Plot
Outside the Firehouse, Janine runs down a to-do list for the Ghostbusters before leaving on vacation, including annual Proton Pack maintenance and a morning interview for a temporary secretary. An entity watches from a nearby alley. Slimer weeps as Janine departs in a taxi.
Peter volunteers to run the interviews. The first applicant, an older woman named Mrs. Attelmeyer, demonstrates that she can type 120 words per minute. Egon finds her well qualified and is ready to hire her, but the others pull him aside and talk him out of it. The second applicant, a young Southern belle named Dixie, arrives, and the whole team is instantly smitten.
Dixie cannot find the "D" on the keyboard, but the guys cheerfully point it out for her. While she goes upstairs, Peter, Ray, Winston, and Slimer dress up and bring her flowers. Slimer wins a kiss on the cheek; Peter later earns one with a box of chocolates, then watches her devour the candy like an animal.
That evening Egon is baffled by a garbled message Dixie took, and she vanishes before he can question her. The next morning everyone but Egon votes to keep her on. Dixie then visits Egon's laboratory and hypnotizes him. When Slimer interrupts their kiss, she twists her face into something monstrous to scare him off, then resumes the kiss. The Firehouse rumbles and the sky darkens.
Dixie's two brothers, Jim Bob and Bubba, appear and steal two Particle Throwers, declaring it is time for a wedding. Egon asks for one last request, to bake the wedding cake, and slips off to the kitchen. An explosion follows. With the others distracted, Peter hides Slimer under a couch cushion, and the team lays out the apparently dead Egon. Slimer rises from the body and impersonates Egon, a trick he had pulled before in "Slimer, Is That You?" Ghostly guests arrive for the ceremony. "Egon" stalls with a song scraped out on a chalkboard, then hands Dixie a bouquet laced with wolfsbane, melting her face and that of Jim Bob, who catches it. Dixie patches herself up with makeup, but when it comes time to kiss "Egon" she is repulsed by the slime and calls off the wedding. The guests depart through a portal, leaving slime behind in the rec room. Egon thanks Slimer for the save.
As Peter muses about Egon's effect on secretaries, the alarm sounds. The team and Slimer pile into Ecto-1, only to be stopped by their newest temp, who turns out to be Egon's mother. To his embarrassment she makes them all wear sweaters and hands out thermoses of soup before they leave.
Ghosts and characters
Dixie is the episode's main antagonist, a ghost who takes the form of a charming Southern belle to infiltrate the Ghostbusters' firehouse as a temporary secretary. Voiced by Kath Soucie, she is shown to be able to transition into mist form, shape-shift her face, and hypnotize humans. Her weakness is wolfsbane, which causes her face to melt on contact. Dixie makes a later non-canon cameo on page two of Ghostbusters Volume 2 Issue #14 (IDW Publishing), appearing as a background guest at a wedding.
Jim Bob and Bubba are Dixie's two older brothers, ghost enforcers whose job is to make sure the wedding goes ahead. Jim Bob is voiced by Frank Welker and Bubba by Dave Coulier. They confiscate the team's Particle Throwers to prevent interference, and prove easy to outwit. Jim Bob catches Dixie's bouquet during the ceremony and his face melts from the wolfsbane just as hers does.
Dixie's wedding guests are a group of ghosts who materialize when Jim Bob snaps his fingers. They include two goblins strongly resembling the minions of Samhain, and a variant of the H2 Ghost colored navy on top and yellow on the bottom. The guests vacate through a portal once Dixie calls the wedding off, leaving slime throughout the rec room.
Mrs. Spengler, Egon's mother, arrives at the firehouse at the episode's close as the next temporary secretary. She insists all of the Ghostbusters put on sweaters and takes soup thermoses with them on their call.
Production
The episode carries production number 201014.2 Voice work was recorded on June 14, 1989.2 The regular cast included Dave Coulier, Frank Welker, Maurice LaMarche, Buster Jones, and Kath Soucie. Soucie additionally voiced Dixie, while Coulier and Welker voiced Bubba and Jim Bob respectively.
Notes
Slimer is shown to be able to blush, which turns his whole body red. Two of Dixie's guests are goblins resembling those associated with Samhain, and the H2 Ghost appears among the wedding guests. The wolfsbane hidden in Dixie's bouquet is a traditional deterrent against werewolves.
The episode is preceded in air-date and DVD order by "Slimer's Curse" and followed by "It's About Time."
References
-
Eatock, James & Mangels, Andy (2008). The Real Ghostbusters Complete Collection booklet, p. 34. CPT Holdings, Inc.
-
Marsha Goodman (1989). Episode Call Sheet and SAG Report, "Til Death Do Us Part" (1989).
