When CITV was showing promos for Extreme Ghostbusters, to be aired on Tuesdays after school, I didn't think of making an effort to watch it. I hadn't kept The Real Ghostbusters in my heart as a childhood favourite, and it didn't come into my mind that I had to watch the sequel (or reimagining, as I thought it might be). I kept catching the last five minutes, though. It must have been on before something I wanted to watch (I think probably Sabrina the Teenage Witch, but I'm far from certain). I can't be sure, but I think these two-minute fascinations consisted of 'Deadliners', 'Casting the Runes' and 'The Infernal Machine'. Kylie caught my attention first; I was a girl, and I was happy to see a girl Ghostbuster, and she seemed super interesting – but I did get interested in the other characters too. The way they interacted just delighted me, and I needed to know exactly who they were. Now then, I thought (more than once), I must remember to watch this from the beginning next week!
Jake says:
I remember seeing
EGB in the TV listings magazine when it was first on. Although I was
surprised and slightly interested to see that someone had decided to
continue the Ghostbusters
franchise, I did not experience even the slightest urge to watch the
show. This was partly because I was feeling a bit scornful of
children's cartoons at the time and thought I shouldn't really watch
them (I was fourteen and this was a brief, silly phase) and partly
because I remembered watching RGB
when I was younger and not particularly enjoying it. It was
only ever something to pass the time for me (unlike many other
people, as I am now well aware) rather than something to get my teeth
into. Consequently, my internal reaction to reading the TV listing
was something along the lines of, 'Ghostbusters,
meh.'
I didn't catch all of 'Home is Where the Horror is', but I got at least half, maybe two thirds. It was a good episode to make me remember to watch next week. I learned all the new Ghostbusters' names, and got an idea of their basic characterisation (that is what you get with this episode, with plenty of attention-grabbing action). I made the effort all week to remember to tune in the next Tuesday, and I probably told the family not to let me forget. Jake, I believe, was aware that I planned to watch the show before I sat down, turned on the TV and found myself well and truly immersed in 'Killjoys'.
Jake says: While Rosey was watching 'Killjoys', I was on the living room floor putting together a self-assembly shelving unit for my bedroom. Still in quite the wrong frame of mind about the show, I was thinking to myself something along the lines of, 'Why on earth is she watching THAT?' However, I soon found myself paying quite close attention to the show. I was interested to hear the name Egon Spengler being continually uttered, and I couldn't help but be pleased to hear what I (correctly) judged to be Egon's voice from the original cartoon taking part in the proceedings. I found that I rather liked the idea of Egon acting as mentor to a new team of Ghostbusters, and I thought it was cool when he turned up at the end of the episode to save the day, as he does in 'Killjoys' and a couple of others. I also thought that the idea of the laughter vampires was a good one. Realising that I had perhaps been too quick to dismiss EGB as something I was not at all interested in, I started watching it with Rosey.
After that, I never missed an episode. I loved these characters, and I had to see them as often as I could. Looking back, I'm now wondering what took me so long to decide to tape the show. After four more episodes, I taped 'Grease' and 'The Jersey Devil'. Why on earth did I then miss out another five episodes before going on with 'The Luck of the Irish'? I can't imagine. Anyway, I managed to get nine episodes from the Tuesdays, and another nine from the Sunday morning repeats – some of those abridged, as I later found out. Some time later – I think about six years – I ordered the 'Back in the Saddle' VHS from Amazon.com (to watch on my uber-modern NTSC-compatible TV/VCR combi!). So I had half the episodes. Of course I wanted more, but there was nothing I could do about that, and half was better than anything less.
When I first saw 'Back in the Saddle', I was disappointed. Compared with the eighteen episodes I'd taped, they weren't satisfying to me, not being EGB enough (however, I have developed my thoughts on the matter since then). Some time later, Toon Disney showed EGB; I don't know the exact date of what happened next, but it must have been more than five years after my 'Back in the Saddle' video and less than ten, because the next chapter of this story occurs when I was babysitting in a house I spent loads of time in during those years. The family had cable TV with Toon Disney, and we didn't. On this particular day I was happy to have so many channels to choose from, excited when I first found EGB listed on the guide and super chuffed when it was an episode I'd never seen before. It was 'Fallout', which I have since decided is a pretty good episode, though not a gem. At the time, I didn't realise that – I was just so psyched to see a new episode of EGB! Subsequent attempts to find new episodes failed; they were always ones I had on tape!
Jake says:
One night when I
was babysitting for the aforementioned family, I found that an
episode of EGB was going to air on Toon Disney before the parents
were likely to come home. I knew that Rosey had already watched an
unseen episode in similar circumstances, and I thought that it would
be a nice surprise for her if I could tape another one.
Unsurprisingly I didn't have either of her EGB tapes with me, but
(luckily) I had brought a videotape with me that night. It contained
some episodes of my own favourite children's programme from my
childhood, which I had been showing to the two boys who lived there. My plan was to record EGB onto the end of the tape, and scart it onto
one of the properly designated tapes when I got back home. I knew
there was a 50% chance that the episode would be one that we didn't
already have, and it would have been so nice to have brought home a
new one for a surprise. Unfortunately the episode that played was
'Grundelesque', which was a bit disappointing but very typical of
life. I stopped the recording once I realised that my plan had been
doomed to failure from the start, but I told Rosey about the
experience anyway because I thought it was still a very nice idea of
mine.
Time passed, and I ended up with some bootleg DVDs (well, if they won't release it officially!). It took me a long time to make up my mind completely about all the episodes. The first time, I was excited to be able to watch the bits that CITV had cut for time on Sundays, the episodes they'd shown but I hadn't taped and, of course, episodes I'd never seen in my life (oh, and 'Fallout'). When I watched the DVDs again I was interested to, well, watch them again. The time after that, I expect I still wasn't sure which episodes I really disliked. Then I began to realise there were some pretty awful ones, and that 'Back in the Saddle' was by no means as bad as it had seemed at first. My tapes were just so good! CITV had shown very nearly all the good episodes and almost none of the bad ones (in my opinion), even skipping quite a lot of drudge to get from 'Moby Ghost' to 'Rage'. How strange, yet how fortuitous.
Now, a frighteningly long time later, here I am with my ideas and opinions quite straight in my mind. I've been an EGB fan for more years than I care to put into words and, for whatever reason, right now seemed like the time to create my website.
February 2015
EGB Fan's Favourites
Eduardo Further to what's over on the left, I have never stopped loving Kylie, but soon enough Eduardo surpassed her as my favourite. Learning about him was a slow process, and therein lies his greatest appeal. He's a closed book with lots of pages; there is much to find, if you can only begin to look for it.
Rage A huge episode for Eduardo, and the closest we come to seeing what is in his secret heart. The audience learns a lot about him, and the other characters find more than they ever imagined was there. Even the paranormal threat, trolls that get angry or stressed and split in two, is symbolic of what's going on with the characters. A particular highlight is Carl getting in Garrett's face and Eduardo unexpectedly rushing to his defence; from what we've seen of Eduardo and Garrett's byplay, we might not have expected this, and Garrett certainly didn't.
Be Careful What You Wish For Since this preceded 'Grease', I guess it must have prompted me to press that record button next time. It's at least as good as 'The Unseen', which I had on tape from Sunday mornings. I was sad not to have 'Be Careful What You Wish For' as well, which I remember thrust me into the heart of Eduardo and Kylie's relationship more than did my initial Tuesday viewing of 'The Unseen', when I hardly knew the characters and didn't realise I was going to become obsessed.
'Till Death Do Us Start Funnily enough, there are only two episodes I love that were never shown on CITV. One is 'The True Face of a Monster' (too ideologically sensitive, I'm sure), and this is the other (too sexy?). I was blown away by the huge and fascinating character interaction during the firehouse overnighter (the first half of which I have come to call the 'castles in the air' scene, in honour of another favourite awesome foursome of mine, the protagonists of Little Women); no other new (to me) episode had such an effect.
Grease This is an episode about the whole team, uniquely done in that it's pretty much joke after joke after joke – running through an interesting and well structured plot, of course – and it works so well! Officious FBI persecuting the Ghostbusters, and a climax of Garrett chasing a gremlin around their plane... it's a riot!
Jake's Favourites
The Crawler I really like this episode because it's very funny. I particularly like the fact that no one realises Janine's date is the bug demon they are looking for when he admits in front of everyone that he wants 'billions' of children, and Egon's awkward attempts to bring Janine back from the brink of bughood by confessing his love to her. Interestingly enough I had not remembered that Egon and Janine were having a ship in RGB, and I thought EGB was building on something that had not been alluded to since the first movie. How wrong I was! (Rosey was able to set me straight on this, having remembered that aspect of RGB.) I'll always remember watching this episode in a hotel room in Cardiff (that's the capital city of Wales) one Sunday morning, where Rosey and I were staying for our cousin's wedding. I don't think this particular showing of the episode actually aired back where we lived thanks to regional TV variations, so being able to watch it was something of a bonus, even though we couldn't record it.
Be Careful What You Wish For A very enjoyable episode and a good one to get viewers interested in Eduardo and Kylie. After eventually seeing all the episodes, I was surprised that this was Pagan's only appearance after the pilot; cats are always great characters to include in stories because of how crazy they are and how people react to them. My favourite part is when Eduardo is absolutely clueless that he is having a conversation with the ghost, and even warns him to look out for 'a crazy ghost on the loose'. Fortunately the episode demonstrates to us in no uncertain terms that there is a lot more to Eduardo's character than a clueless layabout (unlike 'Witchy Woman', for example), so it's fine to laugh at him appearing to be a clueless layabout when he is feeling harangued and unloved.
Rage Here we get a surprisingly and pleasingly in-depth look at Eduardo, but it's never overstated or oversimplified. This episode is everything from an entertaining story about self-replicating trolls to a deep and perceptive study of the human psyche, with just about everything in between that you could want. Eduardo's family has lots of potential to take part in many interesting stories, which is why they turn up in a great deal of fanfiction.
The Sphinx A great episode for Egon, in which he gets to be amusing, vulnerable, poignant, dangerous and invaluable, all in his own inimitable style. The Sphinx itself is probably my favourite ghost-of-the-week character, with its deadpan contempt for humanity ('You guys think you're pretty smart, don't you?') and its inability to accept defeat after Egon beats it on its own terms ('Okay, I've got another one!').