Season 1: Episode 13 - Xmas Marks The Spot

[Spengs]

Know what I almost always disliked? I won't say hate as its such a strong word. When one of your favorite TV shows or a block of them would rerun Christmas episodes in the summer months. Sometimes I would still watch them, it would be hard to get into the spirit (no pun intended) of Christmas when you're wearing shorts, the air conditioning is on full blast, you're mostly wrapped up in summer time activities, and it doesn't get dark until about 9 PM. This wasn't the delay for getting the final episode up from season 1. I do admit when I finally had the time, I wasn't looking that forward to watching the first Christmas episode from out hit cartoon.

Once I started watching it and reviewing it, it felt kind of nice. Though still way too early to be thinking about Christmas. Believe me the department stores and the malls will be doing that before we're all ready. At least we (well our writers, artists, etc) were smart enough not to make this episode contain all the usual holiday jokes you seem to see in every comedy. Then again The Real Ghostbusters doesn't fall under the TV comic genre anyway.

In Xmas Marks the Spot The Real Ghostbusters accidentally get sent back in time, back to Victorian times where somehow the novella, A Christmas Carol is real! While there the RGBs bust the Christmas spirits, not realizing who they are or what they have done. When they return to the future, Christmas no longer exists! The only way to correct the time line is to go back in time, bringing the Christmas ghosts with them? Can the RGBs save Christmas before the doorway closes forever? Or will they and everyone else in the future have a "bah, humbug!"

Find out this weekend and all week long from the final episode from season 1!

[Dr. Fritz V. Baugh]

Once I started watching it and reviewing it, it felt kind of nice. Though still way too early to be thinking about Christmas. Believe me the department stores and the malls will be doing that before we're all ready.

Having worked in retail before joining the GBWC, I could start a whole rant about how the major retailers started putting out the Christmas stuff earlier and earlier every year.

What makes "X-Mas Marks the Spot" better than most "Very Special Christmas Episodes" is that it's still got a solid plot, great characterization (Dr. Venkman and his trouble with Christmas, which makes even more sense later when we meet Charlie), and good ziingers that work whether there's snow on the ground or the temperature's hovering near 90.

I encourage everyone to watch this great story.

[leegol]

Thank you very, very (200 minutes later) very much! I've been bugging you again and again and finally you do it. Thanks a lot. And I'm not saying it in a mean way, I mean thank you. Just to let you know, I won't bug you about Janine's Day Off and Adventures in Slime and Space. Janine's Day Off, I have a recorded cable copy from Teletoon from January 14 2006. Adventures in Slime and Space, I have on the DVD. You would upload it from the DVD to the Internet but as you've said before, " I'm not sure I have the right software to do that." So thanks.

[Dr. Fritz V. Baugh]

Notes from the GBI Historian:

The Ghostbusters Omnibus Timeline and the GBI Timeline places the events of this story in Year Two, 1984.
http://www.ectozone.com/gbtimeline/01.html
http://www.ectozone.com/gbtimeline/11.html

If Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol in 1843, how could Ebenezer Scrooge write "A Christmas Humbug" in 1837?

Well, the best answer I can come up with is this: in the altered anti-Christmas timeline Scrooge writes his book right after he "defeats" the Christmas Ghosts. In the "restored" timeline he never writes the book himself, instead dictating it to Dickens in 1843.

I could start a whole discussion of how good A Christmas Humbug must be to bring down a major holiday in a major religion, but that might be opening too big a can of worms...(lol)

Egon enteres the ECU for the first time. Slimer will be sent into it in "Sticky Business" and Eduardo Rivera will enter it in "Slimer's Sacrifice". The spacesuit Egon wears while entering the ECU would be the basis of the "Super Fright Features" Egon figure released in 1989.