EGB and Me
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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 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 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: 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: 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 (in my opinion) bad ones, 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 *At long last (to coincide with something I'm ignoring), that official release has come. The full series is available on region one DVD, vastly overpriced at the time of writing, but I was lucky enough - or rather, I stalked the Amazon listing enough - to pre-order it for something reasonable. I was very excited to get the news, which I first heard from RGB fan/online friend Fritz, back in January. The set was then listed as 'unavailable' on Amazon for about two months. I did stalk the page, but actually, so did Jake; he saw it was available first, and alerted me. I placed my order, and it should have been that simple! The release date was March 19th. By the 21st, there had been no movement on my order and I was starting to worry. Bless the people on Amazon live chat; curse the lack of information at their fingertips! They will try to solve your problem in any way they can without really understanding it, and at one point, I became convinced the item wasn't shipping to the UK. In the meantime, reviews from the US were telling me that a lot of people weren't happy with the product. It seems (despite that price tag!) not a lot of effort was put into it. There were complaints about picture quality, and even case quality. I'd already noticed the re-hashed artwork (which I've never thought attractive anyway) and blurb (which I don't like being geared towards any old GB fan rather than EGB fans), but I also knew the spine would look much nicer on my shelf than those of the bootleg edition. I'd written the titles myself in biro, for goodness' sake! Finally, two weeks after the release date, my copy shipped. After that, it got here pretty quickly, and the upshot is, I'm happy. The picture quality seems to vary by DVD player (there are two region free players here, and it likes the more expensive one), but either way, it's good enough for me. The episodes appear in production order, which makes neither more nor less sense than the airing order (good news for my Episode Chronology), but it is interesting to EGB fans... or possibly just to EGB Fan. And yes, the spine does indeed look splendid among its fellows on the shelf. April 2024 |
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. 'Til Death Do Us Start There are only two episodes I really 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, or just too late in the run-time?). 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!'). 
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