confrontation the Ghostbusters finally fix the Containment Unit and the family agrees to leave after Egon saved the ghost boy from having his ghost form turned inside out.  

My Take: How often do the Ghostbusters go on vacation and whether they’re on a farm, in the wilderness, or at Mount Rushmore they end up running into ghosts.  So why would they go somewhere and not bring at least three or four proton packs with them?  I am rolling my eyes the entire episode.       

                Now for my stray observations:

•       Okay ghosts have a system where they sell houses to haunt?  Don’t they do research?  Wouldn’t they know who the Ghostbusters are?
•       People trying to take over someone’s house when they go on vacation is a real life problem.  Don’t read about it unless you want to get mad.
•       Why didn’t the more powerful ghosts make a run for it when the Containment Unit was open?
•        Also a group comes to firehouse takes over the place, nearly destroys the Containment Unit and Ghostbusters let them go?  Why, so they can take over someone else’s house?  These are problem ghosts that you shouldn’t feel bad busting.

One of the bad episodes.

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.