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"Standing Room Only" is the 95th episode of The Real Ghostbusters, first aired on October 8, 1988 as part of the show's fourth season. It was written by Richard Mueller. The story follows Peter Venkman as he builds a Ghost Attractor that draws ghosts to the Firehouse like a magnet, a scheme he is sure will spare the team a lot of legwork and make them millionaires. It does neither, and instead packs the Firehouse with spirits fleeing a far larger threat.1
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The episode carries production number 175004.2 The voice cast included Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Buster Jones, and Kath Soucie. The episode was recorded on June 27, 1988.2
On the way to a case, Ray Stantz is enjoying the spring weather while Peter and Slimer, both suffering from hay fever, sneeze their way to the Central Flower Market. A guard describes the haunt as a bouquet with a bad attitude. The team fans out, the flower ghost rushes Peter, and after Winston Zeddemore and Egon Spengler box it in, Ray traps it. With the job done, Peter starts wishing aloud for an easier way to catch ghosts.
Back at headquarters, Peter builds a Ghost Attractor from random household parts. Ray thinks it would take the fun out of the work and Egon insists such a device is scientifically impossible. Meanwhile, out in the countryside, a gigantic entity rises from the ground and flattens a house in its path. When Janine Melnitz sounds the alarm, the team finds ghosts circling Ecto-1, and Peter declares his invention a success. The catches keep coming until Janine has loaded up ten full traps with more on the way. Egon cannot even scan the Attractor because of its junk-drawer construction.
Confident, Peter starts buying things on credit. In the country, the giant entity devours ghosts against their will. In the city, hundreds of ghosts gather outside the Firehouse. Peter shuts the Attractor off, but the ghosts refuse to leave, and when he asks them to go they only heave ectoplasm. The team sends Slimer out to learn what is wrong, and he reports the ghosts chanting one word: "Mee-Krah." Egon's search identifies Mee-Krah as a spirit that rises every thousand years to consume ghosts and replenish its energy, leaving deserts in its wake. The trapped and gathered ghosts are simply looking for somewhere safe to hide.
As Mee-Krah closes on New York City, a plane tries to douse it with water and is shot down, its pilots parachuting clear. Egon, Peter, and Slimer take Ecto-2 west to study Mee-Krah and find it immune to proton streams. Egon predicts it will reach the city at midnight. Peter's plan to lure it back out to sea with a trail of ghosts nearly works until some of the ghosts escape into Ecto-2 and foul the controls, letting Mee-Krah change course. The team stages a second confrontation at the old Hudson River Pier off the New Jersey shore, concentrating the firepower of four Proton Packs and Ecto-1's Proton Cannon simultaneously, but Mee-Krah is unaffected and the team barely escapes.
They realize Mee-Krah is heading for the Containment Unit. Egon, having determined the Ghost Attractor stores energy drawn from nearby ghosts, calculates that with 1,612 ghosts close by, one big surge could neutralize the creature, but someone has to trigger it. Peter goads Mee-Krah into attacking, the Attractor releases its stored charge, feeding Mee-Krah all the energy it needs, and the creature returns to its dormant state. The device collapses in the process. Ray laments that Peter's invention is gone, but Egon points out they can rebuild it from Peter's notes. Peter sheepishly admits he never wrote any. He and Slimer promptly start sneezing again.
Bouquet Ghost. A flower-themed ghost haunting the Central Flower Market at the start of the episode. A guard on scene describes it as "a bouquet with a bad attitude." Peter encounters it first in aisle three, Egon confines it, and Ray traps it. It is one of the episode's minor incidental spirits.
Mee-Krah. The episode's main antagonist. Mee-Krah is an immensely powerful Class 8 entity, described by Egon as a "mindless force" and a "giant storage battery," that awakens every thousand years to consume ghosts and replenish its ectoplasmic energy. As it feeds, its temperature rises and it scorches the earth in its wake. Past visits, Egon explains, resulted in the creation of the Sahara Desert, the Gobi Desert, and Death Valley, placing it at a minimum of 3,000 years old. Physically, Mee-Krah resembles a squid or jellyfish: it has a translucent mantle-like defensive shield, multiple tentacles, a single eye, and a large maw capable of drawing in ghosts. It ignores both water and concentrated proton fire but is ultimately neutralized when Peter's Ghost Attractor releases the stored ectoplasmic energy of 1,612 ghosts directly into it. Egon's post-crisis analysis identifies the Attractor as the world's first Ectoplasmic Energy Capacitor. Mee-Krah returns to dormancy rather than being destroyed. It makes a non-canon cameo on the cover of IDW's Ghostbusters Issue #9 and on page 17 of Ghostbusters Volume 2 Issue #5.
When Peter first proposes a Ghost Attractor, Egon admits he has never tried to build one. Several seasons later he perfects a similar device, the Ghost Beacon, in the episode "Darkness at Noon, Part 1." Egon describes Mee-Krah as the cause of the world's great deserts, naming the Sahara, the Gobi, and Death Valley as the results of its past visits. Janine wears her pink jumpsuit in this episode and warns that if the team fails, Mee-Krah will turn New York City into "The Great American Desert." The episode also establishes that ghosts can suffer allergic reactions, secreting ectoplasm instead of mucus.
Among the ghosts crowding outside the Firehouse, one bears a resemblance to Slug from the series premiere "Ghosts R Us" and is assigned queue number 486; another resembles the Winged Puma from "Look Homeward, Ray." These are background continuity touches in the crowd animation.
The team's standard gear appears throughout: Ecto-1, Ecto-2, the Proton Pack, the P.K.E. Meter, traps, and the Containment Unit. Tobin's Spirit Guide is consulted when Egon researches Mee-Krah. Peter's improvised Ghost Attractor is the episode's central device. Action moves between the Central Flower Market, the Firehouse, and the Hudson River Pier off the New Jersey shore.
"Standing Room Only" is included on Time Life Entertainment's The Real Ghostbusters DVD box set, on Volume 4, Disc 1. In broadcast order the preceding episode was "Poultrygeist" and the following episode was "Robo-Buster." In DVD running order it follows "The Joke's on Ray."