Title
The episode has no formal title card after the opening sequence, so its exact title is uncertain and two forms are documented. Straczynski listed it in his own episode guide as "The Ghostbusters Live From Al Capone's Tomb."5 Jeff Lenburg's The Encyclopedia of Animated Cartoons records it as "Live! From Al Capone's Tomb!"6 The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection box set also uses "Live! From Al Capone's Tomb!"
Plot
Peter sells the team's TV rights for a large sum before the others can stop him, leaving the Ghostbusters committed to hosting an ABC special about Al Capone's tomb. Egon refuses to speak while Ray and Winston pass over the cemetery in Ecto-2. Peter takes over hosting and presents a made-up legend that Capone's ghost appears every ten years at midnight, padding the broadcast with a mock biography of Capone, from a childhood cherry-tree gag through his rise as a Chicago mob boss and his final years in prison. During the broadcast, Winston takes the opportunity to wave at the camera and say hello to his mother in New Jersey. Egon then picks up strange readings on the P.K.E. Meter.
The crew is told they are still on the air and the audience has heard everything. Capone's ghost appears and warns the Ghostbusters to stop talking about him. As midnight strikes, Louis tries to pass himself off as Capone's ghost, and Peter taunts the real Capone with his thrower. Capone teleports the Ghostbusters and Slimer away. A 1934 Ford opens fire on them with ectoplasmic bullets, and Egon realizes they have been pulled into the Netherworld. A ghost steps out and orders them to come see "Da Boss."
At Capone's residence, Slimer helps himself to some clothes from the wardrobe and dresses as a mobster. Capone confronts them carrying a strange baseball bat and insists he is still the toughest guy in Chicago, taking the TV special as an insult. Egon's attempts to adjust his thrower fail, but a raid by rival ghosts lets the team slip out. They are taken to a meeting of mobster ghosts opposed to Capone, who explain they had called a truce and wanted to retire as legitimate businessmen until Capone seized control and revived the old ways. The rivals offer a deal: get rid of Capone, and they will send the Ghostbusters home. Peter agrees and, with Ray, points to Slimer ("The Spud") as their boss. The rivals hand Egon Magic Crystals said to make the throwers work, the underside label guaranteeing as much.
As Ray and Winston rig up Ecto-2 in disguise, Ray draws the attention of a moll whose boyfriend turns out to be Manny, Capone's top henchman. A chase follows, and Egon and Peter trap Manny with the modified gear. The Ghostbusters and their allies launch a raid on Capone, who uses his bat to grow to the size of a building. Winston decides the bat must be destroyed to trap Capone, ejects Ray against his wishes, sets his Proton Pack to a 17-second automatic self-destruct, and flies into Capone's reach, ejecting at the last second. The combined blast of the pack and Ecto-2 disintegrates the bat, and the now-defenseless Capone is trapped. The rival leader teleports the team back to the physical plane.
Janine has wrapped the special by the time the Ghostbusters reappear in a flash of light, and no one believes their story. A TV executive congratulates them on the best ratings since the election, then reveals Peter's contract was for two specials. He pitches the next one as "Live! From the Center of the Bermuda Triangle!" Peter flees as the others chase after him.
Cast
Regular voices were provided by Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Buster Jones, Kath Soucie, and Rodger Bumpass. Jocko Marcellino guest stars as the voice of Al Capone and also voices a crewman. Marcellino is a member of the rock and roll revival group Sha Na Na.
Production
Before being greenlit as an episode, the concept began as a pitch for a prime-time special in December 1988. Two ideas were submitted to ABC just before the holidays that year, both written by Straczynski: a New Orleans Carnival story and a send-up of the hype around Geraldo Rivera's 1986 opening of Al Capone's vault, the latter pitched as a "live animation" special meant to mimic the first-person camera feel of a live broadcast. ABC passed on both, and the second concept was later reworked into this episode.7 Recording took place on July 12, 1989.4
For this episode, ABC's Broadcast Standards and Practices department asked that the term "Netherworld" be avoided, on the grounds it would be associated with Hell and Satan, and suggested "spiritworld" as a substitute.8
Straczynski has named this one of his least favorite of the episodes he wrote, calling it too tied to a specific moment in time and too self-aware as a parody of the "Live From" television trend.
References and homages
The biography reel about Capone leans on a cherry-tree gag, a riff on the apocryphal George Washington story. Peter closes a segment with "That's Al folks," a play on the classic "That's all folks" sign-off. Inside the ghost world he name-checks Geraldo Rivera, whose own ABC special "The Mystery of Al Capone's Vault" was, like the Ghostbusters' fictional broadcast, an anticlimax when the largely empty vault failed to live up to the advance hype. Peter also runs through a string of gangster-movie lines, including "You'll never take me alive, coppers!" and "Curtains!", and claims to be a close friend of actor James Cagney; a ghost dismisses Egon as "a regular Einstein." After a vehicle crash in the ghost world, Peter makes a throwaway joke asking his father to borrow the car for prom, promising to get it back in one piece. When the executive boasts the special drew the best ratings "since the election," the most recent U.S. presidential election in the story's timeframe was the 1988 contest between George H. W. Bush and Michael Dukakis.
The second special Peter contracted for, "Live! From the Center of the Bermuda Triangle," never happens, but the Triangle itself later turns up as a threat in the Extreme Ghostbusters two-part finale "Back in the Saddle, Part 2," which also reunited the original Ghostbusters with the newer team.
This is one of the few episodes that does not feature the Firehouse.
The Al Capone ghost character later received non-canon cameos in the IDW comic series: a young Capone appears as a civilian running from a bust on page one of Ghostbusters Issue #13, and a portrait of his ghost standing before his tomb at Mount Carmel Cemetery appears on page four of the same issue. He also appears on a wanted poster on page one of Ghostbusters Volume 2 Issue #12.
Animation errors
When the Ghostbusters bust one of Al Capone's gang members, the proton streams are absent from the animation, making the characters appear to blast him with invisible beams.
Episode order
In broadcast order, the episode follows "Jailbusters" and precedes "The Halloween Door." In DVD order, it again follows "Jailbusters" and is followed by "Trading Faces."
