Plot
A storm rolls in over Spittoon, a Texan town that looks like it stepped out of a Wild West movie. Several ghosts mounted on monsters manifest, and the townspeople flee indoors to hide from Black Bart. Bart conjures P.K.E. in the form of fireballs and hurls them around, declaring that Spittoon is his and that he will return on Saturday at noon. By then the townspeople must clear out, or else. Bart and his gang ride off and vanish.
At a town meeting, a barber named Red tries to convince everyone they have to resist, since they worked so hard on the gold mine, but no one wants to stand up to Black Bart. The Mayor hurries in and offers a reward to anyone who will get rid of Bart. A pair of volunteers, Duane and Wendal, step forward and boast a foolproof plan, much to the Mayor's dismay. Outside, Duane lays out his idea to Wendal: hire the Ghostbusters.
Ecto-1 pulls up to an airport, where a ghost is terrorizing patrons at baggage claim. The ghost wheels a baggage cart at the team and carries off Egon. The guys open fire, but the ghost dodges the streams, possesses a model airplane, crashes it, and taunts them. Just as Peter is about to fire, Duane and Wendal step right in front of him, and the ghost flies off. Cheated out of another paycheck, the team glumly files back into Ecto-1. Duane and Wendal pitch a big job. Peter is not interested until Duane mentions gold.
Back at the Firehouse, the guys and their new clients talk over pizza. Duane and Wendal explain that Black Bart is after their town's gold mine. In Spittoon, the ghosts arrive and Bart tries to drain energy from the Spectral Well, but the well goes inert as Ecto-1 approaches. Bart nails Ecto-1, and when the Ghostbusters open fire, the force of the spectral well deflects their proton streams. The guys retreat into a bar. Egon improvises by raising a washtub. After Bart blasts it, Egon has everyone aim their throwers through the tub, scoring a direct hit, but the streams are too weak to confine the ghosts. Bart escapes and vows to return for a final showdown.
The townspeople come out of hiding and berate Duane and Wendal for bringing in outsiders. Egon fits a pair of Ecto Goggles with new fiber optic force field lenses and points out that something lies under the town. The mine runs right through the street, but Egon insists the Ghostbusters are not after the gold, and neither is Bart, who wants something that could make him invulnerable. The team and Slimer head into the gold mine with equipment built to take a spectra-source reading. Slimer plays with a pick axe, wakes a swarm of bats, and gets knocked onto a rail cart that carries him down the track to the Spectral Well, whose power surge briefly makes him feel strong. The team catches up and learns that human presence weakens the spectral surge.
While Ray, Egon, and Winston work on Ecto-1, Peter and Slimer train the townspeople in the art of ghostbusting until they overcome their fear and earn the right to be deputy Ghostbusters. A Ghost Train rides up onto Spittoon and Bart and his gang emerge. The townspeople back up the Ghostbusters and stand up to Bart, who absorbs the energy of the Spectral Well and transforms into a demon. A Wild West Tours bus then stops in town for directions, and the tourists, assuming the scene is a stunt show, gather around. With humans present, Bart loses his power. Peter mans Ecto-1's Proton Cannon and blasts him, while Egon and Ray lasso out Ghost Traps to capture the gang. The grateful Mayor, taking Egon's earlier statement to heart, awards the guys genuine cowboy hats instead of gold. On the way out of town, Ray enjoys his new hat while Peter sulks about the gold he did not get.
Ghosts and locations
Black Bart is the episode's main antagonist: a ghostly cowboy from the Spirit World whom Egon classifies as Class 7 or better. His offensive abilities include hurling balls of ectoplasmic energy, summoning lightning, controlling weather, and calling in additional gang members on command. Single proton streams cannot drive him back; concentrating all four streams through one focal point is enough to repel him in the episode's first confrontation. When he absorbs the full power of the Spectral Well, he transforms into a winged demon form. The demon design is recycled from the Airport Roamer ghost that appears in the episode's opening sequence. Black Bart later appears on the RI-B cover variant of Ghostbusters (IDW) Issue #9.
Spittoon is a small town in Texas sitting above both a gold mine and a Spectral Well. The townspeople's attachment to the mine is the reason they refuse to flee when Black Bart issues his ultimatum, and it is also what inadvertently protects them: the populated town directly above the well suppresses the well's output. Having outsiders take on Bart is considered taboo by the locals, which complicates the Ghostbusters' reception after their first failed attempt.
The Spectral Well is a subterranean power source capable of elevating a ghost to full demonic, invulnerable status. Its key vulnerability is human presence: enough people nearby render it completely inert, and this becomes the Ghostbusters' decisive tactical advantage when a lost Wild West Tours bus stops in Spittoon at exactly the wrong moment for Black Bart.
Production
The episode was recorded on May 31 and June 6, 1990.2 The story carries the production number 140-516.
References and trivia
The title is a play on the 1960 western "The Magnificent Seven," which Ray himself references near the end of the episode. The script leans heavily on Wild West and western-movie nods. Peter channels John Wayne through repeated use of "pilgrim" in his lines at the Firehouse,3 and Ray invokes Gary Cooper in "High Noon."4 Ray also quotes the stock cowboy line, "This town ain't big enough for the both of us."5 When Black Bart tells his gang to send the Ghostbusters to Boot Hill,6 he uses the common name for a graveyard of those who died violently in the Old West; Boot Hill Cemetery appeared earlier in the series in "Ghost Fight at the O.K. Corral."
Duane points out the Ghostbusters in an article from "Rolling Rock" magazine, a title-font stand-in for "Rolling Stone," and refers to New York City by the nickname "Fun City."7 Peter dubs his and Slimer's training regimen "Simulation Fright Training," a play on Simulation Flight Training.8 The photograph of the Ghostbusters and Slimer uses their model-sheet poses, and the design of Black Bart's demon form is recycled from the airport ghost seen earlier in the episode. Janine does not appear.
The washtub from the episode later turns up as a background prop in the IDW comic Ghostbusters Annual 2018 (page 9, panel 5), and the P.K.E. Meter screen from the Spectral Well discovery appears on a monitor in Ghostbusters: Crossing Over Issue #4 (page 18, panel 1).
The episode is included on The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection, Volume 5, Disc 1.
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Eatock, James and Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 40. CPT Holdings, Inc.
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Marsha Goodman (1990). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "The Magnificent Five" (1990).
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Magnificent Five" (1990). Peter: "Well, what are we waiting for, Pilgrims? Let's saddle up and head 'em out!"
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Magnificent Five" (1990). Ray: "This time we'll be ready for him like Gary Cooper in 'High Noon'!"
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Magnificent Five" (1990). Ray: "What he means is this town ain't big enough for the both of us."
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Magnificent Five" (1990). Black Bart: "Send them to Boot Hill, boys."
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Magnificent Five" (1990). Duane: "Here we be, Wendal, Fun City."
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The Real Ghostbusters, "The Magnificent Five" (1990). Peter: "Slimer, take them through Simulation Fright Training."
