Today I'll be revisiting one of, if not THE best episode from Season 1 of the Real Ghostbusters animated series. Episode 13 called Xmas Marks the Spot of Season 1 was released just before X-mas of 1986 and still stands as one of my favorite ever from the whole series (standing pretty close next to The Boogieman Cometh from Episode 6 of the same season). Some may see the episode as being silly but this one actually involved some time travel so naturally I went all nuts for it.
In a nutshell, the four guys inadvertently went into a time warp which took them back to 1837 where they met the unmistakably grumpy Ebenezer Scrooge who was on the verge of being taken on his three rides with the spirits of Xmas (yup, just like in A Christmas Carol). Winston later commented that he never expected the story to be true and even wondered if any other 'work of fiction' were indeed true as well (watch that ending and you'll know what happens next!).
Inevitably in the true spirit of being Ghostbusters and in a truly messed-up fumbling of the space-time-continuum, them boys mistakenly captured the three Xmas spirits and trapped them in the Ecto trap, much to the delight of ol' Ebenezer himself. You've guessed it, what happened then created a snowball effect and made everyone hate Xmas in the future when they returned back to modern day New York.
Naturally, the boys made a point to restore everything back to normal when they realised that their actions in 1837 created an alternate future that even Marty McFly can cringe about. The highlight of the episode for me was when Egon went into the Ecto containment unit to find the three Xmas spirits they deposited from the Ecto trap. Of course, in the meantime the three remaining Ghostbusters boys doubled up as the Xmas spirits themselves while they wait eagerly for Egon to return to 1837 with the real deal. Everything ended as they should be and even Venkman learnt a lesson from the whole ordeal since he was the one who suffered most during Xmas as a kid.
Pretty fun episode considering that the boys managed to time travel/mess up history and later made amends by helping the XMas spirits to resume what they needed to do with Scrooge.
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