hen Space Ghost Coast to Coast debuted in 1994, no one knew quite what to make of it. Tad Ghostal, better known as 1960s superhero Space Ghost (Lowe) conducts a bizarrely self-aggrandizing talk show, backed by insectoid bandleader Zorak (Croker) and helmeted lava man Moltar (Croker again) as director? Guests were, if anything, even more befuddled. But the show gradually turned into a cult hit, and Space Ghost Coast to Coast became the foundation for a small empire of spinoffs.
This two-disc set collects the episodes produced in 1997, the show's third calendar year ("season" doesn't really apply). In many ways, this was the show's Golden Age. As its audience grew, it was taken more seriously at Cartoon Network. The 24 episodes included here are more than were produced in any other calendar year, before or since. Production values went up as well. The show got a CGI "camera down the hallway, into the studio" opening cribbed from David Letterman. There was even an opening announcer, supervillain Tansut, though thankfully Tansut was fired about halfway through the season.
The show maintained its ability to attract surprisingly high-caliber guests, even if those guests often had no idea what they'd gotten themselves into. Scattered through this set are everybody from a pre-Daily Show Jon Stewart to Erik Estrada, from Bill Mumy to Charlton Heston, from Steve Allen to Ice-T, plus a professional exterminator who isn't about to take any crap from Zorak.
Several of the episodes from this period remain fan favorites. They include "Piledriver," in which wrestler Macho Man Randy Savage provides the voice of Space Ghost's crotchety, bearded grandfather, Leonard Ghostal; "Needledrop," in which Space Ghost goes mad for the funk, a real ghost is set loose on the set, and Batman's secret identity is finally revealed; and "Dimethylpyrimidinol Bisulfite," in which Zorak scores an endorsement deal for industrial ointment while Space Ghost interviews wannabe heavy metal bad boy Pat Boone via telepathy.
The 24 roughly 10-minute episodes come on two discs, with optional French and Spanish subtitles. Extras include a limited selection of deleted scenes and alternate endings; outtakes from an interview with Jon Stewart and another with David Cross and Bob Odenkirk; and an odd "Toon-In" competition which appears to have once had segments from other Cartoon Network cartoons attached. Finally, five episodes include some of the most incompetent, rambling and utterly useless commentary tracks ever recorded.
More gravy than TV deserves
Space Ghost Coast to Coast's comedy is built on nonsense and chaos. Space Ghost suddenly takes off in mid-show to destroy the Hoover Dam. Brak (Merrill) leaves the gravy faucet on in the commissary, flooding the set in "rich, creamy, coagulated meat juices." Robin Leach is possessed by Moltar's brother-in-law and shoots lasers from his eyes. It's Dadaist television, an anarchic assault on reason and causality. But is it funny? Well, it isn't for everybody. But for viewers who get the show, this collection is a treat. This volume is probably the strongest to date, if only because of the added effort lavished on Space Ghost as it gained momentum.
There are some downsides to this growing popularity. Space Ghost's interview segments work best when guests are dumbfounded, floundering to come up with something to say to an interviewer in tights who doesn't care about whatever they're plugging and keeps asking if they're getting enough oxygen. There are still some of those here—poor Buzz Aldrin deserves better. But by now a lot of guests know what's up and want to prove they're hip by playing along. The result is things like the execrable Beck interview. But there are also gems like author Merrill Markoe. Markoe intuits that the best way to avoid being re-edited out of context is to seize the initiative early and keep Space Ghost on the ropes throughout the interview—which she does brilliantly.
Also, after three years, the show had been around long enough to inspire inside jokes and frequent callbacks to events from previous seasons. Some jokes will go right past viewers unfamiliar with Ghost Planet mythology, but given how absurd the whole thing is anyway, that's not really much of a problem. Despite the occasional self-indulgent disaster, most of these episodes are all you'd want from Space Ghost Coast to Coast.
The extras are mostly OK. In particular, the raw interview footage with Cross and Odenkirk gives a welcome look at how the show remixes and misquotes its guests to comic effect. But the commentary tracks are horrendous. One has more than a half-dozen different people, none of whom seem to have much to say, or even remember the episode. Another has two writers arguing about whether one of them did or didn't work on this episode—without resolution. Just watch the episodes. They don't need elaboration—which is good, because the tracks don't provide any.
