Plot
A graduate student named Sajid opens a small package from Brazil in a third-floor Biology Department lab at a New York university. The plant inside opens to reveal a seed with a bizarre face. Startled, Sajid drops the seed and runs to find Professor Brenner. The seed hops into a tank of plants and burrows under the dirt; the tank glows green and the surrounding plants explode into instant, uncontrolled growth. When Sajid and Brenner return, the lab is overrun with vegetation, and one of the plants swallows Sajid whole. Brenner flees and calls for help as the growth spreads into the hallway.
At the Firehouse, Slimer pesters Kylie in the kitchen while Garrett Miller and Eduardo Rivera wait for lunch. Kylie, having watched a documentary on how global warming and cattle grazing drive deforestation, serves tofu, beans, and steamed vegetable curd and proposes cutting out meat three times a week. Garrett refuses and phones in a large meat-heavy pizza. The alarm sounds and Roland Jackson calls the team to work.
The Ghostbusters reach the university as students evacuate. Brenner tells them a student is still trapped inside. Roland, Kylie, and Eduardo climb the stairwell, guided to the third floor by Garrett over the radio. They find Sajid sealed alive in a giant pod. Eduardo wants to blast the pod open but Kylie warns it would kill the victim. A plant carrying the seed sneaks up on them; Eduardo blasts it and the seed escapes out a window. With the seed gone, the building begins to collapse, and the team carries Sajid out down the fire escape. Outside, the seed leaps into Brenner's lab coat pocket unnoticed.
Back at the Firehouse, Egon Spengler examines the still-active pod and determines Sajid is symbiotically connected to it. Roland builds a unit that fires subzero liquid oxygen. Egon identifies a recovered plant sample as "Unsidiom Demonium," a rare hybrid found only in the Amazon basin. Kylie connects the case to the rain forest; Garrett dismisses the theory. Egon sends Garrett to help Roland rig a life-support system around the pod and asks Kylie to research South American plant demons so the team can anticipate the entity's next move.
Brenner returns to his apartment at 123 Central Park West, where the seed jumps into a potted plant and grows, seizing him with tendrils. His call for help to the Firehouse is dismissed by Kylie as a prank, but Roland traces the caller ID to Brenner's address. Kylie reports that her research turned up a legend of Kuja, a benevolent protector spirit of the Amazon, and theorizes the displaced spirit simply thinks it is still home and is trying to restore the rain forest. She argues they should communicate with it and return it to the Amazon rather than destroy it.
At Brenner's building, the team fights through plant-choked elevators and corridors. Kylie tries to talk to the seed, but the plant roars and attacks; the seed escapes again and glides toward Central Park, leaving the apartment's plants to wilt. Eduardo saves Kylie from falling off the balcony. With Brenner freed and loaded into Ecto-1, Kylie insists on staying behind to freeze the seed into dormancy. Garrett goes with her while the others return to the lab.
Egon reconstructs an image of the seed and searches the Spirit Guide database. The spirit is not Kuja but Shanbahac, an "eradicator" that wiped out an entire South American civilization before going dormant for 2,000 years. Egon realizes that if Kylie makes the seed go dormant, its victims will stay trapped in their pods. He instructs Roland and Eduardo, racing back in Ecto-1, to remove Shanbahac from the seed and trap it, but first to stop Kylie.
In Central Park, Kylie's attempt to reason with Shanbahac fails and Garrett is swallowed into a pod. Kylie grabs the subzero blaster, but Eduardo tackles her before she can freeze the seed. Roland explains the danger. The team realizes they must make the seed an unsuitable host. After a failed attempt with a fire extinguisher (Kylie points out plants breathe carbon dioxide), Kylie has Roland modify the blaster to fire ordinary oxygen at room temperature. Blasting the plant with oxygen forces the seed off; she hits it point blank and Shanbahac emerges. Eduardo and Roland open fire, Kylie traps the ghost, and the pods release Sajid, Brenner, and Garrett unharmed.
The next day Garrett makes lunch, presenting a tossed salad and declaring that the best revenge is a dish best served with ranch dressing and croutons.
Cast
Regular voices were provided by Tara Charendoff (Tara Strong) as Kylie, Maurice LaMarche as Egon, Jason Marsden as Garrett, Alfonso Ribeiro as Roland, Rino Romano as Eduardo, and Billy West as Slimer. John Ingle and Anjul Nigam guest starred as Professor Brenner and Sajid.
Equipment and ghosts
The team's gear includes the Proton Pack and particle thrower, proton pistol, P.K.E. Meter, and trap, along with Egon's Spirit Guide database. Two devices are improvised by Roland over the course of the episode: a subzero liquid oxygen dispenser intended to freeze the seed dormant, later modified to fire oxygen at room temperature to drive the spirit out of its host.
Shanbahac, the antagonist, is an Amazonian "eradicator" spirit that possesses plant matter through a face-bearing seed, growing surrounding vegetation explosively and sealing victims alive inside pods. In his corporeal possessor form he takes the appearance of a red plant with starfish-like mouth flaps; his unhosted ghost form is a smaller, weaker version capable only of levitation. When possessing soil he gains considerable strength, and like all horticultural entities he can regenerate severed parts such as vines. He also has burrowing and gliding capabilities. Victims become symbiotically connected to his pod matter, and if Shanbahac is forced dormant while pods are active, the victims remain trapped for up to 2,000 years. It is contrasted in the episode with the legendary benevolent rain forest guardian Kuja, the figure Kylie initially believes she is dealing with.
Connections
The premise echoes the The Real Ghostbusters episode "A Ghost Grows in Brooklyn," in which a ghost possesses a plant that grows out of control.
Professor Brenner's address, 123 Central Park West, places him near 55 Central Park West, the apartment building constructed by Ivo Shandor where Dana Barrett and Louis Tully lived in the first Ghostbusters film.
While studying the trapped Sajid, the team refers to the victim as a "Pod Person," a nod to the pod people of Jack Finney's 1955 novel The Body Snatchers and its film adaptations, beginning with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956). Eduardo describes the revealed ghost as "Marilyn Manson-ugly," and later exclaims that Garrett got "cabbage-patched" when the spirit seals him in a pod, a reference to the Cabbage Patch Kids toy line. The dialogue also works in references to E.T. and, from Eduardo's architecture class, the Art Deco and Bauhaus styles.
This episode aired between "Bird of Prey" and "The Luck of the Irish" in the first season of Extreme Ghostbusters.
