It Started Out Like A Song

This is very funny.

south downs sketch

I need to talk about Egon Spengler's fire pole. No, really. 

In Ghostbusters Afterlife, Phoebe finds Egon's underground lab. There's a fire pole down to it. 

So?

So, Egon hated using the firehouse fire pole.

In 1984's Ghostbusters, when we see Egon take the fire pole down for a bust, he is NOT comfortable on that thing. Sheer terror, might accurately describe the look on his face. Egon preferred the stairs.

It's Ray who loves the station fire pole. 

Why even is there a barn lab fire pole? How would Egon exit the underground lab? Scooch up the pole? No. He probably couldn't climb a fire pole. Not at 70 years old. So, there has to be stairs or ladder down to the underground lab, though we never see them. Physics demand there must be another way in and out. Those stairs, would have been Egon's functional entrance/exit. The underground lab fire pole is structurally unnecessary. Why did Egon, while low on money and time, install it?

Because the fire pole is for someone else. Ray. Egon put it in because he liked to make Ray happy. And he hoped Ray was coming to help.

I think the pole, and the fact that Egon had multiple uniforms hanging ready in the locker, had more than one proton pack, and installed the gunner seat in Ecto1, all point to this- Egon never thought he'd face Gozer alone. This is why it ultimately takes a team to execute Egon's full entrapment vision, which does succeed and capture Gozer, but only when there's finally enough people on the team.

Egon never planned to be alone. He was doing his best but he knew he couldn't do it alone. He was always ready for Ray to believe him. 

"We're ready to believe you." -The Ghostbusters

When Egon's mega Gozer trap fails at the beginning of Afterlife and he hides the Vinz Clortho trap in the floorboard puzzle box, who (besides Phoebe) was smart enough to unlock that puzzle? Ray Stantz. 

Did Egon know Phoebe would come along? That she would be old enough in time? That she would be in Oklahoma? That she, a child, could handle the battle with Gozer? Perhaps he did.

Or did Egon believe that if he failed, Ray would come finish the job? The book stacks. The number code. The maps. Ray would have recognized everything in the livingroom of that old house, the moment he walked in. He would have recognized everything in the lab. He could have picked up where Egon left off. Only he never answered the call. 

Still mad at Afterlife Ray. 

More pictures from their days working renaissance festivals

He’s a moron. He’s an illiterate middle aged white man who did things Penguin does but also not really. He only succeeded at all in the show either by sheer fucking dumb luck and because of Vick. That’s it. Usually Oswald is genuinely brilliant even sewer rat Batman Returns Oswald was smart. This version on the other hand is just your typical fat rich old white man who succeeds off the backs of women and black people and takes the credit.

Oz started as a driver. What he learned from the business, he learned from listening, staying quiet, and paying attention. His mother mentions this as well. Regardless of what you believe, this Oz has street smarts. He knows how to cover his own ass, at least, and can manipulate situations to get what he wants. I like to believe it's part of psychopathic tendencies. He doesn't care about anyone else but himself. That's always his first interest. What he wants and what he gets out of a situation he's putting himself in, which is why he doesn't mind putting other people, like Vic or Sofia, at risk because he sees them as expendable just as Carmine saw him and the other low level "goons" as expendable.

If you paid attention to literally like first ten minutes of the show, Oz has an entire monologue about how his neighborhood honored Rex after he died for what he did for the people in the neighborhood. Rex was really no different than Carmine or Sal other than he probably wasn't as big of figure in the city. He was more localized, obviously, but he was the same kind of man, in a way. But the point of that is, Oz implies straight out that it's what he wants for himself. He wants the recognition, he wants the power, the money... he's trying to take over Gotham, yeah, but not the world. He has relatively small goals for a "villain" in his position. He's always made it clear what he wanted for himself and the city.

Honestly, at this point, I'm confused on how you deem other adaptations of Oswald smart? if you watch many iterations of Batman movies/shows that feature The Penguin, in a lot of them, he is this sorta pompous, bumbling, fool who likes to believe he's above it all and has the wits to be greater than Batman but he usually fails to some extent if not completely. He was never made to be this great criminal mastermind and he certainly never had the intelligence of say, The Riddler, in an academic way, anyway, to deem him "smart".

I also find it odd that you think his clothes were bland when the clothes he wore was the most varied in style/color I've ever seen but in a realistic way? In almost every adaptation I've seen that includes the penguin he's only ever been in some kind of black and white three piece suit/tux and a top hat.. that's not bland to you? I'm curious as to what you expected him to walk around in because it's very obvious that we're working up towards him being the more "typical" penguin that you see in other adaptations by the end of the show, hence the three piece suit and top hat he was wearing in the final scene of the show.....

You don't have to like this version of the character or the plot. I get some people don't like change when it comes to characters they know and because it is quite different from the usual adaptions, that sorta puts people off sometimes, but I think all the things that make Oz different from how they usually portray Oswald is what makes this show great. It's a fresh take on Oswald, in my eyes. And I know you have a problem with the fact that it was seemingly just another man using a woman/poc to get what he wants but that's real life, babe, and that's what made it feel so much more gut wrenching in the end. This kind of shit happens everyday. Maybe not to this scale in day to day life, but it's nothing new and definitely nothing to lose your shit over. As a woman, I appreciated that that they made Oz's intentions known from the beginning and they showed us just what kind of person he was little by little and to see just how much that unraveled as the episodes went on was thrilling. He's not supposed to be this great person so I'm not gonna complain about the tactics that he used to get himself to where he wanted to go. That's what being a villain is about. Having no remorse and doing what you feel like needs to be done to get the job done and that's what Oz did? The only difference in all this is, I can enjoy the show because despite, as I said, things like this happening to some degree in real life, I still know what I was watching was fiction at the end of the day.