The Final Episode #85: The Real Ghostbusters (1986 - 1991)

 

The Real Ghostbusters was the first thing I was ever truly obsessed with. It was probably the first tv show I ever cared about actually watching (at like a year old) before that all I would watch were tv commercials. They were quick and bubbly and fun. My parents had to go around watching commercials to keep me amused. I think that's very funny. Anyway The Real Ghostbusters was not only my introduction to the Ghostbusters franchise but the first toy line. Well it was  them or Care Bears. I had a ton of Care Bears as a young boy. I didn't need every Care Bear (even though I probably had 98% of them) but if you slapped a Real Ghostbusters thing on a product I HAD to have that mother fucker. This was up until I believe the family dog, Teek ate them all when I went to kindergarten in 1990. It was a sad day. I was more into TMNT at that point but man I still liked my Ghostbusters. I wish I still had them. I wish I still had all my toys. Stupid garage sale where I sold them all for peanuts.

Uh, yeah, The Real Ghostbusters would leave our tv screens in 1991, but YTV or Teletoon or maybe even both would show reruns of the show during their Halloween month stuff. The thing is they only ever showed the first two seasons of the show. Like I would get the internet and find out that Dave Couiler took over for Lorenzo Music (more on this later) and I do not remember this ever happening. Ever. I was amazed the show lasted as long as it did and was completely overhauled. To me Lorenzo Music was ALWAYS Peter Venkman. No Full House dipshits ruining the show.  The reason for these changes was a consulting company called Q5 that ABC went too for some reason. They were hired to "improve" the show but since consulting companies are all ran by braindead morons who should not have jobs they fucked the show in the ass. You remember the character of Janine, a saucy tough noo yawk lady. Yeah well in the Q5 episodes she was soften down to care about the Ghostbusters like a mother. She became a boring mother like figure. They also ruined the character of Peter Venkman. He went from a hilarious deadpan dude to a complete fucking idiot goober. Thanks alot Dave Coulier you dumb shit.

The worst thing that happened was the change in stories. J. Michael Strayzckisfnid whatever the hell his name is pretty much left the show because of these changes and ho boy you can really tell. The original two series had fun inventive stories involving really cool ghosts. One involved the Boogieman and how the Ghostbusters had to stop him. They even go to his realm and its a cool M. C. Esher? I don't know how to spell his name either. I should look this up but the two episodes I watched of the later seasons soured me so badly that I just want this thing over with. Anyway the Boogieman is a great design, the story goes great from point a to point b. It had several funny jokes. The other first season I watched was the one with Sam Hain. They misspell Sam Hain (just like Dr. Loomis in Halloween II) but the same thing can be said there. A great story that isn't all over the place and has a great villain with a great design (35 years later and my old man still mentions this guy.) 

So what happenes to the Ghostbusters in later episodes. Well one of them was so fucking stupid it literally felt insulting to watch. It was so dumb that even when I was 5 I would have been like "wow that was fucking dumb" and I was not a particularly smart 5 year old. The Ghostbusters are forced to move and they are powering down one of the traps and Peter comes in and acts like a big dumb Dave Coulier child and takes one of the traps out of the thing and they travel through time to the 1950s. Yes, apparently the traps can bring you through time. Yep, not something they just threw together at the last moment before calling it quits. They stop some random ghost and go back in time. Also make some dumb 1950s jokes. Oh, yeah Ray and Slimer were all YEAH THE 1950S WERE GREAT AND TOTALLY PERFECT in front of a black dude. I'm pretty sure Winston was thinking "Jesus christ you goof". The second episode from the later seasons I watched was another dumb episode where they fight Ghosts that look like the Simpsons and have the names of the Bundys (you know from Married With Children. Weird how they even got the okay to make fun of those shows because they were the controversial "HOLY SHIT HOW CAN YOU DO THIS" TV shows of their time and It's also just weird to realize they were all on the TV with new episodes at the same time.)

I literally left this in a draft format for a day because the two episodes from the later seasons were so fucking dorky that I really didn't want to discuss the Final Episode, but I had to do it for the Real Ghostbusters and also the fact that I wrote all of this. Here's an neat-o fact, did you know that Arsenio Hall the guy from Coming to America, voiced Winston for the first few seasons? Cool right! Also before I start I just gotta bitch about the animation. The animation in the first two seasons was so damn good you could eat of it. I'm pretty sure it's those rascals from TMS Entertainment and Toei Animation to some random South Korean animation houses because DIC was completely run by Andy Heyward at this time and was being called "Do it Cheaper" by many many many people within the animation industry.

I've put it off as long as I can, because baby, I got other stuff to write about. I want to get four more articles out before we get to Halloween. And that's only 3 days away! So let's do this bitch! Thankfully it's much much less dumber than the other two episodes and just clearly "we have run out of ideas so lets just do this" kinda thing. Yeah I'll give them credit that I'd be hard pressed to find out things for the Ghostbusters to do after 140 episodes and that's not even including the fact that they were still probably listening to those Q5 jackoffs. It wasn't easy for the two writers of this episode Richard Mueller and Jules Dennis, who's other credits include X-Men Evolution, the apparent Starship Troopers cartoon that existed (I am baffled at this just like you), Street Sharks, The Wizard of Oz cartoon, Mighty Max, Batman the Animated Series, and oddly enough Married...With Children. I didn't think I'd be mentioning that show twice in this damn article. 

Enough dilly dallying what is this episode about damnit?  Well my dear fellow it's about bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. Yep. Giant ones. It all starts out with Peter Venkman having a dream about a Praying Mantis trying to eat him. Yep it's one of those later season episodes that just shows us a character having a trait that they never showed ever before. I'm not an expert on this show like I was when I was 6 but I'm sure something related to bugs had to come up before. Yeah I know this is a continuity thing that I usually don't rag on but something kinda bothers me that yeah this is the final episode and we just don't care to check if he didn't care about bugs before hand because now he does. (They really did a more show don't tell kinda thing for at least the episodes of the first two seasons that I can remember) He's awaken to Ray getting an ant farm and he complains about how much he now hates bugs.

So we then change scenes to Winston and Janine in a museum. Janine talks about how she was Cleopatra in another lifetime because they are at an Egyptian museum. The curator talks about some random Egyptian Bug god that would you know it is just a slight redesign of the praying mantis that was in Peter's dream. The South Koreans aren't trying that hard for the final damn episode of your cartoon, Yankee! So the curator dude just tells them all about the crystal that gives the bug god his power all those years ago. You know the way they Ghostbusters defeated the ghost of the episode was totally done better before hand. You just had to be a barely sentient person who could tell when something was important but nah it's just time to completely spell it out. It's the Final Episode. No one cares! 

So the stupid asshole curator goes "Yeah I'll press this button on this magical beetle that was the only thing left behind by the Bug God." Yeah that'll work out. Work out in the fucking Bug God's favor. Fucking earthquakes start happening and when they start every bug in the city is going to the park. And they are getting bigger. This is a job for the Ghostbusters of the Real variety! They get into the Ecto-1 AND Ecto-3 (the Helicopter thing). I mean this might be the Final Episode but it doesn't mean you can't get that one last chance to show the kiddies these new toys! Peter gets captured by some spiders and brought down to the Bug God to become a human sacrifice because that will power up the crystal faster or something? I guess. Anyway the Ghostbusters have to get past all the ghosts and unlike Peter they don't know that you can just blast them and they'd turn back into mini bugs so they go steal a truck full of honey and spray it all over the ground. 

They all go down underground including I was pretty damn sure Janine, but she's above ground. I'm not going to complain really because of an animation error, even if the best animated shows of this time had errors so I'll just move on, but yeah this is one of the episodes where Janine gets in on the action which was always pretty cool. It kinda upped the stakes for the episode. At least in the first two seasons. So Janine goes YEAH THATS THE CRYSTAL THE CURATOR WAS TALKING ABOUT to point it out for the really stupid children, like Little Claw.  The Ghostbusters realize Peter is being brought above ground so they just go above ground again. They start shooting the giant mantis but Janine tells them to shoot the crystal so they do just that. The Bug God yells about it being 3,000 years and how it was TIME NOW! THERE WAS TIME NOW! Then he turns into sand and explodes, the bugs turn back into their small selves and the pyramid they were building out of junk explodes too. I guess that junk got magical the second the crystal touched it.

We then get Peter bitching about bugs and Egon and Ray tell him how the planet cannot exist without bugs. He calls them all stupid smelly and ugly (not quite like that but I don't care at this point) and then a monarch butterfly lands on his nose and he ends up believing it to be so beautiful that he cannot stop looking at it. It's actually pretty funny due to the cornball animation. Ray and Slimer go well this looks like the beginning of a beautiful friendship and I beg to differ because the show is ending and well I'm pretty sure Peter Venkman appears on the spinoff Extreme Ghostbusters and does not seem to give a flying fuck about butterflies in that show.

FINAL VERDICT: When going into this I did not expect that I would enjoy the silly ass Final Episode of the Filmation Ghostbusters show over the Real Ghostbusters, but here we are.  I still stand by my opinion that the Real Ghostbusters was a great cartoon, but only on the strength of the first 78 episodes in the first two seasons (the second season was syndicated so that's why there's 78 episodes. The Real Ghostbusters was one of two shows that I can think of that was syndicated AND on Saturday Morning. The other one was TMNT. Weird huh?) Anyway thats the end of this giant ass piece of work.