The Real Ghostbusters had solved their last case in 1991. Six years later, Sony's animation division, Adelaide, brought the franchise back, but with a twist.
Extreme Ghostbusters lasted just 1 season, 40 episodes, fewer than the norm for syndication, unlike Real Ghostbusters, which lasted 5 seasons on ABC, with some episodes also airing in syndication. Of the original team, only Egon Spengler (Maurice LaMarche, mimicking Harold Ramis) returned, along with receptionist Janine Melnitz (Pat Musick) and Slimer, the team's mascot (Billy West). Egon is now a college professor who only has 4 students in his class, and they become the new Ghostbusters.
The underlying subplot was the relationship between Egon & Janine, which was odd considering that in "Ghostbusters 2", Janine was flirting with attorney Louis Tully. Anyway, the series ended with the rest of the original team returning to help Egon and the kids. Apparently, the folks at Sony had forgotten that Frank Welker (Ray) was also the original voice of Slimer, and could've been brought back.
Veteran voice actor Jim Cummings wasn't a regular cast member, but he did record a punk rock cover of the classic theme song........
This series wasn't lacking in star power, with Alfonso Ribiero (Fresh Prince of Bel-Air) as Roland, who was a complete opposite of Carlton Banks. So, why did it fail? Viewers just wouldn't accept having just 1 of the original team in this new show, and Ray, Peter (Dave Coulier), and Winston (Buster Jones) came too late to prevent cancellation.
Rating: B-.
2 comments:
This had some potential but the cast and the animation were difficult to like as the original team.
Not to mention having one of the team wheelchair bound. To me this was a big limit on what he could do in the field. IRL, he would have been a liability.
What he lacked physically, he made up for in smarts, it seems.
The Adelaide house style came with Everett Peck when he came over from Klasky-Csupo after working on Duckman, his own creation.
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