Plot
An obnoxious radio host, Barry Sherman, opens his broadcast with a story about a factory worker turning violent. A postal worker named Frankie dreams he is buried under an avalanche of mail while his manager, a demon, looms over him and a giant envelope monster attacks. The whole thing is a nightmare. A floating worm is attached to his forehead by a tentacle, and when his wife wakes from the noise the worm detaches and flies out the open window. She finds lesions across his body and panics.
Frankie is taken to Memorial Hospital, where his wife calls in the Extreme Ghostbusters. Roland Jackson takes P.K.E. readings and gets nothing. Kylie Griffin learns Frankie did nothing unusual before bed except listen to Barry Sherman's show, which she openly dislikes. A doctor reports that Frankie's fractures came from abnormally strong muscle contractions during a nocturnal seizure, an unusual case he has been seeing more of lately. With no sign of supernatural activity, Eduardo Rivera assigns Kylie and Garrett Miller the graveyard shift.
Back at the firehouse, Garrett's stray paper airplane switches on a boom box playing Sherman's show. Garrett falls asleep and dreams of playing in the NBA, scoring 103 points before the same demon, now a referee, shoves him down and leaves all the players in wheelchairs. Slimer spots a worm hovering over Garrett and chases it out the window. Garrett wakes with the same lesions on his arm but downplays the bad dream.
The team answers an alarm at a church being used as a shelter for homeless men. The sleepers are all attached to floating worms while Sherman's show plays. The Proton Streams have no effect and the worms register zero psychokinetic energy. A drowsy Garrett fires wildly and accidentally hits the radio, which makes the worms melt and the men wake. The ceiling collapses, and the Ghostbusters evacuate everyone while Roland grabs a sample of melted worm. One of the rescued men describes the nightmares, the bruises, and a demon.
Egon Spengler confirms the sample has no P.K.E. and decides to widen the bandwidth for a full spectral analysis. With Garrett dangerously short on sleep, Egon takes him off active duty, and Kylie stays behind with him. Going through a book, Garrett identifies the demon as Morpheus, who inhabits the dream world but has never entered the physical plane. Kylie connects every victim through the Barry Sherman show and theorizes Morpheus is using Sherman's voice as a conduit into sleeping minds. Slimer plugs the radio back in, and elsewhere in the firehouse Egon and Janine Melnitz drift off.
Garrett and Kylie borrow Roland's Mustang and leave just as Ecto-1 returns from a false alarm. Roland and Eduardo nap in the rec room and the dreams take hold. Eduardo dreams of Kylie, who shoves him away and reveals her boyfriend is Morpheus before Eduardo watches his hair fall out. Roland dreams of being presented to the scientific community as Dr. Roland Jackson, only to gush water uncontrollably until the room floods. Egon has a classic "naked in public" dream and is fascinated rather than embarrassed, noting its distinctly Freudian overtones. Janine wakes in her dream alone in an empty city, where Morpheus appears laughing on storefront televisions.
Several worms combine into one large creature above Eduardo and Roland. Egon recognizes the worms are not fully ectoplasmic but embryonic, growing into something else, so a Trap would not hold them. The big worm flies off, and Eduardo and Roland pursue it in Ecto-1 while Egon tends to a weakened Janine. At the WKYR radio building, Kylie and Garrett confront Sherman, who rants that people blame the supernatural for their own problems. Kylie reads an extremely high level off him. Garrett shoots his equipment, Sherman watches the worms gather on the roof, and then he vanishes.
The worms merge into a giant construct, and Morpheus, now possessing Sherman, prepares his triumph. Proton Streams flow harmlessly around him as he animates a ventilation system and the radio tower to attack. Roland realizes Sherman is now giving off off-the-scale P.K.E. and stops Garrett from firing, because he wants Morpheus to fully cross over. Once Morpheus emerges, declaring he will master the physical plane as he mastered dreams, he is finally ectoplasmic and trappable. The Ghostbusters confine and capture him. Eduardo's hair returns, and a confused Sherman comes to believing he was sleepwalking again.
Cast and crew
Regular voices were provided by Tara Charendoff, Maurice LaMarche, Jason Marsden, Pat Musick, Alfonso Ribeiro, Rino Romano, and Billy West. Guest voices were Jeff Altman, Xander Berkeley, Susan Eisenberg, and Michael Pataki. The episode carried production number 125.1
Continuity and references
Garrett's NBA dream echoes his stated wish in "Be Careful What You Wish For" to play professional basketball. Roland's dream of becoming a famous doctor follows up on "Ghost Apocalyptic Future," where he is told he will become a doctor. After the church ceiling collapses, Eduardo quotes "Nice shootin', Tex," a line from the first Ghostbusters film. Egon describes his own dream as having Freudian overtones, a nod to the psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud.
When Sherman taunts the Ghostbusters about people blaming their problems on the likes of Count Dracula and the Boogieman, both have prior history in the franchise. The original team faced vampires in the Real Ghostbusters episodes "No One Comes to Lupusville" and "Transylvanian Homesick Blues."
Production notes
The script went through several drafts in early 1997, with a final draft dated April 5, 1997.12 An early version had Garrett's mother appear in his dream and zap him with a cattle prod, and it also originally had Garrett gain the ability to walk while dreaming.345 The first draft implied, in-universe, that the Ghostbusters had disbanded four years earlier, around 1993; Egon refers to a NEXIS search turning up hundreds of newspaper articles pairing "Ghostbusters" with "disgrace" over the previous four years.6 A character named Aaron Curtiz, a photojournalist and friend of Janine brought in to help the team's public relations, was cut from the final episode.78
Several locations and details shifted between drafts. In the final draft, Roland and Eduardo were sent to the Wradley Hotel in Midtown, and the radio station was placed at Rockefeller Center.91011 Barry Sherman's dialogue referenced Mayor McShane, Central Park, and the Statue of Liberty.121314 Janine's nightmare was reworked from being dragged down a corridor by a nun (Morpheus) and locked in a cell, in the first draft, into a simpler scene of her placed in a jail cell in the final draft.1516
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script Title Page).
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (First Draft March 24, 1997) (Script Title Page).
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (First Draft March 24, 1997) (Script p. 21). Line reads: "Garrett's mother in hospital exam room."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (First Draft March 24, 1997) (Script p. 22). Line reads: "Garrett's mother raises a cattle prod also."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 19). Line reads: "Garrett goes to sleep to find out more."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (First Draft March 24, 1997) (Script p. 6). Egon says: "I did a NEXIS computer search last week. The words 'Ghostbusters' and 'disgrace' appeared together in five hundred and twelve newspaper articles in the past four years alone."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script Cast List).
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 05). Janine says: "Well, it won't happen this time. Aaron's an old friend --"
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 21). Line reads: "Roland and Eduardo at a Midtown hotel."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 37). Line reads: "Tawny Little Type - ...as well as damage to a local radio station and the Wradley Hotel--"
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 28). Line reads: "Ext. Streets near Rockefeller Center - continuous. The Mustang screeches to a halt beside Rockefeller Plaza. 30 Rock looms overhead, its radio tower stabbing into the night."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 24). Barry says: "Mayor Pinhead should give free parking to all of New York. How? Pave Central Park!"
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 25). Barry says: "And how about that Statue's liberty!"
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (First Draft March 24, 1997) (Script p. 26). Barry says: "...And speaking of parking, that do nothing mayor McShane should make all of New York City free parking. You know how we do it? Pave over that stupid Central Park!"
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (First Draft March 24, 1997) (Script p. 28). Line reads: "Janine, dressed like a Catholic schoolgirl, is being dragged down a dank corridor by a NUN (MORPHEUS)...MORPHEUS shoves Janine into a cell and closes the door."
-
Melching, Steven (1997). Extreme Ghostbusters "In Your Dreams" (Final Draft April 5, 1997) (Script p. 26). Line reads: "Janine put in a jail cell."
