Plot
After three weeks without a single job, Peter and Winston pass the time with a ping pong match until Slimer ruins it by eating the ball. Janine brings out her old black-and-white television set, but something is wrong: the show "Leave it to Woodchuck" is playing in color. Woodchuck emerges from the screen in a monstrous form. Egon and Winston trap him, then trap Glorp, a living tube of toothpaste, before pulling the plug. Egon notices the set is tuned to channel one, a channel that does not exist. The team realizes that images from televisions all over New York are coming to life as ghostly manifestations.
The Ghostbusters head out on a call, Slimer tagging along in Ecto-1 and still trying to win Peter's forgiveness. After they trap more ghosts, the nearby Bobo's Restaurant opens for business, its advertising boasting the biggest TV west of the Hudson River. The team rushes in too late: Power Guy emerges and attacks, opening a vortex in his chest. Peter is nearly pulled in when Slimer sticks him to a wall with ectoplasm, but Slimer is sucked in instead. Power Guy then turns into a vortex himself and flies through the roof.
Following a strong P.K.E. trail, Egon theorizes the ghosts have banded together as a pirate TV station, WBOO the Big Boo, using television sets as doorways. A power surge leads the team to a ghostly broadcast tower that has manifested in the center of Central Park. Inside, they learn the ringleader, the Unreal Shriek Squeal, plans to broadcast a ghostly signal to the entire world at midnight. Egon locates Slimer 100 yards in. The team splits up and runs into spectral versions of TV characters, including Gumbo and the Star Patrol crew, before regrouping and tracking Slimer down by following their noses.
The team traces the station's power to a dynamo. Their particle throwers have little effect on Shriek Squeal, who encases itself in thousands of television sets, so Egon directs them to aim for the dynamo powering the signal instead. They destroy it just before the worldwide broadcast can begin. With the signal gone, the Unreal Shriek Squeal is dispersed and the tower dissipates, and the Ghostbusters and Slimer get out just in time.
Ghosts and locations
Woodchuck is the title character of "Leave it to Woodchuck," a parody of "Leave it to Beaver" that plays in inexplicable color on Janine's black-and-white set, triggering the episode's central crisis. Woodchuck emerges in a monstrous form before being trapped by Egon and Winston. Immediately after, Glorp! materializes as the commercial sponsor during the same broadcast: it takes the shape of a giant toothpaste tube with sharp teeth at the cap. Both are among the first television manifestations the team encounters.
Power Guy is a ghost who emerges from the enormous television set at Bobo's Restaurant, voiced by Arsenio Hall. His in-universe show describes him as a "king, hero, and snappy dresser," and Ray Stantz identifies him as the main character of a TV program based on a toy line. He possesses great physical strength, can fly, and is able to morph his torso into a TV screen to generate a powerful vortex: victims pulled into the vortex are teleported to the WBOO broadcast tower. He is a parody of He-Man. Power Guy also makes non-canon cameo appearances in several IDW Ghostbusters comics, visible as arcade game artwork.
The Unreal Shriek Squeal is the ringleader of the spectral broadcast operation. It has organized the television manifestations as WBOO the Big Boo, a pirate ghost station housed in a tower that physically manifests in Central Park. When directly engaged in combat, the Shriek Squeal encases itself in thousands of television sets, making particle thrower fire largely ineffective. The team defeats it by destroying the dynamo powering the broadcast signal rather than attacking the ghost itself.
Bobo's Restaurant is an eatery on the west side of the Hudson River, notable for housing what its advertising calls the biggest TV in the area. Its owner, Bobo, flees when Power Guy emerges from the screen. The restaurant takes significant structural damage during the Ghostbusters' confrontation with Power Guy, including the roof being destroyed when he transforms into a vortex and flies out through it.
Inside the WBOO tower, the team also encounters the Star Patrol crew: skeletal spectral parodies of the Star Trek away team, including Captain Jim, Doctor Bones, and Mister Spook. Gumbo is a spectral parody of both the film character Rambo and the television clay figure Gumby.
Production and trivia
The episode was recorded August 4, 1986.2 Several of its ghosts are parodies of period television and pop culture. "Leave it to Woodchuck" spoofs "Leave it to Beaver," and Power Guy is a send-up of He-Man; Zicree had earlier worked as a writer on He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. The Star Patrol crew parodies the original Star Trek away team, with the skeletal Bones reading a medical tricorder in the manner of Dr. McCoy; Zicree later wrote for and consulted on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. The character Gumbo blends the film character Rambo with the clay figure Gumby, even mentioning that he is looking for an orange horse, a nod to Gumby's horse Pokey.3 The Star Patrol ship transforming into a bird references the series Battle of the Planets, whose ship became the flaming Fiery Phoenix.
Winston jokingly asks Janine whether she got her television from "The Outer Limits," referencing the 1960s science fiction series. During the battle at Bobo's Restaurant, Winston proposes a "six-pack," meaning the deployment of six ghost traps simultaneously.
The script originally called for a giant taco monster to run amok in the city. Because the Japanese animation team working on the series was unfamiliar with Mexican food in the mid-1980s, and because "tako" is Japanese for "octopus," they assumed the creature was meant to be a giant octopus monster. The mix-up was caught and corrected once it was traced to the translation.4
He-Man is also referenced in Ghostbusters II, where children at a birthday party complain about the Ghostbusters' presence by invoking the character.
The episode aired between Egon on the Rampage and Hanging by a Thread; in DVD running order it follows Knock, Knock and precedes Play Them Ragtime Boos.
Animation errors
Several animation coloring errors appear in the episode:
- When the team shoots at Glorp!, Winston is colored exactly like Ray. The order in which the Ghostbusters are standing also shifts between shots.
- Just before Winston proposes using the six-pack, a second figure wearing Winston's jumpsuit color walks into the foreground while Winston is visible standing in the background.
- After the Ghostbusters enter the ghost tower, a shot showing a Ghostbuster from the waist down depicts Egon wearing Ray's jumpsuit color.
- As all four Ghostbusters slide toward the camera, Peter is briefly recolored with Egon's hair and suit palette in the moment after Egon exits the frame.
References
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 6. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1986). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Station Identification" (1986).
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The Real Ghostbusters, "Station Identification" (1987). Time Life Entertainment DVD release. Gumbo: "Yo, I'm looking for an orange horse."
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Benjamin, Troy & Goldberg, Craig (2025). The Real Ghostbusters: A Visual History, p. 66. Dark Horse Books, Milwaukie, OR, USA. ISBN 9781506749273. Ken Duer recounts the Japanese team mistaking the scripted taco monster for an octopus monster because "tako" means "octopus" in Japanese.
