Plot
A strange midnight thunderstorm sends a lightning bolt swerving through the city, lighting up electronics until it settles at the Firehouse. Inside, Winston, Peter, Egon, Slimer, and Ray are watching television in the rec room. Ray channel-surfs and Slimer hogs the popcorn, annoying the others, just as the set loses reception. When it returns, "The Sammy K. Ferret Show" is on: an obnoxious cartoon host who insults his guest and drops an anvil on her. Ray and Slimer laugh, but Peter and Winston call it a night, and Egon soon follows.
The television acts up again, so Ray extends the antenna out the window. The reception returns, but the same lightning strikes the antenna. The set sparks as if Sammy is about to climb out, then catches fire. Slimer puts it out and Ray pulls the plug, shrugging that they will just buy a new set.
The next day, Janine tries the broken television on her lunch break and watches a cartoon mouse and cat chase out of it and into the kitchen. The Ghostbusters do not believe her, and Egon chalks it up to overwork and gives her the afternoon off. Sammy finally emerges from the melted set and hides as the team returns with their gear. They corner him in the kitchen, where his cartoon gags, bombs, a cannon, a train pulled out of a drawn-on cabinet door, turn out to be very real and wreck the dining hall. Egon works out that the longer Sammy stays in the real world, the more solid and dangerous his cartoon creations become.
Driving around in Ecto-1, the team finds cartoon creations spreading across the city. Sammy kisses Ray and turns him into a cartoon pig, and Winston into a cartoon dog, while taunting Peter and Egon and dumping them into a hole in the road. Ray reasons that Sammy, convinced he is the funniest thing alive, will not resist a challenge to his title. They disguise Slimer as a comic called the "Funny Spud," and when Sammy shows up the team blasts him, but the proton streams pass straight through and the trap catches Slimer instead. Ecto-1 is turned into a cartoon car.
Egon concludes Sammy is still an ego-driven ghost that can be trapped if they make him angry enough to drop his cartoon form. They realize he will not be able to resist appearing on "The Lenny Jason Show." There the crew helps them humiliate Sammy on live television, distorting his image, burying him in fake snow, and blowing him into a tuba while the studio audience laughs at him. Sammy loses his temper and reveals his true, monstrous form. The team blasts him and Slimer traps him. Ray, Winston, and Egon turn back to normal, though Ecto-1 is left stuck in its cartoon shape.
References and homages
The episode is built around parodies of contemporary pop culture. Sammy's guest plugs a movie called "Dog Tracy," a play on "Dick Tracy," and Winston flips through a TV listing whose cover reads "Slimsons," nodding to "The Simpsons." When the picture cuts out, Peter quips "Married with Static," a riff on "Married... with Children," and Janine is reluctant to miss her soap, "Nurses and Doctors, Doctors and Nurses." The cartoons Janine sees in the kitchen resemble Tom and Jerry. Late-night host Lenny Jason is a play on Jay Leno, and his first name also references series writer Len Janson.
Egon whistles in appreciation of actress Michelle Pfeiffer, followed by a cat wail, a gag tied to his running "cat call" and a wink at her then-recent turn as Catwoman.
Of the team, Peter is the only Ghostbuster who is never transformed into an animal, while Egon, Ray, and Winston each are.
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Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 40. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1990). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Stay Tooned" (1990).
