Plot
On the day before Thanksgiving, Egon and Ray finish connecting a functioning airlock to the Containment Unit. Ray does not understand why they need one until Egon reveals he wants to open diplomatic relations with the spirit world and become the first ambassador to it. The airlock lights up and Slimer returns from inside the unit. Ray placates the irritated ghost by telling him where Peter keeps his jellybeans.
In the garage, Peter and Winston wipe down Ecto-1. Winston is surprised by Peter's initiative until he learns it is meant to impress women at the Thanksgiving Day Parade, then points out the crowd will be mothers and children. That evening, parade official Anne Lawson checks on a crew rushing to finish inflating a Murray the Mantis float in a warehouse. Crew foreman Harlan assures her all will be ready, then mentions the building used to be a city morgue, which unsettles her. A floor panel glows and something seeps into the pump inflating the float. The mantis balloon's eyes begin to glow.
During the parade the next day, Ecto-1 rides in the procession with the Ghostbusters, Janine, and Slimer all present. Ray spots the Murray float and alerts Egon, who recognizes it as the star of a popular Saturday morning cartoon, a mantis who keeps the peace in a garden and is best friend to the gardener's daughter, Posey. The float handlers, dressed as Posey, are forced to let go, and the balloon rises into the sky. Since it has become a menace to aerial navigation, Peter volunteers to shoot it down, but bursting the float releases a giant mantis entity that goes berserk.
The Ghostbusters and Anne Lawson board Ecto-1 and drive to Central Park. Anne informs the team the float was inflated in an old warehouse in the Upper West Side. Ray theorizes that filling the float in a former morgue released dormant death force energy and triggered an ecto surge. Running calculations, Egon concludes that "Murray" could have a life energy as high as Gozer's, putting it near 45 megawatts times ten to the fourteenth power. Winston repeatedly insists their only option is "The Big Guy."
Back at the firehouse, Peter bribes a reluctant Slimer into the Containment Unit with promises of a mini fridge, daily ice cream, donuts, and a Diner's Club Card. As police arrive and Lieutenant Frump relays the Mayor's displeasure, the airlock explodes and energy surges from the roof, re-forming into the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. When officers drag Egon away from the basement, he quips about an unpaid parking ticket. Anne refuses to let the team take all the blame. Slimer guides Stay Puft north to Central Park, where he meets Murray and the two giants fight. Egon directs Stay Puft to coax Murray into the alley between two buildings, where the Ghostbusters open fire from Ecto-2 while Stay Puft holds the mantis in the crossfire. Murray explodes. With the threat gone, Frump restarts the parade and Stay Puft stands in for the destroyed Murray as an impromptu float.
Characters of note
Murray the Mantis is the fictional cartoon star who gives the episode its name. Within his show, Murray is the sheriff of a garden who keeps the peace by chasing away the bad Roach Brothers and the evil Hypno-Snake; his best friend is Posey, the misunderstood daughter of the garden's owner. Ray and Egon are both fans of the cartoon. The entity that possesses his Thanksgiving float is voiced by Arthur Burghardt. Egon estimates the creature's energy level at 45 x 10^14 megawatts by cross-indexing the dimensions of a standard praying mantis, the 120-foot scale of the float, and the ecto energy quotient of an average Class 3 Non-Transitory Specter. The result is comparable to Gozer's output, placing Murray in a Class 7 classification or higher. Murray later appears in IDW Publishing's comics in non-canonical form: a Murray doll is visible in Ghostbusters Issue #6 at the Fantastic Land stand (and on the cover RI variant), and his likeness appears in a Thanksgiving Day Parade advertisement in Ghostbusters Issue #15. A Murray doll also appears near Janine Melnitz in What in Samhain Just Happened?! page 14.
Anne Lawson (voiced by Amy Hill) is the parade official overseeing the float preparations. She is present when the possessed mantis escapes, boards Ecto-1 with the Ghostbusters, and informs them where the float was inflated, giving Ray the clue he needs for his death-force-energy theory. When police arrive to detain the team, she refuses to let them take sole blame. She makes a non-canonical cameo in IDW Ghostbusters Issue #8, crossing a street with Posey.
Harlan (voiced by Maurice LaMarche) is the warehouse crew foreman who inadvertently oversees the float's possession. His mention of the warehouse's history as a city morgue is the detail that later explains the haunting.
Production
In his introduction to the episode on the home video release, writer Richard Mueller said the story was inspired by the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York. The episode was recorded on September 17, 1986.2
Notes
This episode features the short-lived airlock added to the Containment Unit, which is destroyed when it blows up to release the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man. Both the Murray balloon and the mantis entity are drawn with only four legs, where a real praying mantis has six, making Murray appear more humanoid than an actual insect. During the fight, the possessed Murray grabs a red Volkswagen Beetle; an insectoid entity picks up a Beetle again in the later episode The Crawler.
The dialogue strings together several pop-culture references. Winston compares the giant Murray to "another big Twinkie," echoing Egon's analogy from the first film, and Peter jokes that beating it would take Darth Vader loaning them the Death Star. Egon also name-checks Gozer when estimating the creature's power.
Other small details: Peter keeps his jellybeans in a box under his pillow, which is why Slimer reacts so enthusiastically when Ray reveals their hiding spot. Ray is noted in this episode to still be an unlicensed pilot. The Diner's Club Card Peter offers Slimer was the first credit card designed for travel and entertainment, a period-appropriate joke.
Animation errors
After Slimer exits the airlock, the lever on the control panel behind him and Ray is missing.
Episode credits
- Written by: Richard Mueller
- First aired: November 2, 1987 (Season 2)
- Episode number (air-date order): 49
- Episode number (DVD order): 65
- Production number: 76052
- DVD release: The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, Volume 3, Disc 1
Adjacent episodes
By original air date, this episode followed "Boo-Dunit" and preceded "The Headless Motorcyclist." In the DVD ordering it follows "A Ghost Grows in Brooklyn" and precedes "Rollerghoster."
