The Real Ghostbusters was interfered with heavily by the network which completely destroyed the show it had used to be. It started to dumb thing down and shoved Slimer to the spotlight.
The Real Ghostbusters: The Bad Episodes
The Real Ghostbusters was interfered with heavily by the network which completely destroyed the show it had used to be. It started to dumb thing down and shoved Slimer to the spotlight.
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I think I remember that episode you showed, in the clip, with the pink critter in the firehouse. Why does Janine sound like a kid?
Those who can’t do, consult.
My problem with Janine is also that she ends up sounding more like a kid. I do remember that pink thing in the firehouse from the clip you showed. Adventures of the Galaxy Rangers was guilty of doing the whole “Let’s shove a kid into the show because they can only relate to kids” thing, too, but it didn’t happen often.
Disclaimer: I’m no expert.
When it comes to consulting you basically have a group of mercenary Opinion-Havers. The worth of their group is measured in either Experience or Pedigree. People who have PHDs are intelligent and hard-working, but if all you have is a degree and you’re in the consulting biz you’re basically wielding a sawed-off shotgun; a powerful short-sighted near directionless blast that has as much chance of harming the target as yourself.
What I’d imagine might have happened with the focus group is that Q5 was staffed by unvetted people without experience in children’s programming. They probably borrowed research done by earlier focus groups for other cartoons that fell under a different story-style and demographic and claimed that it was research they performed. Like taking notes from a character design artist from 70’s era Hanna Barbera cartoons and calling it “market research.” That is, if they didn’t just make it up off the top of their heads.
There’s also the danger in the show-biz industry of rising to a power of authority without having earned it. The right connections or outright nepotism can propel complete idiots (PHDs aside) to the top branches of power. And of course, once you’re hired you show them the research you did on where they stand, the research you did on what the problems are, and then the research you did on what a good job you did and why they need to renew the contract. We can trust those guys, Tony’s kid’s college roommate works with them.
And executives don’t care. You think they watch cartoons? “These are just dumb little kid shows. What is the Real Ghostbusters? What is that? Is it like Scooby Doo? Wacky Races? I don’t have time for this. I only work four hours today and then I have to be on a flight to LA to get to a coke party. Just make it four times more better. Pass it down the line.”
I even question the quality of their PhDs. Someone with a PhD should be extremely well versed in research, its value, and how to do it. Unless they got their degrees from some mail order university in South America they would have had to have done actual research studies for their dissertation.
I do have a small bit of sympathy for the consultants in one regard. They pretty much HAVE to come up with a bunch of changes to justify their existence. Had they said “everything’s great! Don’t change a thing” then the studio would have thought they were useless and never hired them again.
It’s always really sad to see a damn good show go downhill so massively like this. I watched the first several episodes of this show, and while I didn’t think it was quite as great as you describe, it was certainly a huge cut above most 80’s animated shows that I’ve ever seen. Certainly it was a massive improvement over the disposable, generic crap at the time like the 80’s Transformers and G.I. Joe shows, two shows I never understood the fanbases of based on the old 80’s show (I was a fan of much of the rest of the Transformers franchise, just I never understood the big deal about the original).
By comparison, this is… well, pretty much as you describe, pure awfulness that shouldn’t have happened. The changes and interference seriously made me angry just listening to it, and I’m not even a huge Busters fan. And the racist, sexist jackassery behind the scenes .
By the way, Phelous, just wondering why there’s a thing next to all the comments here that says “Eli Roth?!” that’s confused me ever since I first commented on the site…
I remember watching this as a kid during the original run. Since it was pre-internet I had no way to understand what was happening. All I know was I liked it for a while then stopped watching. Must have been these changes.
I wish we could say “boy they sure were stupid 30 years ago”, but the exact same crap is still happening to this day.
Thanks for the entertaining retrospective Phelous! I have never been fan of Ghostbusters (I don’t hate the franchise or anything, it just isn’t my thing), but you actually made me want to take a look at this show (or at least the good episodes). Hopefully you will someday talk about Extreme Ghostbusters, since I have vague memories of watching it as a kid and it would be interesting to know how you feel about that show.
I hope it would be a positive review about Extreme Ghostbusters. It was actually a great show with quality characters and some of the best writing.
Ugh.
Ok so I actually missed the Real Ghostbusters as a kid. partly because I was just just too young when it first came out and secondly even if I did catch reruns, I can tell you right now that the ghost designs of the first season and syndicate episodes would have been too scary for me. (I would like to point out I was afraid of the Gummi Bears as a kid so… you know… …and yet I was never afraid of Watership Down at all…. huh….) anyway, the point is I was watching your video on the original seasons very excitedly for a show I could look into and enjoy as an adult that I missed as a kid. And although you mentioned the other seasons being bad I wondered if I would be able to stomach them without any kind of nostalgia hurting me for doing so.
But watching this… no. I just can’t. Cartoon censorship is one of my greatest pet peeves, even as a child I would become irrationally angry when I felt a show or movie was holding back for some reason on something even little kid me could see was much more important and grave than I was being told. Perhaps that’s a side effect of growing up watching Watership Down XD. But no. I just can’t deal with this garbage. The idea that “kids wanna see kids” is an obscene belief I have NO IDEA where it originated from and one people STILL BELIEVE to this day when dictating how a show “should” be written. And everything else? I’m not even gonna comment on it because I’m just gonna enrage myself and get upset and not be able to have an outlet for it.
….so no. No thank you.
Thanks for this recap Phelous, even if it was painful. You’ve saved me a LOT of pain and headaches as I now go forth to look into this show that I’ve missed.
Also I’m a girl and to everything they changed with Janine to make her more “appealing” to female fans I say FUCK YOU SO HARD!!! THIS shit is why I often have to simplify myself with “I hate female characters” to people despite that not actually being true. Because to try and explain the details why female characters annoy me 90% of the time would take to long. But now I can just point at this show and say “THIS is why I say “I hate female characters”. Just… fuck everything. *throws papers into the air and marches off angrily*
Even as a kid I enjoyed watching women who had an identity and a personality. Kids don’t want to watch a character who reminds them of their mother. They ruined Janine. She was entertaining because she had an attitude.
You know, prior to watching Phelous I had never even heard of the Real Ghostbusters cartoon. But watching these retrospectives made me legitimately interested in it, and genuinely pissed off at the way it was botched by the network. Just from watching these videos I got a clear idea what the show was about, why it had worked, and why it was just so galling to see it changed the way it was. I could tell these videos were a real labour of love for Phelan, and I enjoyed them a lot more than I had expected. The commentary was really well-explained and insightful. Nice one mate 🙂
I remember very little of the ABC/Q5 Ghostbusters. I think I have seen a little bit of Slimer and the real Ghostbusters but nothing of Ghostbusters jr. or even Slimers own show. Much like you Phelous, I either forgot or just blocked out the series since the changes. For me though, I prefer both movies and the original series before the changes.
Good review of the damage done to such a great series, it is sad when a network takes a successful show and ruin it due to pure stupidity. I have seen that happen to so many great shows like Teen Titans, Young Justice, ThunderCats, and so on.
The edits to the show reminds me of how 4kids used to butcher anime shows for kids.
The best example is what they did to One Piece.
Replaced all firearms with nerf guns in the show because.. Of course kids could not handle just seeing firearms
Got rid of any form of Japaneses letters and Japanned food
And outright CHANGE a characters name and powers just because it had to do with smoking.
They butchered Pokemon & Yugioh just as hard, & their predecessor was DiC who did the very same things to Sailor Moon.
At least the “inadvisable” guns thing from Yugioh and the American named food over what was clearly Japaneses food was so stupid it was funny.
But the stuff with Salior Moon and One Piece where just kinda needless and really questionable.
& lets not forget the terrible voice acting & the horribly mismatched voices.
For some reason out of ALL the awful voice acting it was Usopp and Nami that sounded the worse out of anything coming from 4kids.
The Salior Moon dub is at least so bad it’s funny, with the 4kids One Piece dub.. I can’t
The voice 4kids gave Yuugi & Atem haunts me to this day, but at least I can drown it out with Littlekuriboh ^_^
Q5: “Kids don’t know what they like, parents know what kids like… so, of course we cater it to them in the best way”
Me: “Know your audience, numb-nuts…”
the changes with slimmer i remember watching the show during the first season not liking peter being mean to slimmer but after the changes slimmer just got on my nerves
my 5 fave episodes ever, in no particulate order
1 when Halloween was forever
2 No one comes to Lupusville
3 the headless motorcyclist
4 the long long long ect good bye
5 ragnarok and roll
As I’ve read sometimes consultants aren’t hired to actually consult so much as to do the dirty work management doesn’t want to do personally so they don’t look like the bad guys to their employees. Essentially acting as an executive mouthpiece while deflecting blame away from said executives.
This may have been the case here, that would explain why there was no research for them to present when they were challenged.
If that were the case they wouldn’t have been hired to do any research, and likely wouldn’t have been given any time or budget to do so.
Though of course they could also just have been lazy incompetent fucks.
I’m really trying to remember what episodes of Real Ghostbusters I saw as a kid, I want to say the good ones but can’t think of anything in perticular about them, I would say the bad ones but I really don’t remember the Couiler Veckman and I defentily don’t remember less scary Jeanine. I would say being a child of the 90’s I saw more of Extreme Ghostbusters but I know I only saw about 8 episodes of that show, thank you very much Canadian TV schedule.
Also, wanted to ask; do you think this cartoon could ever come back with the revival interest in the movie series?
Or would it even be worth it anymore?
It seems that nowadays you can get away with alot more in cartoons then they used to.. Well at least with Cartoon Network and the Disney Channel.
They might come back into syndication, but I doubt there will a continuation. New adaptations and remakes have a tendency to bring things back into print (like bringing back old Looney Tunes on Cartoon Network when The Looney Tunes Show came out>.
I wouldn’t mind a reboot or something like that; it’s just the universe of Ghostbusters is so interesting and we have proof if you have a great writing team you can make a cartoon series from this franchises that’s both fun and cynical and a cartoon that can appeal to both adults and children.
Ok, so I definitely see the drop in quality. But I can totally imagine Egon yelling “Charge!” as like a last resort, or just him saying “fuck it” cuz logic isn’t proving too fruitful
Here’s an article about Q5 from right after they ruined The Real Ghostbusters, which was referenced in the video.
The article also covers other shows Q5 “helped” with, such as this “brilliant” suggestion for Defenders of the Earth:
WTF does this even mean?
“Regardless of what your problem is, we can solve it, ” Q5 President Thomas J. Heinz asserted. “We have worked on (items from) breath mints to car wax to 976 phone numbers. It doesn’t matter–if there’s a product and a target, we can provide a totally unique insight.”
Man, that article just makes me angrier. It was clearly written slanted towards ABC’s use of Q5 but the writer was willing to show the other side of the story. You can really see the difference between then and now. Back then having referential sophisticated humor in a kid’s show as seen as damaging. The kids won’t get it, so why care? These days EVERY cartoon has humor for the adults to enjoy even preschool shows sometimes.
I wish someone could get a hold of Q5 consultants for an interview to see their perspective on all this if only for curiosity’s sake.
I hope the people who used to work for that firm see this scathing review, & that they’re not sadists who get high off the misery of others.
Dr. Dweeb was played by Jeff Altman. He was the “Jeff” from the infamous “Pink Lady and Jeff” variety show.
I am actually very hesitant to call things sexist, but even I find the changes ordered to Janine’s character quite…uuuuuuuuy…
Was also totally unaware of the existence of the Slimer-only vignettes. Words utterly fail me, besides the fact that they seem to be designed to invoke as much Animaniacs as humanly possible (though I’m not sure which of the two came first).
Lastly, your Slimer impression is worryingly accurate. VERY worryingly.
I didn’t hate the post Straczynski stuff but hearing those changes they made all in a row like that, it sounds like something weird was going on. Wild guess, maybe someone at the network was afraid that the show wasn’t kid friendly enough. Like, literally afraid, feeling actual fear for some reason. Fear can make people do weird things, like maybe hire expensive consultants to make constant suggestions on how to fix a problem that only they can see, not even notice when the suggestions are totally nonsensical, make people follow the suggestions and label them as stubborn if they complain, and keep going full steam ahead even while the show is tanking horribly.
Q5: “We’ve never actually spoken to children before to ask them what they actually do & don’t like, but we’re positive children only enjoy & empathize with talking animals & children characters. We’re sure the audience is too young to have seen the movies, so just pretend the source material for this show doesn’t exist.” & that’s just three reasons they’re company is not in business anymore.
Boogie Man must live on a strict diet of Joker Fish.
As a snarky redhead girl, Classic Janine was a role-model I could look up to, so her changes hit me the hardest. & while Kath Soucie is one of my favorite voice actresses, I hated how the change made Janine sound like a 10 year old Linka from Captain Planet. Am I the only one who got the impression that Egon really wasn’t into her & just went on pity dates to show her there was no hard feelings?
I’ve heard that GI Joe was an excellent cartoon that suffered network interference in its latter years, but I never actually watched it.
I did not make it through a single episode of “Slimer!” Christ Slimer was annoying. Making him more prominent would be like “Orbity & the Jetsons,” “Snarf & the Thundercats,” or “Orko & the Defenders of the Universe.”
As an adult, I can hear that Coulier didn’t read his lines with the same gusto that Music put into it, & his delivery was sloppy & kind of half assed, but I watched the movies so much as a kid that Coulier’s ability to pull off Bill Murray’s voice made the change acceptable to me.
I was not a terribly observant child, so the budget style changes in the last seasons didn’t stand out to me. This is some “Captain N is about to be cancelled” levels of animation mistakes.
I really did miss Peter’s rivalry with Slimer. Man….Q5 is right up there with 4Kids, Manga Corps, & DiC on ruining shows. Now that I think of it, this is the same kind of it, this is the same kind of executive meddling that ruined the CLUE book series from the 90s, where each writer was worse than the last. & much like reading CLUE, I’d have to recommend watching Real Ghostbusters in reverse order & save the best seasons for last. It also makes me think of what the Comic Code Authority did to Batman; the stark contrast in mood between the golden & silver ages.
“They’re company….” ::Typo facepalm::
My favorite post meddling episode was Play Those Ragtime Boos.
I loved Gi Joe as a kid…I think it just got too big and popular and suffered from marketing fatigue, but executive meddling wouldn’t surprise me.
There was a definite Jump the Shark moment: Gi Joe used to start each syndicated run with a 5-part mega adventure that would often introduce some of the newer characters. I don’t know what season it was, but this is what happened,
– They got rid of cowardly Cobra Commander and replaced him with Serpentor, the search for DNA of earth’s greatest tyrants was the basic plot of the 5-part adventure. While Cobra Commander was kind of a loser, Serpentor was just …bland. For a show with such great “James Bond” style villains…his supernatural look and origin really didn’t fit in.
– WWF wrestler Sgt Slaughter became a character…I’ll just leave sink in
– Cobra troops were replaced with B.A.T.s…. Battle Android Troops. Now instead of capturing their human targets, they could blow up endless hordes of robots. Sounded good in theory, but it got too far away from the Elite special forces motif and too much into Sci-fi.
The writing and ideas just kind of suffered after that, and they even introduced the most bland leader character of all for the Joe team, General Hawk. For the life of me I can not remember any defining characteristic of this character.
hehe, I meant this to be a short answer and I got into another stroll down memory lane.
Thanks for the part 2 review Phelous, this actually really clarifies things for me. I remember really enjoying the syndicated episodes that ran on weekday mornings in my market along with some other great shows of the era like Inspector Gadget and Heathcliff.
I remember watching the Saturday Morning episodes sporadically until around the time they started calling it Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters…and even then I knew it was being dumbed down and geared to a younger audience. Those Q5 consultants just didn’t understand that the show was quite popular with slightly older kids and early teens. It was a PG movie after all, and PG back then was like PG 13 now…a little more swearing and off color humor was allowed.
I loved your point about kids not particularly liking shows that added kid sidekicks…I don’t know how or when that became the conventional wisdom, but it never was the case with any of the people I grew up with. The tagalong kid and mascot characters were always our least favorites. I recall shows like M.A.S.K. where the leaders son and his annoying robot scooter was everyone’s least favorite. Same with Orco on He-Man and Snarf on Thundercats to name just a few.
Cartoons that were expressly about kids were different in their approach, Like Tiny Toons or Johnny Quest. Also it was okay when the kid characters played a role where they acted like kids and their heroics and roles were proportional. Spike from G1 Transformers, Kit Cloudkicker of Talespin, and Huey Dewey and Louie from Ducktales as examples of that.
Still, we 80s and 90s kids had to suffer through this outdated notion that we wanted to watch silly tagalong characters more and less of the actual heroes of the show. The Slimer takeover of the Real Gostbusters is probably the greatest example of that.
Ironically, we didn’t appreciate Penny too much on Inspector Gadget, but seeing them now as an adult, you appreciate her as the competent contrast to the walking disaster that is Gadget.
Anyway, great video and analysis, I thought your eyes were gonna pop out of you skull at a few points, and I don’t blame you. While it wasn’t my all-time favorite show, I too have a soft spot in my childhood memories for this show, and holy crap…how could anyone with a brain even think of removing Ray!!!
Since you posted the review of the Good Episodes, I’ve been checking your site pretty much daily. Although it took longer than I expected, it was well worth the wait! This is one of your most through reviews yet. Clearly that extra time you put into this resulted in something that really displays the care you have for your work.
By the way, during the wait for this review I caught up on some AVGN and although I love him to death… His more recent work has been slipping (compared to his older stuff), while yours has been improving slowly over time. James seems to be stuck in a rut of trying to recreate the same jokes, like the long speech that goes nowhere in the episodes Hong Kong 97 and Seaman, or his trademark string of obscenities which is now more overused than it used to be. Whenever he starts swearing excessively I just look away and wait because it is so predictable. By contrast, your episodes seem to be improving in quality. You give us more substance in your reviews and mix in humor without forcing it in, or forcing a particular style repeatedly.
My only complaint about you, Phelous, is that you don’t give us that Muppet voice that I love enough 😀
Just kidding, I wont ever complain about a reviewer who gives us free entertainment online. I only complained about James as a way of saying you have improved over time, more than him. But all of you guys are saints in my book for what you contribute to the retro nerd community. You could bend over and fart loudly for 5 seconds and call that a review of “Ghostbusters: The Bad Episodes” and although I would be disappointed because of your usual high quality, I wouldn’t fault you at all.
Kids hate kid characters. They are fine with characters that are kids, but they hate “kid characters” in a way they have difficulty explaining. “Kid characters” make kids uncomfortable because they are kid stereotypes. “Kid characters” are typically hot-headed, inexperienced, stupid, and annoying, and kids can detect that and they feel insulted.
A character that just happens to be a kid is usually in shows where all the characters are kids like in “Recess” or something. These characters have value and distinct personalities, in other words REGULAR CHARACTERS, and so kids can actually find them tolerable or even likeable.
Perfectly put 🙂
I enjoyed Recess when I was a kid because they had adult-relating personalties and that’s what was funny about it.
The kids in Ghostbusters were ‘just’ kids. Kids aspire to being like adults and yes those kids were just an insult.
lol at the 44:07 mark the ghost that is getting trapped sounded phelous screaming or is it just me
In my opinion, I didn’t think Dave Coulier was that terrible, he did an okay job with Peter doing ha Bill Murray impression. Also, he wouldn’t have been so bad, if they didn’t fuck up his character in later seasons. But having said that Lorenzo Music was the superior Peter.
After hearing the what changes Q5 made based on non-existing research it make me wonder how anyone could take them seriously. It didn’t occur to these idiots that making Janine more maternal seems kinda sexists and making Winston the driver kinda racist. Also, I want to know who was afraid of Janine’s sharp-edged glasses scary, especially with all the creatures that were in the series. Hell, as a kid I found the DIC closing logo scarier. While I do like Kath Soucie, her Janine wasn’t the right fit. It now makes me wonder what other shows Q5 screwed over.
Considering Q5 fucked over kid Phelan’s all-time favorite show, maybe he can make a series: “Shows screwed over by Q5”. Maybe even trace the individual consultants responsible and figure out what other heinous acts they perpetrated during their career.
the only one I could think of would be Pound Puppies.
Channels in my country only ever purchased the first good season of Ghost Busters, so I only have fond memories of the show. I haven’t even seen the movies at that point, so the characters sounding different due to dubbing wasn’t a problem either.
The thing I’ve started wondering about as an adult is what if they would actually made Peter a John Belushi character in the cartoon or a mix of him and Bill Murray? He was the first choice for Peter in the movie before his untimely death, so attempting to realize that in next best way would have been awesome to see. I would have been happy with even a single episode where we see an alternate dimension John Belushi Peter.
Seems like he’s more like Uncle Joey from Full House. I think hiring him led them to start writing his character more like the characters he usually plays.
So THAT’S where 4Kids got their policies. Only the amped it up to eleven when shows like Yu-Gi-Oh! and One Piece couldn’t even say or reference the word “death” or anything having to do with it.
FYI: I LOVE the Cthulhu episode of The Real Ghostbusters due to how dark and macabre it was.
“Save it from what?” Save it from being a good show, duh. Networks detest good shows. Networks only like bad shows, especially ones they can milk for 50 years. Just like you said before, Phelous. Gotta fuck it up, that’s how you make it good. “But the ratings were very high, alot of people liked it!” Doesn’t matter, fuck it up.
All sarcasm aside, thanks for this little retrospective about this show. It’s pretty sad to see a show like this become victim of executive meddling. Being meddled with by people who don’t know how TV shows work, people who think they know what viewers want. And the worst part about it? They win. They get to make unnecessary changes and additions to shows that no one asked for, because the original creators of the show let them. Why? Why would they let them? Why would they let the network screw with something they made, that’s successful no less? To quote Stephen Fry about this subject, why don’t they just tell them to fuck off?
I remember loving this show… back in the year whatever when I had to sneak into my parents room early saturdays, because our flat had no living-room and the TV was in their bedroom. But then something… happened… because the show was aired out of order in my home, there were suddenly two openings. And I prayed every week that I would just see the ghost in the beginning of the show get crossed out and then it would snap to the firehouse, because all other episodes would be DISAPPOINTMENT!
Speaking of that, I was curious and found the bible of the second season online… what a very, very insulting read. I will now quote a sentence that, while not of context (it was about Peter being harsh to Slimer) should bring a light on what logic the Q5 people operated:
“Kid viewers tend to identify with Slimer.”
This is basically what Q5 think of kids: They are small, loud, obnoxious, all over the place, can’t talk well and smell bad.
I also love how they point out that Janine should never strap on a proton pack and actively help the guys. God forbid the wo-man does something!
(By the by… maybe it was just me, but I always figured that Janine was the Ghostbuster’s secretary because she was capable but couldn’t get a job with another company due to her snarky and slightly bossy attitude and therefore had to settle with those weird doctors and their exploding toys. Then she slowly began to soften up to them while still remaining herself. Since… you know… not every woman is motherly and nurturing. Just ask my mother when her son sneaks into her room to watch cartoons on her day off)
I can’t think of a title more undeserving of having “Slimer and…” in the front of it than The Real Ghostbusters.
I issue a “Thank you!” (that is totally not full of sarcastic loathing and contempt) to Q5 for showing me what I really want in my cartoons. You have showed me that I didn’t really want black people that were defined as more than what the stereotype was at the time. I didn’t really want women that were defined as more than a watered-down version of my own damn mother.
Plotlines with real consequences, clever dialogue, and genuinely creepy imagery don’t actually prepare me for the real world. As Q5’s pseudo-analyses have shown us, the stupider things you watch, the stupider you get, and stupid people have more of a chance to live a happy life without questioning anything. You see, they’re really utilitarians out to maximize happiness for the most amount of future adults!
Holy shit, did I just express sarcasm? I should lay off of that critical thinking that I smoke so often.
This show was like the story of an attractive person with Body Dysmorphic Disorder, who became addicted to plastic surgery & slowly turned into a hideous freak, but convinced themselves that they looked better than ever.
Moral of the story: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
So much character murder,
so the ghostbusters, became the real ghost…..
I remember watching the show when Peter’s voice was changed and I hated it. Venkman was also my favourite and it became so disheartening when he acted weird and was buddies with Slimer. Even at a young age I remember the small nerd rage I had and I refused to watch it after the change. Thankfully I think it stopped showing in the UK after the change and I only saw a few of these episodes.
At 10:25, was that supposed to be a twisted Homer Simpson and Marge? Or the inspiration for Octodad?
It’s like these Q5 assholes either never saw the first Ghostbusters movie, or they have never heard of it. Thank Christ these morons arn’t around anymore. Just imagine if they made these drastic changes in something like Batman: The Animated Series
They may not exist anymore, but people like them do. Just look at what happened with Young Justice – cancelled because they weren’t getting enough of the very specific, very narrowly-defined demographic, and too many girls.
What?! I thought Young Justice was FOR girls! It’s very female-gazey.
This is what happens when, instead of letting creators create, networks like ABC just want to pander to lowest common denominator. These Q5 people must operate on the the logic of “Even though it’s not broken we need to fix it. Why? Well we have Ph.D’s so that makes us smarter than you.”. You know, Q5 really does sound like the name of a Bond villain.
I think Q5 has a bright future in politics.
I grew up not even realising this show existed. My first experience of a Ghostbusters TV series was the nineties Extreme Ghostbusters show, and while I liked it at the time, given how dark it could be at times and how good the character designs were, it feels like a huge disconnect looking at that and thinking “yes, this is in the same universe where the Ghostbusters busted the boogeyman.”
I saw your review of Xmas Marks the Spot, and I thought it was brilliant – not just as a review, but as an episode – and marathoned as much of the original series as I could on youtube, and even as a newcomer I was horrified by the changes to Janine. I don’t think I noticed the changes made with Venkman, but it may just be symptomatic of how the entire show had changed that he felt like a minor quibble. I did notice them change Winston, but as you said in the last retrospective, it wasn’t so much the voice actor’s fault as the scripts he had. I ended up giving up watching the whole thing, and just finding a bunch of top ten lists and watching the post-syndication episodes that people liked enough to put on a list. But episodes where the Ghostbusters went up to bust an alien ghost aboard a space station on a Five Year Mission, or where they discovered Ray had conniving Scottish relatives trying to con him out of a castle, or where they busted Cathulhu cultists and the Big Daddy Manifestation himself? Those were brilliant, and frankly, I wish they were still playing stuff like this on TV now. I’d watch it!
IDW is currently doing a crossover event between the Real Ghostbusters (circa their fight with Proteus) and their comics based on the movie/game-verse, and it’s pretty decent so far! A bit slow, but it’s only up to issue two and we’ve already seen glimpses at other dimensions of Ghostbusters “continuity” which is cool. I’d love to see your thoughts on the IDW comics – Erik Burnham and Dan Schoening are a fantastic team, and in my opinion their stuff has been brilliant written, and brilliantly visualised! It’s full of homages to the Real Ghostbusters, and they even bring in the only character from Extreme that anybody remembers, not to mention the host of new characters. And all through it, I can hear the voices of Lorenzo Music, Frank Welker, Arsenio Hall and Maurice LaMarche coming through loud and clear.
Oh, and they did a Ghostbusters/TMNT crossover that is to DIE for 😀
Not every ghost is the spirit of a dead person. Many are simply ectoplasmic entities that were never alive to begin with in any sense of the word we’d understand. In fact, most of the ghosts in the first film fit this description better.
True, but he was more talking about how they ended up just about moving away from ghosts completely and focusing too much on non-ghost things.
So the derpy Ray in the titlecard….By any chance was that inspired by this bootleg toy? http://www.eonline.com/eol_images/Entire_Site/2014106/rs_562x749-141106144406-617301100_1737.jpg
Hah, I just grabbed a doofy looking shot. The miniland Ghostbusters figures are actually legit they just look so silly you’d think they should be bootlegs.
I actually picked up 3 of them so far:
https://twitter.com/Phelous/status/438437057216520192
Wow. You know your show is screwed when the Post-Movie Spongebob seasons are better.
That’s just sad, & hilarious….So fukkin hilarious….. XD Also, Winston appears to have Glaucoma.
phelous would you sell the set or can you please put me in place to find a set?
Hey Phelous, what do you know about this? Wikipedia says:
“At the start of the second season, Music was replaced by Dave Coulier when Murray complained to the studio that the character sounded too much like Garfield the cat (who was also voiced by Music).”
Gotta be honest, I have no memory of watching the Ghostbusters cartoon on ABC. I’m sure I knew of it’s existence, but there’s a chance I was watching whatever else was on at the time. Mario Bros., maybe?
But I do remember watching the syndicated episodes when they were on. Then USA started airing both them and all the ABC shows (Ah, Cartoon Express, how I miss thee…). I think I only watched the Slimer & episodes because USA aired them on Sundays and there wasn’t much else on TV those mornings. So I remember them, just not as fondly.
Even weirder is I don’t remember the changeover from Lorenzo to Coulier outside of the more cartoony Slimer episodes. Guess much like you I blocked it all out of my head. 😛
So Phelous, we at the network have been reviewing your show for some time and ee have hired D1 logistics and farm equipment to retool your show to make it for people friendly. For starters you will be replaced with Dave Coulier as that’s what sells the merchandise. Eli Roth will take over script writing and all “meta” (whatever that means) will be removed. More pop culture references will be used to make the show way hipper, as the kids say. However, cameos and crossovers will be stopped as having people from better shows on the show hurts it. This includes the Cinema Snob, Obscuras Lupa and most importantly, Le Sad Panda. For every 10 minutes of your episode 2 minutes will be dedicated to merchandise selling, we believe that delightful Shao Khan is the best for these commercials. Also the Phelous/Coulier character will never be angry or sarcastic but rather doofy and constantly getting into hijinks. Also, the show is severly lacking in education so we shall be hiring Raiden and Johnny Cage to teach the viewers science and history. Micheal Meyers was offered a spot but he was, to quote, “not listening! AHHHHHHHHHH!!!” Wooden Rob has been working on an intro song for the show as well as the end theme because of the aforementioned Le Sad Panda. Also the show will also have junior Phelouses or is it (Phelai?) to assist Coulier in reviewing mediocre to terrible horror films and solving mysteries… scratch that, your show is now an arts and crafts show and cooking mystery theater. We are including 3 of your creations/alter egos, Phelous D1, since he is doing the revision and reimagining of the show, Halloweenie and Pumpkinweenie, all played by that American treasure, Dave Coulier. We will not be requiring your services for Phelous and the Movies as you are as relevant as Ray Stanz was to the success of The Real Ghostbusters. However, we will offer you a 50% discount if you sign up today…. ooh FACED!!!
Hugs and kisses
The Network
Wow this is basically what the game industry is going through these days, random people with degrees claiming they know what is successful despite countless examples of logic, or reason or history proving otherwise.
Hey Phelan, do you plan on covering the “Extreme Ghostbusters”? Or dose that show not even worth covering?
It went from “The Real Ghostbusters” to “Slimer + Kids (and those other guys)”
I loved the Real Ghostbusters when I was a kid, I don’t think we got the later series aired in the UK. We got the first couple of series airing on loop until the late 90’s, I guess our networks didn’t want the later series XD
I watched some of them online and you’re right, they killed it. Killed it dead. Dead in cold blood.
They aired the early series right up until Extreme Ghostbusters premièred.
I was sceptical about the Extreme team at first because like all other fans I was bias to the original characters, but into the second episode I really got a feel for it. Extreme Ghostbusters arrived with actual effort in the writing, it’s like they fired everyone responsible for the later RGB series and hired all the very best writers. It had all of the conflict and jokes that RGB lost after the changes. The characters were assholes to each other in a loveable way, just like in RGB when it first started.
RGB was good for the first 2 seasons, but when I watch them I start from episode 2, I actually hated the first episode.
EGB has the writing quality of RGB’s early episodes and a lot more. I don’t understand why people hate it so much. Maybe it’s because most of you didn’t see it when you were kids because USA had really bad airing times for it (like during school). It deserves a lot more credit than it’s been given.
Extreme still had that annoying problem of “Kids want to see kids like them in a TV show, they can’t relate to adults”. They made the extreme ghostbusters about as clinically diverse as possible. There was the generic sassy gothy chick, the clever one, the disabled one and the token black friend. It just felt too “sculpted” if you know what I mean. Checking off the boxes.
I didn’t watch many episodes so my memory of it is weaker than yours clearly is. I remember nbot being overly keen on it because it wasn’t the same show I’d grown up with. Maybe a fresher perspective would have made me like it more. =)
I remember watching the Real Ghostbusters when I was about 7/8 years old and I barely noticed Slimer, he was nothing more than background noise to me. My favourite thing about the series was Peter’s one-liners and the way he picked on Ray.
But y’know, according to the experts; kids don’t like conflict and want more Slimer. After all, what do kids know about what kids enjoy?
You’re assuming they even had even done any research instead of simply assuming they knew what kids liked because, well, obviously right?
It’s that same thinking that gave us a Jack Sparrow movie or a Penguins from Madagasca movie. Assuming the reason people liked the meal was because the gravy really helped set off the flavour of the meat. So for the next meal they gave us a bowl of gravy.
I was skeptical at first….Didn’t remember their being any “bad episodes.” But I guess my child brain refused to believe something I loved could be flawed & get worse with time. As an adult, I’ve come to expect that sad reality from everything.
Jeez, I’d done literally the same thing. I remember Flip Side and with it being an episode I remembered quite fondly as a great “What if” kinda scenario I figured it had to be from the good run. I’d totally forgotten it wasn’t.
And ho-lee crap I never knew they re-dubbed the good episodes. Why!? Thank God I never stumbled onto those monstrosities.
As a kid I was quite reliant on my parents taping shows they’d think I’d like, Ghostbustrers being one of them. They recorded a bunch of them for me and I loved watching them. Later on when we got satalite TV and there was a kids TV channel that had cartoons pretty much all day, I bumped into a “new” series (to me) of Real Ghostbusters, so I pounced on that. Awesome! New episodes I hadn’t watched 50 times each!
I didn’t continue watching it. I remember watching two or three episodes maybe and then just giving up. The silly side episodes with Slimer made it feel like a Hanna Barbara special or something. Peter being ruined was also a major factor for me. The fact Egon was the same was one of the only things I really remember liking. I stopped watching pretty quickly because it was clear the show had stopped treating me like I had a brain and just wanted to dangle its keys in my face.
Thinking back, that thought is kinda weird…because I watched The Adventures of Sonic the Hedgehog instead. Huh…
I guess there was a time and place for stupidity with me, and Real Ghostbusters wasn’t it. Re-watched the Cthulu episode again recently because I know a little more about the mythos now and wanted to remind myself how the show did it. I was pleasently surprised at just how easy it was to watch. No eye rolling silly plot moments like I had when re-watching the Transformers cartoon.
Q5 should be a codename for interferences by executives on animated shows… Why have the Jr. Ghostbusters when children already look up to the protagonists? Ugh, good thing I never watched Q5’s mutilations, I guess, because their version of Janine rubs me the wrong way. I mean, she couldn’t be less accurate (also, she wasn’t “slutty”)! I don’t hate Slimer since I only find him slightly annoying, but was it necessary to give him his own series? All he does is eat food, think about food, etc. for the most part, and he was less childish in the movies.
Ray was my favorite of the four in the movies, so thankfully, he wasn’t ultimately let go. I can’t blame you for not liking Dave Coulier as Peter because his performance doesn’t sound anywhere as good as Lorenzo Music’s.
I also like Louis Tully because, well, he was originally portrayed by Rick Moranis and all… too bad Louis wasn’t used much. Was he ever in any of the pre-Q5 episodes? If not, then I kinda wish he was…
It would have been interesting to see how they would have utilized Louis in the original version of the show but unfortunately, no, he never had any appearances until way after Q5’s bullshit.
Well, ABC also completely screwed “Twin Peaks”, the number one show on prime time television, around the same time, leading it to be cancelled after only two seasons, so they weren’t the brightest network at the time. But, yeah, I remember completely not understanding as a kid why this show I used to love suddenly sucked. The Slimer cartoons were often so horrible that I would often switch the channel during them and just not turn back.