THE BOOGIEMAN COMETH
There's a lot of charm and heart in this one, as two little kids come to the Ghostbusters with their piggy bank to hire them to get the titular Boogieman out of their closet. I really adore the idea of the Ghostbusters being the heroes of little kids and stepping up to fight the monsters for them; it gives me some of those old whimsical Doctor Who vibes. The Boogieman's real and a big nightmare goblin which comes out of the closet to spook kids for kicks, and it turns out that Egon Spengler has history with this creature: it remembers him, as Egon remembers being a child who was scared of the Boogieman and how he parlayed that fear into studying the paranormal in order to fight it. Hey look, kids, lore about your Ghostbuster that isn't him being a deadbeat dad! Wow!
This episode feels like Stephen King's It for kids, with a monster that feeds on fear and an adult confronting the supernatural being they feared as a child. Its back half also has some gonzo visuals as the Ghostbusters take the fight to the Boogieman's realm, an in-between dimension connecting to every closet in the world to give it easy access to scaring kids. It's a strange nightmare world with weird and wild things like floating tables and a big Mobius strip, and at the end of the day it's those two kids from the opening who end up confronting their fear and fighting back against the Boogieman while the Ghostbusters set up a big ghost bomb to blast it. Egon faces his fear too, and the Boogieman blows up and all is well. I found this charming and touching in its own way, really liking the Ghostbusters as heroes and people facing their fears. That Boogieman design would probably have spooked me as a kid, though.
THE COLLECT CALL OF CATHULHU
Fuck bringing Gozer back, the Ghostbusters get to take on the fucking Lovecraft mythos in this one. And since it's a kid's show it doesn't include any of Lovecraft's inherent bullshit! What's not to like? I don't know why the title is spelled like that. I figured it was a copyright avoidance thing but they just say Cthulhu in the show a million times. There's lots of other Lovecraftian references like the Necronomicon and Miskatonic U., the former of which gets stolen to kick off the plot. From there a bunch of crazy shit happens, like lesser demons and lots of gross tentacle monsters for the Ghostbusters to try and shoot. Or the Cthulhu cultists themselves, who look ridiculous but also are trying to summon a Great Old One. Anyway, this being drama, they do end up doing that.
Even though he's bright red for some reason, the big squiddy boy is still too powerful for them to stop by just shooting at it. Cue... oh, I kind of love this. Earlier on they pull a weird Von Daniken-esque trick and imply that the Cthulhu mythos is a real thing and Lovecraft et al were inspired by it to make up their stories. This leads the Ghostbusters to find the solution to banishing Cthulhu in an old fantasy story. The answer is to electrocute the shit out of it, which leads to some fun visuals of Peter Venkman riding a roller coaster on Coney Island to taunt Cthulhu. Also they electrify the whole roller coaster and banish Cthulhu that way. Funny enough, the whole summoning of Cthulhu to end the world is based on this global cycle of alignment, kind of like the dates that Gozer can be summoned as stated in... Afterlife! JASON DID YOU CRIB HALF THE MOVIE FROM THE CARTOON? Anyway. The Ghostbusters fight Cthulhu in a 25 minute cartoon. That's neat, and speaking of the end of the world...
RAGNAROK AND ROLL
This was my favorite of the bunch. Expand its mythos and give it some more maturity, and this could have been a Ghostbusters 3. The plot of it sounds simple, but it feels like it's playing for higher stakes than a weekly cartoon should be. There's a spurned lover who goes mad with grief and takes his best friend/weird Igor-esque pal on a quest to find the power to bring about the end of the world; said power being a flute which releases untold calamity upon the world. Volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis... this is a global threat and not just some shit happening in New York. Of course, things are happening in New York as there are weird demons which are immune to proton beams, and at the center of all the disturbances is one house in New York which belongs to the ex-girlfriend of the guy bringing about the end of all things. Who broke up with him because he wanted to get married and she wanted to focus on her career.
It's not just the big high-stakes game of the literal world ending all over the world that makes this great, but this really does have a microcosmic little story to it as the ex-girlfriend accompanies the Ghostbusters to go confront the madman ending the world. His pal is hesitant to see the entire world end as well, and she tries to talk him down but fails because he's jaded and bitter and if he's hurting then everything else must be destroyed. The Ghostbusters are desperate enough to trigger an overload in their proton packs which will destroy the building and themselves, but what defuses that is the pal nearly falling to his death and snapping Mr. Jaded out of his stupor by showing him there's still good in the world. He almost calls off the end of the world but is stopped by whatever force wants it to happen, and now the Ghostbusters can shoot it with proton packs and save the day, before our guy helpfully reverses all the destruction.
You would have to change a lot to make this a movie, and the face turn of this guy who nearly killed everyone on Earth is a big quick... but it is a kid's show so I can be more lenient. I dunno, I just really liked how this had both end of the world stakes and a real human story about bitterness and heartbreak and learning to find good in the world again. It's impressive for a Saturday morning cartoon, and kind of better than Afterlife. I enjoyed this one a lot, but I keep comparing shit to Afterlife. Fine. Fine then. Let's close out by invoking some more of that iconic nostalgia. One of the four things Afterlife gives a shit about, in...
THE REVENGE OF MURRAY THE MANTIS
That's right! Murray The Mantis is back and he's out for revenge-- Wait, who the fuck is Murray The Mantis? What is this? Alright, we'll back up a bit. The Ghostbusters are taking part in the city's Thanksgiving Day parade, showing that they're beloved public figures who get to wave to the crowd at all. Among the many balloons in the parade is Murray The Mantis, an in-universe cartoon character whose balloon is possessed by a ghost and becomes an actual giant mantis monster rampaging through the city. It is a very powerful ghost mantis and the Ghostbusters have no choice but to deploy the services of an enemy turned ally, releasing a now-good Stay Puft Marshmallow Man out into the city and having Slimer guide it to do battle with Murray the Mantis.
Look, you know how I feel about this reference shit. I have made that clear. On the other hand, though, one of the things I love about Ghostbusters are the parts where a giant thing rampages through the city and what that giant thing represents. Afterlife lacking one is telling. This is basically an excuse to have a Ghostbusters kaiju fight, but it is interesting that it's a mascot versus a cartoon character. Two IPs are duking it out while the Ghostbusters flit about the fight, monitoring and prepping their beams to dissipate Murray when Stay-Puft weakens him. At the end of it all Stay-Puft gets to be in the parade too, which is literally a gag the 2016 film lifts for its Stay-Puft cameo. Look, Stay-Puft being one of the four ghosts that always gets trotted out is tiring... but seeing him punching a giant fucking mantis in New York City brings some joy to my heart. That's all I have to say about this, and about Ghostbusters cartoons. They're not bad, not really. I could come back to this well next year if I wanted to. We'll see, but for now let's go back to the world of adult horror.
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