Plot
During a localized summer heat wave, an earthquake makes the Ghostbusters suspect paranormal activity, especially after going two weeks without a bust. When the water pressure in the firehouse bathroom goes haywire, they detect unusually high concentrations of ectoplasmic residue. Ray is eager to explore the sewers, but Peter Venkman dismisses the idea. They head down to investigate anyway. Egon Spengler theorizes an inversion caused by an ectological cross rip, with elemental imbalances taking hold. In the sewers they find an extremely corrosive orange gel seeping through the foundation and more than forty ghosts. Ray recalls a childhood urban legend that Manhattan Island rests on a stone pillar, and that if the pillar ever broke the island would sink into the ocean. Egon confirms an ethereal spring nearby. Unequipped for so many ghosts and unpaid, they take a sample of the gel in a trap for testing and call it a night.
Egon places the gel in an analyzer, but the readout will not be ready until morning. Unable to wait, Ray goes back down alone with Slimer. They follow ghosts down a tunnel, where Ray is attacked. He orders Slimer to get help, and during the fight he blasts a strange drain plug and falls into a deep cavern.
The next morning, Janine Melnitz arrives and cannot find Slimer. When Slimer returns, he manages to tell her Ray is in trouble by spitting out the Ecto-1 license plate and acting out the message. Janine wakes the others. Egon learns the orange gel has very high pressure readings, making it dangerous, but that its base substance is an inorganic suspension with a high quotient of lubricity, similar to axle grease. The team takes Janine's car to find where Ray left Ecto-1. The earthquakes worsen and the car plummets underground.
Ray wakes and explores until he reaches a vast room holding a spinning pillar, the Pillar of New York. He theorizes the gel is a lubricant for the pillar, which acts as a gyroscope, before the ghosts attack him again. The others reach the hole he fell through and help fend off the ghosts. Ray finds where the ghosts blocked the flow of orange gel to the pillar, and the team blasts the blockage clear. When the gel flows over the pillar again, the tremors stop.
Egon cannot say whether ancient gods, a lost civilization, Atlantis, or something else built the pillar, but the team determines its gyroscopic properties stabilize Manhattan. City officials do not believe the story about the pillar but pay the Ghostbusters anyway for stopping the earthquakes. Winston and Peter set to work repairing Janine's car while Ray feeds Slimer.
Cast
Equipment and items
Locations
- Firehouse
- New York Catacombs
Quotes
- Winston, watching the ooze melt through Egon's sample jar: "Plastic, huh? Maybe you should try a glass one." Egon: "That WAS glass."
- Peter: "We're professionals, not vigilantes! People pay us to do this! We can't just bust every single ghost in the universe just because they're there!"
Trivia
The episode was recorded on November 14, 1986.2 It is based on the urban myth that Manhattan was built on a pillar. After feeling the earthquake, Ray remarks that the firehouse is as strong as the Rock of Gibraltar. Peter references Popular Mechanics magazine during his bathroom mishap and later mentions AAA after Janine's car falls underground. Peter also calls Ray "Great Carnac," a likely nod to the Johnny Carson character Carnac the Magnificent. In his sleep, Egon apologizes to his mom for burning down the garage. At one point Winston rappels down a wall despite a built-in ladder nearby.
Janine says she is glad she lives in the Bronx, although she is later depicted living in Brooklyn.
The episode shares some parallels with Ghostbusters II, including a brightly colored goo bubbling up from the sewer and a Ghostbuster hanging from a rope over a pit. It predates that film by two years.
References
