Plot
In a Chinatown antiquities shop, the owner, Mr. Chen, is unable to pay protection money to a local syndicate. His daughter Jodi suggests handing over a small dragon figurine whose gem eyes are worth a fortune, but Chen warns her it is too dangerous. When the gang's one-eyed leader and his men arrive demanding their "taxes," Chen pushes Jodi into the back room. Jodi pries the gems loose, and as the thugs threaten Chen, the figurine shatters and releases an entity that possesses Chen and transforms him into a demon. The creature throws the gang out of the shop and chases the leader into the street.
At the firehouse, Eduardo and Kylie argue over whether light is a particle or a wave, a debate Roland settles by invoking quantum theory and the idea that light behaves as both. Janine takes a call and jokes that the Ghostbusters now offer physics tutoring at reasonable rates.
A police officer and a doctor lead the team through Bellevue Hospital to two patients, the syndicate leader and one of his men, whose bones have been removed without any surgical incision. Meanwhile, Jodi fails to pawn the gems and is cornered in an alley by two thugs. When she is threatened, the gems begin to glow and objects fly on their own to defend her, after which one of the thugs is taken by the demon.
Investigating the shop, the team reads off-the-charts residual energy and recovers fragments of the figurine. Jodi arrives looking for her father, and when Garrett confronts her, the glowing gems animate two store statues that attack the team. After the Ghostbusters destroy the statues, Jodi calms down and agrees to talk. The surviving thug reveals himself as Special Agent Michael Wu of the FBI, working undercover in Chinatown to build a case against organized crime; he had been following Jodi to keep her safe.
Roland determines the figurine was a kind of containment vessel inscribed with the name Gu Mo, a bone demon from a story Jodi's father used to tell. He faxes the inscriptions to Egon, who consults Spengler's Spirit Guide and explains that the gems, the Dragon's Eyes, have telekinetic properties that protect their owner. Gu Mo once twisted that power to create flaming circles and was defeated when the gems were used to seal him inside the statue, making it a containment unit. Egon warns that Gu Mo must not recover the gems.
Underground, the team is swarmed by creatures formed from the stolen bones. Gu Mo, using Chen as his host, demands the gems in exchange for the others' lives. Jodi surrenders them and is teleported away with the captives. Gu Mo binds the bones into a giant bone dragon with the Dragon's Eyes set as its eyes, then bursts up through the streets of Chinatown during a New Year celebration, stripping the bones from everyone the dragon passes and forming flaming rings in the sky toward a fifteenth circle.
From the firehouse roof, Egon works out that the gems let the dragon create the rings by manipulating waves of ecto-charged green light, and that setting the proton streams a half cycle out of phase with that light will nullify them. He instructs the team to tune their throwers to 13.5 gigacycles. The blasts dissipate the rings and disintegrate the dragon; Wu shatters the gems with a thrown rock, and with no outlet for his power, Gu Mo overloads and detonates. Wu catches Chen as he falls, Kylie traps Gu Mo, and the stolen bones return to their owners. The recovered thug attacks Wu and is quickly subdued and arrested.
Ghosts and entities
Gu Mo is an ancient Chinese bone-stealing demon. Eons before the episode's events, he used a pair of jewels called the Dragon's Eyes to control the 15 Flaming Circles in a bid for invincibility. He was defeated when the gems were turned against him and used to seal him inside a golden dragon statue, which functioned as a primitive containment vessel. The legend of Gu Mo survived as a folk tale used to frighten children, in a role similar to that of the Boogeyman in western cultures.
When possessing Mr. Chen, Gu Mo takes the form of a green humanoid demon in archaic Chinese dress. After being expelled from his host and overloaded by the Ghostbusters, he reveals his true form: a green, dragon-like specter. Even without the Dragon's Eyes, Gu Mo retains the powers of flight, possession, teleportation, remote communication, and the ability to strip bones from a living body without surgical incision. He is classified by Roland as a spectral entity of immense power. Kylie traps him with a standard ghost trap after Wu destroys the gems.
Gu Mo's image appeared years later in other Ghostbusters media: his true form can be seen on a storefront in the IDW comic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters Issue #3 (page 13), and he appears on the IDW Convention Variant Cover of Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary: Extreme Ghostbusters.
The Bone Dragon is a giant creature Gu Mo assembles from the stolen bones of his victims, with the Dragon's Eyes set into its skull as glowing eyes. It serves as his vehicle and weapon during the attack on the Chinese New Year crowd, stripping bones from bystanders as it flies overhead and generating the flaming circles in the sky. The dragon disintegrates when the Ghostbusters nullify the gems' output.
The Animated Curios are two antique store statues briefly animated by the Dragon's Eyes when Jodi becomes frightened during the team's investigation. One attacks Eduardo with a staff, the other attacks Garrett with a blade. The Ghostbusters destroy both with their proton throwers.
Bone-Creatures are the skeletal minions Gu Mo assembles from stolen bones. They can be shattered temporarily but reform into new configurations, and they merge to form larger, stranger shapes. The creatures dissolve when Gu Mo is defeated and the bones return to their owners.
Cast
Regular voices were provided by Tara Charendoff, Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices included George Kee Cheung, Tim Dang, Clyde Kusatsu, and Lauren Tom.
Production notes
The first draft of the script was completed on April 17, 1997.1 In that draft the episode was set in January during Chinese New Year; a line of description reads, "A few stray dry leaves blow by on this mild January morning," and Jodi tells the team, "It's the Chinese New Year."23 A scripted sequence in which Jodi also tried to sell the Dragon's Eyes at a second pawn shop and a gambling den was cut from the finished episode.4 Pearl Street in Chinatown was named as a location in the draft.5
Continuity
Garrett's grudge against federal agents refers back to the earlier episode Greased, in which the team was handcuffed to a sabotaged airplane by FBI agents. Roland's recognition of the figurine as a containment unit echoes the original team's encounters with other ancient containment vessels in The Real Ghostbusters, such as in If I Were a Witch Man.
Near the climax, Gu Mo announces that it is the end of the Year of the Ox, placing the episode firmly in 1997. This is consistent with other episodes of the series, such as Greased, that include similar date markers.
In broadcast order the episode follows Fallout and precedes Till Death Do Us Start.
Notes
The "Bellevue Hospital Center" sign in the animation is misspelled as "Bellvue." When the Bone Dragon creates two flaming rings behind Gu Mo, the rings do not appear in the animation.
Eduardo calls Jodi "Bewitched," a nod to the 1964 television series of the same name about a witch living as a suburban housewife. Roland's references to Planck's Quantum Theory and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle suggest that Kylie and/or Eduardo are enrolled in a Physics 101 course during the events of the series.
References
