Edge;155126
1. The first flaw - forced characters. Sometimes in an effort to promote diversity, a show can come off as a little too PC. No matter how good the writing, audiences often have a hard time overcoming this flaw.
Yeah, I agree. Although, I actually really like Kylie & Roland, and even though they were obviously PC-motivated (female, black guy), I don't really find them bothersome. I mean the characters work, they seem real to me. Garrett on the other hand, although he is a great “character,” he is not a great Ghostbuster. His handicap-nature is just way too over-the-top and forced to suspend disbelief. And Eduardo, at least as the “comic relief,” seemed way too forced to me as well. I never could find his humour or his stupidity to be believable. I mean, Venkman (Lorenzo & Bill's anyway) was ignorant on some issues, but overall he was actually pretty smart and merely acted immature. Eduardo on the other hand seemed truly retarded in my opinion, I seriously think he had some learning disability, seriously. And whether you're a “real” or an “extreme” Ghostbuster, mental retardation and paraplegia are both unacceptable traits IMO.
Edge;155126
2. The second flaw - destroying the original premise to get an idea over. This is a lot of what plagued the second movie. Let's take a concept that is essentially a buddy/character movie that people buy into and blow it to kingdom come. RGB was the “natural” sequel to Ghostbusters. The guys continue doing their business, sometimes scrapping by, but sticking to the original premise.
GB2 basically said “yeah everything went to crap and now they have to start over.” Clearly that idea didn't resonate with people. So why would you create a TV series with the same concept?
Why is it that for 13 years, the best “future” anyone could come up with for Ghostbusters was to put them out of business? It's like taking a giant crap on everyone who bought into the original premise.
I strongly have to disagree here. How is the GB's going out of business “destroying” the original premise and like “taking a giant crap on everyone?” On the contrary, to me it makes perfect sense, from both a realistic standpoint and a dramatic one.
I mean, in the real world, and in a truly free market system, the economic demand for ghostbusting services would very much be spontaneous, sporadic, and intermittent. Unless by some mathematical improbability, you would not have a “ghost of the week” type scenario. Instead you would have the occasional ghosts/creatures to deal with (Class 1-5 entities probably accounting for most business), and then also the much more infrequent “mega-baddies” (Gozer, Vigo, Sandman) which would cause temporary economic booms due to the increase in paranormal activities, and therefore increased ghostbusting demands from frightened individuals, that these spectral characters generally bring about.
Beyond that however, in a ghostbusting industry, you would likely see a lot of economic downturns, during which you might have to liquidate or downsize parts of the company. To use an example from Murray Rothbard; imagine some community where you have a 7-year locust cycle. Every seven years will therefore see a boom in the bug-extermination industry. In between those seven years however you have to liquidate the business, you cannot artificially prop the industry up, just to create so-called “jobs,” when there's obviously no real demand for bug/locust extermination.
Laying off, for example, one or more of the team members, like Winston (as much as I love him), would be one way of dealing with such an economic slump. I mean, the whole reason Winston was hired in the first place was to satisfy irregular and increased demands for ghostbusting services. During an industry downturn however, the only way to keep four Ghostbusters and a Janine employed is to either raise service prices, decrease individual wages, cut company spending, and/or to artificially increase consumer demands (like getting Slimer to dress up as a Class-6 phantasm and frighten some poor sap - but stuff like that ain't likely to happen in the private sector). It seems to me like, aside from the latter, the Ghostbusters have practiced all these things (in RGB & GB2 at least).
I think what they do in fact, since they actually have a monopoly in the ghostbusting business (not counting fan branches), is that they jack up service prices for things like “proton charging” (which I'm sure is expensive, but really, $5,000 circa 1984?…), that way, during business slumps, they can usually live off the excess income. It's kinda funny the way they do it in GB1, like they're scamming people, but it actually makes a lot of business sense according to the principles of free-exchange, and long-term entrepreneurial planning.
So yeah, GB2 and XGB make perfect sense to me in that regard. You would expect the Ghostbusters to “go out of business” every once in a while. It's not because people stopped “believing” or stopped liking the GB's cuz they're “full of crap” - it's that there's no real demand for ghostbusting when spectral activity becomes so infrequent. And don't forget, the RGB's went out of business once too, and so they transformed their company into the “Crimebusters.” The concept might've been unrealistic or whatever, but it made for a great episode anyway, and I hardly think it was “taking a giant crap” on the fans.
Personally, I like the idea of the Ghostbusters' business size fluctuating radically. I like the idea of Zeddemore, Venkman, and even Stantz having to get side jobs, like with “Ray's Occult Book Shop” (which should've been mentioned in “Back in the Saddle”). That's a cool, dramatically engaging idea, don't you think? And it gives a lot more potential for character development. It's like they all have these double-lives. I don't see why you're so set on having the same four guys constantly living and working together. I rather enjoy the change of pace and scenery.
That's my two cents at least. Sorry for the pseudo-intellectual rambling. I'd never thought too deeply though, about the economic aspects of Ghostbusters - it's actually pretty interesting the more I think about it…… (*peter)