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"Janine's Genie" is the twelfth episode of The Real Ghostbusters. After Janine Melnitz joins the team on a bust and accepts a brass oil lamp as payment, she frees a genie and a horde of vacationing ghosts who pour out into New York City.1 The episode was written by Len Janson and Chuck Menville and first aired on December 6, 1986.2
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The episode carried the production number 75005 and was recorded on July 25, 1986.2 It aired during the first season of The Real Ghostbusters, and is collected on the DVD box set as part of Volume 1, Disc 2.
Lorenzo Music, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Arsenio Hall, and Laura Summer provided the regular voice cast, with Charlie Adler appearing as a guest voice. Like the rest of the season's episodes, it uses music from the show's soundtrack, featuring the song "Driving Me Crazy" in one sequence.
The alarm sounds at the Firehouse and the Ghostbusters head for Ecto-1, but Janine stops them. Wanting some action, she insists on coming along. Before leaving, Peter Venkman warns Slimer to stay away from his watermelon.
At the docks the team gets to work. Janine tries to back out, but Peter pulls her into the bust. After nearly shooting Peter, she traps the last ghost with help from Winston Zeddemore. When Peter prepares the bill, the client admits he has no money and offers something from his collection instead. Janine accepts the barter and picks an old brass oil lamp.
On the drive back the guys tease her, with Peter joking that a genie might appear if she rubs it. While wiping the lamp, Janine wishes she were the boss, and a genie appears and grants the wish. She thinks it is a prank at first. The genie whispers into the lamp to his "brothers and sisters" that the gateway is open and the vacation has begun, and ghosts pour out of the lamp.
When the alarm sounds again, the Ghostbusters line up in front of Janine as though she is in charge. She reports a disturbance at the airport, then wishes for Egon Spengler to be in love with her. On the way, Egon keeps telling Janine how beautiful she is even as she nearly crashes into a truck.
At John F. Kennedy International Airport, near gate 14-21, the team picks up a residual reading. Slimer points out a set of lockers where they find trace ectoplasm, and dozens of ghosts burst out, stow away in luggage, and end up aboard a departing plane. The ghosts seize the pilot cabin, and after takeoff the Ghostbusters find it empty. As they try to avoid crashing into Fifth Avenue, the ghosts parachute into the city.
Once the plane is down, a newsboy announces more than a hundred hauntings. The reports show ghosts appearing at an amusement park, a baseball game, and the beach, as if on vacation. Egon reasons that an interdimensional gate has opened between the physical and spirit worlds, and that if the flow is not sealed it will become too powerful to stop.
Driving back, they detect a massive concentration of spectral energy coming from the Firehouse. Egon uses the Ecto Goggles to confirm the lamp is the source. Janine summons the genie and wishes for all the ghosts to return to the lamp, but he refuses and reveals the whole thing was a distraction to let the ghosts escape. In the back seat, Ray Stantz combines four Traps to reverse the lamp's polarity so it will pull the ghosts back, but someone has to go in and connect the cables to the lamp. Janine goes in alone. The genie blocks her, she slaps him aside, and he reveals his true form. Egon, Peter, and Winston hold him in their Proton Packs' streams while Janine connects the cables. Ray triggers the traps, the polarity reverses, and the lamp pulls in every ghost, the genie included, before vaporizing.
With everything back to normal, Ray offers Janine the chance to become a full Ghostbuster. She turns it down and chooses to stay on as secretary, then muses aloud about her third wish before everyone quickly shushes her.
The Genie (voiced by Charlie Adler) is the episode's main antagonist. He is a ghost who was imprisoned in the lamp along with his siblings and uses the pretense of wish-granting to engineer their escape. In his standard form he appears as a short man wearing a white turban, goggles, a polka-dot shirt, and a red tie. He can also take a larger, more imposing form when rallying the other ghosts. When cornered by Janine at the climax, he reveals a final form: a red-orange, pig-like creature with glowing eyes. The pig design has been noted as a possible reference to Jodie from the 1979 film The Amityville Horror. The Genie is later referenced in the RGB episode "The Grundel," where Egon briefly flips past the Genie's entry in Tobin's Spirit Guide while researching a separate case. The Genie's lamp also makes non-canon cameo appearances in IDW Publishing: in Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles/Ghostbusters #4 on the filing cabinet behind Janine, and in Ghostbusters: Get Real #4 atop the office drawers. A Genie doll appears at the Fantastic Land stand in Ghostbusters #6.
The Vacationing Ghosts are an interdimensional group released through the lamp when the Genie opens the gateway. They treat Earth as a holiday destination, spreading across New York to amusement parks, baseball games, and the beach. Among the distinct types seen are a one-eyed humanoid, a "Gum-mouth," and a "Mantas" ghost. They are returned to their dimension when Ray converts four Ghost Traps to reverse the lamp's polarity, though it remains unclear whether all of them were recaptured before the lamp vaporized.
This is the first of many episodes built around the relationship between Egon Spengler and Janine Melnitz. It is also the second time Janine uses a Proton Pack, after "Mr. Sandman, Dream Me a Dream", where her dream self took over. Her uniform here is a medium brown, between Ray's and Peter's, with light green trim. When Egon locates the brass lamp in the Firehouse, the Ecto Goggles display the word "BINGO".1
The Firehouse is shown jumping into the air at one point in the episode; this is never explained within the story. After the plane clears Fifth Avenue, it is shown flying past the Statue of Liberty.
The Knight Books novelization includes an extra scene running from pages 86 to 92. After Kennedy Airport, the Ghostbusters, Slimer, and Janine drive to a pop concert in Central Park where a band called The Hairy Honchos is performing. The ghosts steal the instruments and use scissors to cut off each member's long hair and beard. The team only manages to drive the ghosts from the park and wrecks the band's equipment in the process. An angry band member grabs a pair of scissors and threatens to cut their hair. They pile back into Ecto-1 and leave, after which Egon shares his theory about the interdimensional gateway.
Egon: Janine, you're beautiful when you drive. Janine: Why thank you, Egon.
Peter: Knock, knock. Ghost: Who's there? Peter: Dishes. Ghost: Dishes, who? Peter: Dishes the Ghostbusters. Come on out.
"Janine's Genie" follows "Citizen Ghost" and precedes "Xmas Marks the Spot" in both air-date and DVD order.