Plot
In rough seas, a research vessel hails its submersible, Magellan Echo Starburst 13, piloted by Michelle, who flirts over the radio with the captain, Danny. While exploring the depths, she finds the ruins of the Lost City of Krobos and swims past a structure that opens. Danny orders her back to wait out the weather, but a ghost flies out of the ruins and into the submersible. When the sub is hauled aboard, Danny opens the hatch to find Michelle's desiccated remains.
At the Firehouse, Eduardo Rivera is typing a philosophy paper by copying out of textbooks word for word, arguing that copying from one book is plagiarism but copying from several is research. Kylie Griffin and Roland Jackson call him out, and the whole team piles on before Janine Melnitz announces a call. Ecto-1 heads to the Maritime Research Center, run by the famous marine biologist Francois Rousseau. The center has been quarantined as if there were a viral outbreak, with hazmat-suited workers carting off victims. Rousseau, who summoned the Ghostbusters, suspects something supernatural rather than a disease. Kylie's P.K.E. Meter reads the entity as a Class 5. Rousseau explains that his people recently located the Lost City of Krobos and sent a distress call, after which a tug boat found the crew desiccated. Krobos was reputedly home to alchemists versed in demonology, and some researchers blamed demonic forces for the city's destruction.
The team tracks ecto activity through the ship to the flooded Engine Room. The ghost pulls Eduardo underwater and a fight breaks out, with the creature hurling a large pipe and swatting aside their throwers. Rousseau climbs onto a pipe and turns a valve, blasting the ghost with steam, which lets Garrett Miller, Roland, and Eduardo blast it so Kylie can trap it. The victims recover, Michelle waking with short-term memory loss. Rousseau asks to study the creature and to see the Containment Unit, but Roland refuses because Egon Spengler bars civilians from going near it.
Back at the Firehouse, Egon explains the ghost takes its victims' life force, and the theft of body fluids is a byproduct of its affinity for water. Janine compares it to an ectoplasmic vampire. Roland figures it had been hibernating, unfed for centuries, and Egon warns that, untrapped, it could have reached the city's water supply and fed on millions.
In the basement, Eduardo quietly lets Rousseau in for a look at the Containment Unit. While Eduardo is distracted, Rousseau steals the trap holding the ghost and slips it into his briefcase. Slimer witnesses the theft and tries to warn Eduardo, who does not understand. Garrett spots Rousseau sneaking out, Slimer alerts Egon, and the team gives chase in Ecto-1. Egon reports a Nexus search showing that several of Rousseau's benefactors had threatened to cut his funding, and that one major discovery could buy him ten more years of research grants. The team loses him in traffic, but Roland knows where he is headed.
At the Maritime Research Center, Rousseau releases the ghost into a water tank, which it shatters. The Ghostbusters arrive too late, and the creature escapes down a drain, reappearing in a man's shower. Janine relays sightings at 75th Street and Lexington Avenue, Murray Hill, and two more in Midtown Manhattan, and the team realizes the ghost is working its way toward the Lower East Side and the ocean. They find it in a public pool before it slips into a curbside drain. Egon directs them to the central waystation in the East River, through which all the city's ocean-bound water passes first.
Roland reroutes two of the station's three inlets into one reservoir so the ghost has a single exit. Kylie's plan requires someone to stand in the water as bait. Roland volunteers on the grounds that he is the oldest of the four; Garrett and Kylie both counter-nominate themselves. Eduardo jumps in before the argument is settled. With hypothermia setting in after twenty minutes, the ghost finally grabs him. The others blast it, but Rousseau, still after the creature for the publicity and $10 million in research grants he has lined up, opens fire on the team with Eduardo's pack. Kylie pretends to release custody, Rousseau loses his balance and falls into the water, and the ghost turns on him. The Ghostbusters recover and blast the creature, Eduardo grabs Kylie's trap to capture it, and then drags Rousseau to safety. Outside, the team scolds Eduardo for jumping in but admits it was a brave move.
The Dry Spell Spirit
The episode's antagonist is a massive, slug-like red creature classified by Kylie as a Class 5. It is identified on-screen as an "ectoplasmic vampire" and fits the category of demon desiccator: its primary mechanism is draining human victims of life force, with the theft of bodily fluids being a byproduct of its strong affinity for water rather than a goal in itself. The spirit is physically powerful, capable of hurling heavy objects, passing through solid surfaces, and thriving in and navigating through plumbing and drainage systems.
The episode establishes that the spirit infested the Lost City of Krobos approximately 2,000 years ago. After Krobos was destroyed and sank beneath the ocean, the ghost retreated into one of the city's structures and entered a state of hibernation. It remained dormant until Rousseau's 1997 deep-sea expedition broke its sleep. Once recaptured, its hold over all victims is immediately broken and they recover fully, including Michelle, who initially wakes with only short-term memory loss.
Cast
The regular cast features Tara Charendoff, Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices are provided by James Avery, Kristy McNichol, and Steven Weber.
Notes and references
The Lost City of Krobos resembles the legend of Atlantis, another fabled city said to have sunk beneath the ocean. Michelle's gasp of amazement upon sighting Krobos was scripted as a deliberate nod to a similar scene in the 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey. The character of Francois Rousseau is loosely modeled on the real-life oceanographer Jacques Cousteau, who died on June 25, 1997, the same year the episode aired; the episode also refers to Rousseau having previously searched for Montezuma's treasure and the great white whale. Rousseau's own assessment of his potential find is that the ghost would bring him more publicity than the raising of the Titanic. Eduardo mistakes Rousseau for the hosts of the cooking programs The French Chef and The Galloping Gourmet, and at one point references the killer whale Shamu, while Garrett likens the Containment Unit to the Bates Motel from the film Psycho.
Eduardo's philosophy paper cites the thinkers Soren Kierkegaard and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. His philosophy course had already been mentioned at the start of "Be Careful What You Wish For". While the team scolds Eduardo for plagiarizing, several characters note he is only learning to "Lie, Cheat, and Steal," a catchphrase associated with wrestler Eddie Guerrero at the time. Roland asserts that he is the oldest of the four Extreme Ghostbusters when volunteering as the ghost's bait. When the ghost is recaptured at the waystation, Eduardo activates a flotation option that lets the trap float on the water's surface.
