In the final episode of the Saturday
morning series The Ghost Busters, the evil Dr. Centigrade (Ronny Graham)
materializes with his sidekick, the Abominable Snowman, in the local
graveyard.
Everything the Abominable Snowman touches
turns to ice, so he needs the heart of a warm-blooded human to replace his
own.
Dr. Centigrade determines the
perfect candidate: Spenser!
Zero (Lou Scheimer) assigns the Ghost Busters to take
down the ghostly duo, but Spenser bumbles his way onto Dr. Centigrade’s
operating table.
The Abominable Snowman certainly made the
rounds on Saturday morning television. He appeared in the third and final
season of Land of the Lost (1975-1977), and in Bigfoot and Wild Boy
(1977-1978) too. Here, in The
Ghost Busters, he is a shaggy, innocent (ghost) creature with no menace
whatsoever.
All the evil in the episode is provided by the scenery-chewing
Ronny Graham who, as Dr. Centigrade, delivers his dialogue to the
camera, consistently breaking the fourth-wall.
The actual plot here is a hold-over from “Jekyll and
Hyde: Together for the First Time.” That episode saw Dr. Jekyll plotting to use
the personality-less Spenser for a supernatural grafting of the Mr. Hyde
personality. In this episode, Spenser’s
heart is needed to give the abominable snowman new life.
As we come to the end of The
Ghost Busters journey, I will confess that I have developed a grudging
respect for the slapstick, immensely silly series from 40-plus years ago.
The same jokes get repeated every single
week, the plots are ludicrous, and the sets and acting are cardboard. And yet the show breaks you down with its
inanity and good-heart.
The Ghost Busters breaks through your resistance,
and you just have to laugh at its weird flights of fancy. I don't know that Saturday mornings have ever produced a weirder program than this one.
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