The Real Ghostbusters (1986-1991)

Starring: Lorenzo Music, Dave Coulier, Maurice LaMarche, Frank Welker, Arsenio Hall, Buster Jones, Laura Summer, Kath Soucie, and Rodger Bumpass
Grade: B

We were only two years removed from the iconic 1984 film, but the fans wanted more. No one can blame them either, as the Ghostbusters concept opened a litany of storytelling opportunities begging to be explored further. On top of that, the characters introduced while bringing said concept to life were too beloved to not have a continuation in some fashion. With this came the Ghostbusters‘ first foray into becoming a multimedia franchise, the creation of the animated television show The Real Ghostbusters. It was a well-received cartoon that breathed new life into Dan Aykroyd’s original idea and is partially responsible for the singular, one-off film becoming a full-on franchise lasting to this very day. The generation coming out of the 1980s speak highly of The Real Ghostbusters and for good reason. It shows the awesome potential of how far the series can go and the increasingly intriguing mythology surrounding the world our favorite characters find themselves in. Unfortunately, the series starts to lose its way about halfway through, and it started to become a chore to watch once the edges were softened because of corporate meddling in an effort to improve ratings. Even so, writers J. Michael Straczynski and Michael Reaves should not be faulted, as their work in putting together a weekly series behind Joe Medjuck and Michael C. Gross really honored the Ghostbusters franchise with imaginative episodes and antagonists, action-packed sequences that are what we always wanted out of the cinematic team and arguably haven’t gotten since, and an understanding and respect for the foundation laid out by the original creators and transitioning it seamlessly to a cartoon format for kids. Admittedly, it’s hard to keep that momentum for an entire run, which is why the show flamed out like it did.

The show’s basis should not be much of a surprise. Based out of Manhattan in New York City, New York, the Ghostbusters still consist of the beloved team of Dr. Peter Venkman (Music and Coulier), Dr. Egon Spengler (LaMarche), Dr. Ray Stanz (Welker), and Winston Zeddemore (Hall and Jones). Janine Melnitz (Summer and Soucie) is still their sassy receptionist as well. The biggest change is the inclusion of Slimer (also Welker). Because he’s the only ghost willing to sit still for them, he’s valuable as a test subject for Egon, so he’s kept in-house as a mascot for the group and becomes almost a pet. I understand how this show has made Slimer an important piece of 1980s pop culture and an adored figure in the franchise, but I honestly couldn’t stand the tub of goo, at least early on. He’s annoying and useless, and Venkman is the only one who acknowledges the fact. All Slimer does is eat and cause trouble in the firehouse station and tries to make everyone feel bad for him with puppy dog eyes after he’s rightfully yelled at. As the seasons move on and the show changes makes its aforementioned changes however, so does Slimer. As stated previously, the changes made midway through the cartoon’s run drastically change the energy, the humor, the thrills, the characters, and the action of the series. On the other hand, the one positive coming from all the studio interference is making Slimer sweeter and a bigger part of the team to make sense of his screentime. Personally, I wouldn’t have made him a part of the series in the first place, but Egon’s reasoning with all the scientific tests he takes on the ghost does make sense from a story perspective, as it allows the group to continue to improve on their weapons and devices and subsequently helping them figure out new ways to face off against other unknown entities. Once this point is hammered home and it’s understood that they need the little guy to attract the demographic watching, I can allow it for the sake of the cartoon. It’s just that their presentation of the famous green mascot pissed me off as much as did Venkman.

Obviously, I’m in the minority, but keep in mind that this is only my initial reaction to Slimer. Then, a strange thing happens. As the show gets worse and the aforementioned studio changes are made, Slimer gets better and does win everyone over. In the middle of the show, Slimer gets his own sub-series Slimer!, and it’s focused entirely on him with limited appearances from the Ghostbusters and a crop of new characters added. The animation budget is noticeably less, as all the Ghostbusters look less detailed as does Slimer. Strangely enough, Slimer even looks different in his own title sequences compared to the actual Slimer! episodes. It’s just a boatload of inconsistencies, but that seems to be The Real Ghostbusters‘ calling card once those structural changes are made. In Slimer’s defense, he does a decent job at carrying his own little episodes in a Looney Tunes-like way. The continuity gets increasingly confusing though because Slimer is a sly hero in his show, as he finds ways to defeat opponents like alley cat Manx, hulking dog Bruiser, and the too Inspector Gadget-like Professor Dweeb (Jeff Altman), but when it comes back to The Real Ghostbusters, he’s back to being this cute little idiot puppy. It’s like there’s two different Slimers within the show. This cannot happen because it only results in questions as to how it’s all connected. For instance, in Slimer!, he is like Jerry from Tom and Jerry and regularly finds ways to outwit or elude his opponents. On the other hand, there are episodes of The Real Ghostbusters post-Slimer! where Slimer is mad he’s not being driven in Ecto-1 to a job or finds himself trapped when it doesn’t make sense because he can fly, is transparent, and can fly through walls. A lot of the situations he finds himself in are completely avoidable if he just thinks, but this isn’t a problem in the Slimer! series where he’s a legitimate problem-solver. Since he acts so different and even looks different in his own series within the series, could it be that the style is be design as it’s seen through the perspective of Slimer? Is that why everything is much simpler in story and design, and why he’s the defined hero each time? No, that’s me giving the show a little too much credit to make sense of it all.

Really, the sub-series was just given a small budget. It’s either that, or it was given to different animators who tried to imitate the style in the most cost-effective manner possible.

Even so, you could argue that it’s all just a tad too much of the gluttonous green ghost, especially because the show itself becomes Slimer-obsessed once they realized the marketing potential of the character. Hell, the show is even renamed in Season Four as Slimer! and the Real Ghostbusters, which is almost disrespectful, though they make sense of it with Slimer’s increased role in the group and a noted toning down of his annoying tendencies. Had the show figured out who Slimer was from Season One, there wouldn’t have been any problems. Sadly, with the way the show progresses (and ironically devolves) the viewer can pinpoint exactly when the quality of the show went down. What started as a humorous, thrilling, relatively sophisticated cartoon with intelligent scientific writing to make sense of the strange happenings the Ghostbusters face, turns into a noticeably dumbed down version of the show, with less attitude at that. The moment begins right when Dave Coulier takes over as the voice of Peter Venkman in Season Three. Though his voice acting does sound more Bill Murray-like compared to Lorenzo Music’s lazy-sounding, Garfield-like delivery, the writing for the character becomes instantly less funny. His quips aren’t as clever, his reactions to the other characters don’t align with who he was previously, and he even loses a lot of his personality traits that made him a distinct character in the first few seasons. I don’t know if the scripts got worse or what, but the actual dialogue and humor loses its luster completely once Coulier takes over the lead role, totally wasting his serviceable impression of Murray. The Ghostbusters as a whole aren’t nearly as tough either once these changes are made. In the first couple of seasons, they are practically action heroes when it comes to battle and aren’t afraid of anything. They walk in fearless, and it makes sense for Venkman to throw in a funny joke in the heat of battle because that’s classic Venkman. They shouldn’t be scared because why would they be? They’ve seen it all! I liked this approach the most about the first couple of seasons, but again, it all changed. Later on, they regress as a collective, become startingly naive on a lot of occasions, and even start to be fearful of ghost appearances at times.

What?

Sitcom-like misunderstandings happen more often, and it doesn’t fit the continuity of the show because the characters shouldn’t be surprised at all of any strange happenings or things that characters point out to the four. Considering what they have been through, they should be suspicious of everything. An episode like “The Brooklyn Triangle” flat-out doesn’t make sense in that point of the show. The first thing they should assume is something spiritual at play. Yet, they waste half the episode trying to think of a logical solution as to why everything is lost. The same can be said about “Trading Faces” because they should know something is wrong with Slimer because he NEVER acts like that. Why have these scientists and relatively intelligent people gotten dumber? Most of the events of “The Copycat” would have never happened with the Season One versions of themselves, but Season Three is the difference-maker. There, they are fooled like a bunch of schoolchildren by a shapeshifter who takes turns impersonating them all to cause problems. It doesn’t make sense for things to go as far as they do though because the stark behavioral changes are so out-of-the-blue, any close-knit group of people would think something is up, never mind a few resident scientists. It’s like the writers got scared that the characters were too intelligent. If anything, they should get even smarter and be ready for anything by Season Three, but everything is dumbed down and it ruins the momentum of the show! At the same time, the character assassination of Janine going into Season Three was abominable! Considering how unimportant the character is in the first movie other than being an amusing supporting character for the Ghostbusters to play off of, The Real Ghostbusters do a great job at turning Janine into a big part of the show’s success, as she proves her worth on numerous occasions (Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream, Janine’s Day Off, Short Stuff, etc.) and foreshadows her own foray into ghostbusting like in Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire with two of the better episodes in the series with “Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster” and “Jailbusters“.

Though some of her better moments are sporadically found throughout the show, the Season Three changes RUIN her. They change her voice, they make her uglier (which is an odd decision), her general personality becomes less combative, and in turn lessens her distinct character traits. Despite all the great work they put into her character in the first couple of seasons, she’s devolved in every way and becomes just a regular receptionist. Sadly, she never recovers and never reaches the heights she did in the beginning of the show’s run. They actually don’t acknowledge it until Season Six’s “Janine, You’ve Changed“, which is insulting. That episode specifically is the second-worst of the entire show. Because of the show’s changes going into it, they make the already disrespected character turn into a further shell of herself. The once strong-willed, funny, tough Brooklynite is turned into a weak, sappy loser whose harmless crush on Egon becomes an obsession. Since Egon doesn’t pay attention to her advances, she doesn’t think she’s pretty enough and keeps asking for a supernatural entity posing as her fairy godmother to grant her wishes to improve her appearance. Not only is this sexist as hell and sends off a wildly negative message, but it also just doesn’t fit Janine. It’s so far apart from who she is that it’s flat-out disrespectful. Really, it does irreparable damage to her character arc and might be the biggest blunder of the second half of the show’s run. She even loses her “annoying Brooklyn accent” as Egon points out. Losing her accent doesn’t even make sense story-wise since she still lives in New York! It’s awful, and it might be the worst decision of the show’s run, especially when you consider how well they were doing with her character from the outset. What executive forced this change to fuck Janine up that badly? That’s what I want to know. As bad as this episode is, it’s still not the worst. That award goes to “Guess What’s Coming to Dinner“. Though the last couple of seasons start to tread water, it’s still passable entertainment. However, this episode in particular actually evokes anger because of how infuriatingly stupid and arrogant the ghost family is that takes over the firehouse station.

The Ghostbusters are gone on vacation, so a ghost realtor sells it to this ghost family thinking that it’s available to buy. The unexpected war happens when the Ghostbusters come back to see this family refusing to leave or listen to them in any way. The father’s continued antagonistic responses to anything that’s happening and refusal to understand how detrimental his actions are legitimately made me want to turn off the TV. At the very least, I thought I would get the satisfaction of seeing them being put into the ghost trap so they can fuck off for a lifetime, but they just drive off unscathed and the Ghostbusters are left to clean up the mess! Why would they let the most annoying characters the show has ever produced off scot-free? It shouldn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, but it just irks me to no end. Though the episode wasn’t necessarily bad, the dumbest episode by far was “Chicken, He Clucked” by a landslide. The plot was about a guy named Cubby who hates chickens so fucking much, he uses a trio of spell books to summon a wish-granting demon named Morgannan. Cubby is given the ability to make anything disappear or reappear by request, but he only asks for Morgannan to rid the entire world of chickens. Yes, you heard that right. I cannot make this up. It’s the only thing the character wants, and he was willing to go as far as summoning a demon to make it happen. Even Morgannan is flabbergasted at the request, but he acquiesces and sends all the chickens to a different dimension. Cubby sends the Ghostbusters there too when they try to intervene, so Morgannan helps them get out because he’s been consistently made fun of by all the other demons he works with due to Cubby’s outlandish chicken-hating request. With this, Morgannan brings the Ghostbusters back to New York to stop the guy. It’s so insanely stupid that it was enough to make you get nervous over what the rest of the series was going to be, as this plot is something so far out of left field that it makes the viewer think the writers have already run out of ideas in Season Two. Thankfully, this wasn’t the case.

Though admittedly, the solutions in the first two seasons did have a tendency to be redundant. It started to become comical how many times they figured that the way to stop an entity was to “reverse the polarity” on their guns. At one point, I guessed it as Egon said it and nodded to myself.

In addition, I’m extremely conflicted on Season One’s “Take Two” because of what the story implicates. The content of Ghostbusters II was directly affected because of The Real Ghostbusters, as there was somewhat of an effort to avoid contradicting the show and keeping things lighter as a whole. On the other hand, the show didn’t take this approach because this episode alone implies that the movie that started it all is fake, and these are in fact the real Ghostbusters. I don’t want to hear any sly comments saying, “Uh, yeah. It’s in the name”. No, the only reason the title of the show has “Real” in it was to avoid confusion with an unrelated show that came out the same year called Ghostbusters. The premise of the “Take Two” episode is that a movie (which is implied to be the 1984 classic) is being made on their exploits, and they are brought in as advisors to make it true to life. In effect, it undermines the entire franchise, which is totally unfair since Ghostbusters II was handcuffed to the show’s success and couldn’t branch out because they were forced to concede to the studio’s demands. The cartoon refusing to do the same is unbelievable. Venkman even says the names “Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis” out loud when looking at what actors will play them and jokes that they sound like a legal firm. It’s bullshit. The icing on the sourdough cake is the characters attending the premiere and cartoon Venkman makes fun of the live-action Venkman, you know, THE REAL GUY! I hated it. Aren’t we all supposed to be on the same team here? You don’t have to parody the movie just to prop the cartoon up! Is it supposed to be a continuation of the first movie or not? Even after watching the show, I still don’t know, mostly because of how different the characters are. For instance, Venkman is almost completely changed. He’s lazy, doesn’t want to be there, is all about money, gets into fits of rage because of Slimer (though this accurate), and shows no inklings of being a scientist whatsoever. At times, he’s just plain stupid when compared to Egon and Ray. However, in the movie, he’s just as intelligent, and he should be because he’s a PhD. He just doesn’t act like it compared to his friends. That’s the whole point!

The cartoon just took Venkman’s surface-level antics and ran with it, disregarding the root of the character to make him look like a conceded goofball. This was never Peter Venkman. It’s disrespectful to the screenplay Dan Aykroyd and Harold Ramis wrote and the performance of Bill Murray in the famous role.

As far off as his initial character description is, you at least still appreciate Venkman showing off a personality far different from the others to balance the action and humor of the show. Without him, the show could be too dry. When Venkman does show his heroic side and fights for his team unselfishly (The Devil in the Deep, Don’t Forget the Motor City, etc.), they are big moments. Unfortunately, the character gets substantially worse when Dave Coulier is brought in. In the later seasons, he’s buddy-buddy with Slimer despite flat-out hating him before, and there is no reason given for such a radical change seemingly fundamental to the show’s humor initially. A simple explanation of the two coming to a truce as long as they work together would have made a world of a difference, but Venkman suddenly treating Slimer like his best friend is too noticeable to not have an explanation. Again, in those first couple of seasons, he wouldn’t give the green bastard an inch and would regularly threaten to capture him until he was stopped by the others. This coupled with a brand-new tendency to turn into a “Let’s get ’em guys!” type of hero makes him frustratingly one-dimensional and tonally out of character. It couldn’t be further from who Peter Venkman is to his core, whether it be the early part of the show or the movies. Egon is portrayed relatively well, but I HATE the design of his character. His loopy, blonde, Elvis hairdo with a bonus rattail might be the worst decision ever made for a cartoon adaptation of a cinematic character. I don’t have to tell you this, but we know Egon looks NOTHING like how he looks in this show. My question is why they felt such a drastically stupid design change was needed. Though I appreciated the concerted effort they had in making his character so important to the Ghostbusters to where he arguably becomes the leader because of how intelligent he is and how serious he takes his job, I could not get over how fucking ridiculous he looked. There is not a single iota of Harold Ramis in his look. The only thing they got right was the voice acting work of Maurice LaMarche who did an excellent impression of Ramis’s performance.

The design of Ray didn’t look at all like Dan Aykroyd either, but it does get points for at least retaining his trademark enthusiasm about the job and predicting what Aykroyd’s body shape would be years down the line. Though to pile onto the things they got wrong, they made him noticeably slimmer in the later seasons for whatever reason. Now, Buster Jones was a better choice for the role of Winston than Arsenio Hall, so that is a minor positive of the later seasons. However, the most baffling fact about the production of this animated program is that Ernie Hudson was the only actor from the original film to audition for Winston and STILL lost out on the part. WHAT? Why didn’t he get it?! ERNIE HUDSON IS WINSTON! Who the fuck made this decision? The ACTUAL WINSTON was willing to take time out of his schedule to reprise his role for the cartoon and they turn him down like he’s a sack of shit? That’s outrageous! I’m starting to see Hudson’s points about being disrespected by this franchise despite the character’s popularity with fans. Why was he treated like this so consistently? The only character who is treated fairly accurate from start to finish is the Ghostbusters’ bumbling in-house accountant Louis Tully (Bumpass) who’s added in Season Five to coincide with how Ghostbusters II ended. The design of the character and the voice acting match Rick Moranis’s comic performance fairly well. Actually, it’s a shame he didn’t join the cast sooner because he was an extra source of fun in Season Five and Season Six after a sour-tasting Season Four, but the only reason he was added was because of the film sequel, so that wasn’t a possibility. Even so, he’s strangely missing from the short final season of the show, and no explanation is given.

The Ghostbusters take on new cases seemingly every day, though it does get slow at times like in the episode “Ghost Busted“. This episode alone is one of the many ways Ghostbusters II could have taken notes or got inspiration from. Not getting as much business is understandable because it’s not like ghosts flying around haunting people is that much of a common occurrence. The intelligent unit deciding to dabble in crimefighting to make some extra cash is a pretty decent idea in the interim period. More importantly, it shows the potential of the group and how they are so much more than what the studios may have realized going into making things happen on the big screen. This episode is just one of the examples of a more grounded story to make sense of times when it might be slow in New York. However, the Ghostbusters don’t stay put for the series. In expanding the universe and the scope of what they can do, they travel all over the place to stop not only ghosts, but supernatural entities, specters, spooks, spirits, mystical beings, and creatures of many kinds. Some of these places in need of ghostbusting help are New Orleans (Play Them Ragtime Boos), Detroit (Don’t Forget the Motor City), Arizona (Ghost Fight at the O.K. Corral), Alaska (Cold Cash and Hot Water), Texas (The Magnificent Five) and countries like Greece (Apocalypse—What, Now?) Germany (My Left Fang), Russia (Russian About), France (The Ghostbusters in Paris), Mexico (The Treasure of Sierra Tamale), Japan (Attack of the B-Movie Monsters), some random village named Lupusville containing disguised werewolves and vampires (No One Comes to Lupusville) and Boldavia, which is basically Transylvania (Transylvanian Homesick Blues). Sometimes, they run into issues when they’re on vacation and aren’t even looking for trouble (Very Beast Friends, Transcendental Tourists, Camping it Up). They even go to space (Ain’t NASA-Sarily So)! In one particular instance, the group found themselves traveling to space again. This time, it’s to save Winston from a creature after he found himself cornered on a spaceship with no help after he won a contest to be there (Spacebusters).

Actually, this is the biggest positive of The Real Ghostbusters, as there is no limit to the imagination. Again, it shows the true potential of what the team can do and how they can thrive in almost any fantastical scenario. Some of the ideas in these episodes are so creative, genuinely innovative, and movie-quality, it almost makes you wish that the screenwriters behind the Ghostbusters movies did take notice of the cartoon to expand their own imaginations when writing the screenplays. As seen in my review, I was a big fan of Ghostbusters II, but I can’t help but think how much the movie may have been improved if they took some of these concepts and expanded them into a feature length film with the live-action cast. At the very least, there’s a myriad of these episodes that could have been a third Ghostbusters film sometime in the 1990s had Bill Murray sucked it up and gave the fans what they wanted when he was still young. The show proved that you could explore all of mythology and science fiction and still realistically place the Ghostbusters into these scenarios to save the day. If anything, capturing simple ghosts of mob figures, century-old rulers, and dead criminals becomes mundane after a while once the Ghostbusters break the glass ceiling of possibilities. Watching the first movie, you would never think of such scenarios, but The Real Ghostbusters show how this franchise could have had 10 film sequels had they opened their mind a little! Some of the best episodes have the group traveling to different dimensions (You Can’t Teach an Old Demon New Tricks, Flip Side, and The Cabinet of Calamari, where the Salvidor Dali references were appreciated), a cartoon world come to life (Who’re You Calling Two-Dimensional?), the Land of Lost Objects (The Brooklyn Triangle), the Underworld (Hanging By a Thread), Ghost Town (Partners in Slime), the Ghost World (Trading Faces), the Netherworld (Afterlife in the Fast Lane), and Toyland (Busters in Toyland), which is essentially a subsidiary of the Netherworld dressed up as Toyland to trap Louis’s greedy nephew. Seriously, any single one of these could have been a movie with the live-action actors, especially the aforementioned “Hanging By a Thread” or “Jailbusters“.

There is even an episode where they accidently travel back in time through a portal in the snow to 19th Century Britain and meddle with the fate of Ebenezer Scrooge in the Christmas episode “Xmas Marks the Spot“. Yes, they capture the ghosts of Christmas Past, Present, and Future. It becomes a major problem, as you would imagine.

To further the praise of the excellent work of story concepts from the writing team led by J. Michael Straczynski and Michael Reaves, it’s not just about putting the Ghostbusters in all of these different locations. It’s also allowing them to face any and all monsters and supernatural creatures under the sun. In turn, it makes them more than just Ghostbusters but rather Earth-saving protectors. They take on a troll (Troll Bridge), a genie (Janine’s Genie), The Sandman (Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream), gremlins (Don’t Forget the Motor City), numerous demons, Cthulhu (The Collect Call of Cathulhu), a banshee (Banshee Bake a Cherry Pie?), goblins and shapeshifters (Drool, the Dog-Faced Goblin), some supernatural entity disguising herself as a fairy godmother (Janine, You’ve Changed), a witch (If I Were a Witch Man), vampires (on several occasions), werewolves, a were-chicken (Poultrygeist), and even the Boogieman. The Boogieman might be the best antagonist they face in the series, and that’s saying something because they have a lot of them. Still, he’s genuinely creepy and is a part of one of the best episodes in the series in “The Boogieman Cometh“. I loved the concept of it. Other fan-favorite villains are the Spirit of Halloween in Samhain, the Master of Shadows who desires a battle of wits with Egon, cartoon star Sammy K. Ferret, and countless others. I can’t praise it enough. Also, utilizing the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man on occasion and turning him into a good guy and friend of Slimer later on in the series was an excellent decision. I was apprehensive about him getting a voice at first, but it won me over in short order (Sticky Business). He was too iconic to not be used in the series, so I’m glad he was given a role of some kind.

As you can see by this in-depth review, there are countless episodes that are among the best. Along with several of the others already mentioned, there’s a failed Egon experiment leading to millions of little Slimers (Adventures in Slime and Space), the Ghostbusters falling into a cartoon world to save famous cartoonist Walt Fleishman (Who’re You Calling Two-Dimensional?), the group finding themselves on a gameshow hosted by a demon (The Devil to Pay), the aforementioned debut of the Boogieman (The Boogieman Cometh), Winston and Janine having to save the day (Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream), Egon’s soul being swapped with a demon’s and put into a different dimension (Egon on the Rampage), Peter Venkman at his most Venkman, angering the ghosts of a haunted Irish castle (The Bird of Kildarby), Venkman having to save the day when the others are swallowed by Necksa (The Devil in the Deep), a haunted balloon at the Thanksgiving Day parade (The Revenge of Murray the Mantis), the spirit of an old timey private detective assisting the Ghostbusters in retrieving an Egyptian tomb and bringing it back to the museum (The Long, Long, Long, Etc. Goodbye), a lonely ghost wanting to be friends with the Ghostbusters (Buster the Ghost), Egon temporarily turning into a ghost (Egon’s Ghost), Janine at her best (Janine Melnitz, Ghostbuster), the group on a haunted train being forced to play games to bring it to a halt (Slimer Streak), the group being put on trial by ghosts (Jailbusters) the New Jersey Parallelogram being this smaller and worse version of the Bermuda Triangle (Venkman’s Ghost Repellers), mean-spirited cartoon Sammy K. Ferret coming to life and turning everyone and everything into cartoons (Stay Tooned), the Ghostbusters having to stay in a haunted house overnight to win a contest without their proton packs (The Haunting of Heck House), and of course, a clock monster causing Egon to age in reverse (Three Men and an Egon).

On a lesser note, Slimer!‘s best episodes are Professor Dweeb chasing Slimer through a hospital (Doctor Dweeb, I Presume), Slimer impersonating “Scarface” and him eventually showing up (Scareface), Slimer wanting peace for a change but Manx ruining things (Room at the Top), Slimer and his dog friend Fred entering a dog show for free food (Show Dog Showdown), and his version of Little Red Riding Hood (Little Green Sliming Hood). None of the episodes in Slimer! are bad per say, but it’s not necessarily worth it either. It’s more the novelty of watching a Slimer-centric show and how it manages to succeed despite the low expectations going into it. With that being said, Dweeb should have never crossed over into The Real Ghostbusters. He was almost too cartoonish for the tone of the series. In Slimer!, he can get a pass because of the Looney Tunes energy it has. Nevertheless, he felt like a different character from a different universe in his few appearances on the main show. Clearly, they just liked writing for that character and brought him back because he did not fit at all. Chilly and Bud could have crossed over fine though.

Marred by inconsistencies and terrible show-changing decisions that affect the trajectory of what could have been, The Real Ghostbusters still succeeds in continuing the Ghostbusters franchise, exploring the mythology of the concept to its fullest and absolute limits, and helping it become a merchandising dynamo loved by legions of children. Still, the cracks start to become noticeable in Season Three. By the time Slimer’s importance nearly takes over the program, the animated show slowly loses its cool identity and personality until it finally limps to the finish line in Season Seven. The imagination of each episode is never lost and neither is the action, but every other aspect gets progressively worse, from the personalities of the characters to the lack of decent humor. It’s a shame too because it started out STRONG! Many recall The Real Ghostbusters fondly as one of the premier cartoons of the 1980s, and it is that. With that being said, my guess is that they are only remembering the first few years and not what the show turned into before going out with a whimper in 1991.