The Subject: This time, we're looking at two different series side-by-side: Ghostbusters and The Real Ghostbusters. Both began airing in 1986 in an effort to capitalize on the popularity of the 1984 Murray/Aykroyd/Ramis film. The huge difference between the two is that Ghostbusters was produced by Filmation (the people who brought you He-Man) and was based on a short-lived live action series from 1975. The Real Ghostbusters (TRGB for the sake of brevity) was based on the aforementioned '84 film. The use of the word "Real" in the title was forced because of legal issues in regard to the other series.

This piece is going to be an examination of two different cartoon properties. I watched and enjoyed both of them back in the day, so in terms of initial neutrality of bias, it's pretty square. I'll be frank in saying that I am an ardent fan of the 1984 film, a situation that has only grown as I've "matured." So as I revisited these two series, I did go back with a pretty hefty bias in place. To try and account for that, I'm going to run down a few principle categories and attempt to neutrally compare and contrast the shows before I go all editorial on your ass.

Overall Plot: GB is about Jake and Eddie, the sons of the guys from the 1975 show, and their adventures in learning how to become Ghostbusters. Aided by Tracey the Gorilla (who is a wizard with gadgets), an office full of haunted talking appliances (think Flintstones with ghosts instead of dinosaurs), and GhostBuggy, their talking, time-traveling car, they face off against "Prime Evil" and his horde of ghostly minions.

TRGB tells the continuing adventures of Peter Venkman, Egon Spengler, Ray Stantz, and Winston Zeddemore as they would have continued after the events in the movie, dealing with paranormal investigations and eliminations around the greater New York City area. This obviously conflicts with the events in Ghostbusters II, but since when do feature films care about established series canon?

Animation: This is an interesting case where the shows utilize the two different dominant art styles of the period. GB, being produced by Filmation, has a very familiar look to it because they'd been doing animation for television since the 60s. The models themselves are clean and certainly skew "cartoony." TRGB, on the other hand, used art and animation that was more akin to anime, and looks a lot like some of the Japanese imports of the day, like Voltron and Robotech. Of the two, the overall quality of the Filmation stuff appears better, and TRGB has a tendency to go "off model" in a lot of the cells.

Voice Acting: Both shows used well-established voice actors in their principal roles. GB featured names like Alan Oppenheimer (also known as "Skeletor"), Pat Fraley ("Krang" from TMNT, was also on G.I. Joe), and Peter Cullen (tons of Disney work, voiced KARR, KITT's evil twin on Knight Rider, and… oh yeah -- was the voice of freaking OPTIMUS PRIME). No worries there.

TRGB came out swinging for its first two seasons with Venkman being voiced by Lorenzo Music (Garfield), and Winston voiced by Arsenio Hall. Egon and Ray are voiced by two guys who I think have done more voice work than anyone else in the universe -- Maurice LaMarche is Egon (but at this point you might recognize him best as "Brain" from Pinky and the Brain) and Ray is acted by Frank Welker, who might actually be voice-acting Jesus (Welker has been the voice of Scooby-Doo's "Freddy" since 1969, and his profile on imdb.com is certainly worth a quick viewing). Dave Coulier (who doesn't love "Uncle Joey"?)* replaced Lorenzo Music as Peter in later seasons. TRGB comes out a little on top in this match up simply because I think the voice acting and direction of the cast is leaps and bounds above the work of the Filmation crew. Everyone's talented, but TRGB crew seems to care more and gives much more nuanced work.

Writing: Here's where the wheels come off the wagon for Ghostbusters -- the writing is just terrible. From the ground up, it's silly, empty, patronizing (more on that later), and just… well, it seems like even the writers thought the show was a bad idea. On the other hand, one of the first things I noticed about TRGB is that the writing was BETTER than I remembered. It was quippy, the stories were well thought out and substantive (drawing a lot on actual folklore and making references to things like Citizen Kane and H.P. Lovecraft books), and the tone of the writing feels more elevated than the other show (and possibly a reason that the voice acting was better as well). The first time I sat through the credits I found out why -- the head writer and story editor in the early seasons was a guy by the name of J. Michael Straczynski, who is now a sci-fi powerhouse after creating the show Babylon 5.

So there's your mostly-unbiased analysis. Here are my personal reactions as a viewer of both shows:

There were many different points during my viewing of the Filmation Ghostbusters DVDs that I found myself wondering exactly how stupid of a kid I was. The show is awful -- and I desperately don't want to undersell that impression. It's a total phone-in. Like I said before, the production standards were okay in comparison to the show's contemporaries, but it was clear that there was little to no love invested in the project. A lot of this can be blamed on the writing, to be sure. Remember when I called it "patronizing?" Here's what I was talking about:

During the course of one show, Prime Evil (bad guy stereotype) steals the Statue of Liberty right as it's due to be unveiled following renovation (which was a parallel to events in real life; renovation, not the theft. Dude isn't David Copperfield.) To coincide with the unveiling, a naturalization ceremony for a group of immigrants -- including Ghostbuster Jake's grandfather -- is scheduled to take place. Long story short, the good guys recover the statue, but it's been shrunk to miniature size! Horrors! With no way to change it back, the ceremony goes on as planned (because you can't stop the spirit of freedom, or some sentiment like that), and as the naturalized citizens recite the Pledge of Allegiance… wow! The statue suddenly grows back to the correct size. Yeah. I appreciate the sentiment, but come on -- then again, maybe if I don't believe, then the terrorists win. I am easily confused about these things twenty years after the fact.

More proof of incredible lameness -- like other Filmation properties, the GB cartoons took a minute or so at the end of each episode to teach us about the moral or lesson of the day, but even these were horrible. In one instance, after some ghosts eat part of the Eiffel Tower, we're told that it's not okay to eat metal, and that proper nutrition is important.

I could spend a lot more time going on and on about the weaknesses of this property, like how, in daily cartoon fashion, there's a large use of recycled animation sequences (the standard "Ghostbusters transform into their action uniforms" sequence tops out at about a minute and thirty, which is a huge chunk of time in a show that runs a little over 20 minutes) or how everything's so damn formulaic, but I'd rather just move on. Although it's worth noting that Prime Evil's weapon of choice is a giant electronic pipe organ (called a "Bonetroller"). More than anything else about the series, that thing single handedly captures the flavor of the 80s with its glowing light-up keys and flashy space-age case. Sadly, Prime Evil never uses it to cover songs from Van Halen's 1984.

Now, bias be damned, The Real Ghostbusters was a show worth watching. Sure it had its cheap moments as well -- the animation could get a little jerky, the music was always the same -- but the redeeming value of good writing trumps all else in this case. The quotability factor is high here, and while Venkman generally gets the best lines, the love is shared between everyone. Here are a few examples:

Peter:
It's times like this that I wish I'd listened to what my dad used to tell me.

Winston:
Yeah? What was that?

Peter:
I don't know. I never listened.

---

Peter:
How come we never meet anything cute? It's always big and mean with lots of teeth.

---

Egon:
Notice the vacant stare, the completely mindless look. That could only mean one thing.

Winston:
She's from California?

Egon:
No. She's been hypnotized.

---

Peter:
Anything that looks like Godzilla wearing an octopus hat shouldn't be hard to find.

There are plenty of moments for adults as well, as evidenced by a scene from my own past. There was one specific moment in the late 80s when I was watching an afternoon episode, and a lawyer character arrived at the Ghostbuster's firehouse and introduced herself as representative of the law firm of "Bilkem and Runn." My mother overhead the line and laughed, remarking how it was clever. I was too young to get the vocabulary joke, so I had her explain it, bringing me a moment of "Oh. I see what you did there." The series is laden with moments like that, things there just for the adults that might ordinarily have to suffer through watching TV with their kids. Quality.

Something else I'd like to touch on is the show's sense of peril. While you're sure that the good guys are always going to win, the dramatic forces are set up so you're generally left wondering how in the hell the plot points are going to get resolved. Action sequences are clever, props and surroundings always come into play, and bad guys tend to be played as mean, unfriendly, and, well… evil. Not funny, wacky, or fraternizing with the good guys. Evil wants to be evil here, and who you gonna call to stop it?

Sadly, after a few seasons, the show was retooled for Saturday mornings and became Slimer and the Real Ghostbusters, which was okay, but really started to go downhill after a while. My first reaction is that it got increasingly "kiddie," but it may be that I was just getting older and that the quality of the writing suffered. It had the side effect of making me really resent Slimer, who, while always a part of the show's cast from the start, took more of a featured role as opposed to being comic relief. They tried to make Slimer the heart of the Ghostbusters, which is crap. Everyone knows that Ray is the heart of the Ghostbusters.

All in all, I hope that there's eventually a release of the early seasons on DVD. There's a few collections out there right now, but certainly not what I consider the show merits, especially in lieu of the fact that it appears Ghostbusters IS going to be released in its entirety. There's a need for balance in the universe, and there's no doubt that the word "real" was applied to the title of the correct series.