Plot
A demonic entity arrives at Grand Central Station around 4:00 a.m. disguised as a traveling salesman. A conductor, startled by a gust of wind, bumps into the stranger, who offers his wares from a glowing suitcase. The conductor wishes for a little peace and quiet, admitting he is tired of hearing himself shout. The salesman obliges and departs, and the conductor discovers his mouth has vanished.
At the firehouse, Egon Spengler is wiring together a new project that Roland Jackson warns is a fire hazard. Janine Melnitz brings up a fire extinguisher and jokes that Egon will be the first man to burn down a firehouse. In the rec room, Eduardo arrives in a foul mood after earning a C- in his Existential Philosophy course despite genuinely studying. Garrett Miller needles him, comparing him to Edison's dim light bulb, and Eduardo manages to insult Kylie twice over her journal and her cat. Janine then calls everyone up to see Egon's demonstration.
Egon shows off his Synthetic Ecto-Imaging Program, which can produce a photograph of a ghost from trace ecto-energy. Using earlier P.K.E. readings of Slimer, the program generates an image of him. Eduardo tries to improve the blurry picture with skills from a computer graphics class, overloads the equipment, and sets the lab on fire. He puts it out with the extinguisher just as Janine takes a call from a janitor at Grand Central Station.
The team finds the mouthless conductor, who writes that "a salesman did it." Around the city, more victims appear: a woman who wished to be young again is reduced to an infant, a man who admired another's looks ends up with two heads on one body, and a cyclist who wished to reconnect with his roots is turned into a tree. Roland realizes the salesman is twisting each wish into a curse. While the others argue, Eduardo blasts a corn dog truck mistaking it for a ghost, and Kylie declares him a walking disaster.
Left alone on a park bench to wait for a police officer, Eduardo is approached by the salesman, who asks where people go on a Sunday afternoon. Eduardo mentions the flea market on 63rd, then carelessly says he wishes Kylie would treat him the way she treats her cat, Pagan. The wish is granted. Eduardo recognizes the salesman as the ghost too late, faints, and wakes up trapped inside Pagan's body.
Worried about her cat's strange behavior, Kylie takes Pagan to a vet, who diagnoses worms and prepares a shot. Back at the firehouse, Egon's program reveals the salesman's true demonic form layered beneath the human disguise. Checking the Spirit Guide database, Kylie identifies him as Duophanes, a demon from ancient Greece who reappears roughly every hundred years in different disguises to grant wishes. If he leaves the city, every wish becomes permanent. Pagan spells out "I am Eduardo" with a Scrabble set, and the team races to find Duophanes.
At the flea market, a man who wished to be made of money is literally turned into banknotes. Pagan fogs the base of the Ecto-1's rear-view mirror and writes "Flea Market," directing the team to 63rd Street. There, a grandfather who wished things were like the old days triggers a pet lizard and bird to become a Tyrannosaurus Rex and a Pterodactyl. The team defeats the dinosaur by luring it into water near a downed power line, and Pagan rescues Kylie from the Pterodactyl by scratching it.
The chase leads back to Grand Central, where Duophanes is trying to leave the city. On arrival, a giant toy robot crashes through the station building, apparently the product of a child's wish. The Ghostbusters' proton streams have no effect on Duophanes because his human form acts as a shield, and he teleports away. On the platform he tempts Garrett with an NBA career, Roland with the Ivy League, and Kylie with a reunion with her Great Grandma Rose, but each is talked out of wishing by the others. Pagan studies the station's arrival board and, in the conductor's office, types out a solution: Roland goads Duophanes to grant a wish, and Kylie reads from the monitor, "I wish you could not grant my wish." Caught in the paradox, Duophanes is forced to reveal his true form, everyone is restored, and the team blasts and traps him. Kylie praises her cat instead of Eduardo, and Eduardo teases that Pagan told him plenty about her.
Duophanes
Duophanes, also billed as "The Salesman," is the episode's antagonist: a demon of ancient Greek origin catalogued in Egon's Spengler's Spirit Guide database. He reappears briefly every hundred years or so in various disguises, always offering to grant wishes with his signature pitch: "No currency required. No payment do I need. Satisfaction completely guaranteed." In this episode he takes the form of a tall, lanky traveling salesman carrying a glowing briefcase from which he releases the power to fulfill wishes.
His transformations are classified as Class 6 Spectral Transmogrification and, critically, the results are physically real rather than ectoplasmic. This makes proton streams useless against anything he creates or transforms, and his human disguise doubles as a shield that blocks the streams from affecting him directly. His only exploitable weakness is a paradoxical wish, one he is compelled to attempt but logically cannot fulfill, forcing him to break his human form and reveal his true demonic appearance. The character draws loose inspiration from the Djinn of Arabian mythology.
Duophanes was voiced by guest actor Jonathan Harris. He later appeared in his true demonic form on the IDW Convention Variant Cover of Ghostbusters 35th Anniversary: Extreme Ghostbusters.
Cast
The regular voice cast included Tara Charendoff as Kylie Griffin, Maurice LaMarche as Egon Spengler, Jason Marsden as Eduardo Rivera, Pat Musick as Garrett Miller, Alfonso Ribeiro as Roland Jackson, Rino Romano, and Billy West as Slimer. Guest voices included Jonathan Harris as Duophanes, Nick Jameson, Scott Mosenson, and Victor Raider-Wexler.
Production notes
The episode went through four known drafts.1 The Writer's Draft was dated February 7, 1997, the First Draft February 13, the Second Draft February 18, and the Final Draft February 19, 1997.
Three sequences involving Duophanes were cut from the final draft. In the teaser, the conductor was meant to shout back at the salesman and have his mouth disappear mid-sentence.2 Before Eduardo blasts the corn dog truck, the team was supposed to first chase a harmless ordinary salesman selling health bars and vitamins to a woman, only to realize their mistake.3 On the way to Grand Central, before the giant toy robot attack, the script called for a man whose brains had grown so large they overflowed his skull and spilled into the street, prompting a remark from Garrett.4
Cultural references
The script lines several pop-culture jokes through Garrett. He compares Duophanes to Willy Loman, the protagonist of Arthur Miller's play Death of a Salesman, calls the defeated dinosaur "down for the count" in a specific nod to Godzilla 1985, and twice borrows the "Houston, we have a problem" catchphrase. He also likens the wish-granting salesman to a twisted Santa Claus. When the other Ghostbusters wonder aloud where Eduardo has gone, Garrett echoes Eduardo's own recurring "Maybe he's dead" line back at them. Eduardo dubs the tree-transformed cyclist "Mr. Chia Pet" after the sprouting figurine novelty.
References
