"He'll Have to Sit and Watch Them All and We'll Monitor His Mind"

And now we come to the final installment in the MST3K season 4 overview. 

Invariably during every season there are episodes which can mostly pass without comment -- "good" but not "great".  In the midst of these episodes though there may be a terrific host segment or a short film which outshines the feature film it is paired with.

So this post is where I highlight those things.

First up:

'The Rainy Day Holo-Clowns':  This one actually starts in the third host segment of episode 405 -- Being From Another Planet.  The gang would continue it in the opening to the following episode Attack of the Giant Leeches.  The second half -- in which it turns out the 'holo-clowns' have been up on the hexfield viewscreen for three weeks -- is the funnier bit as Joel frantically tries to finally shut the system down and the holo-clowns start to have their own nervous breakdowns.  And yes, that's Mike Nelson as one of the clowns -- the other is Paul Chaplin, a writer on the show.  This was Chaplin's first on-screen appearance.

Next: 'The bots try to convince Joel he's crazy' from episode 409 The Indestructible Man.  The movie and the short are a unremarkable and unmemorable but this opening host segment is a hoot.  It wasn't too often that the bots tried playing tricks on Joel but when the gang brought one out it was usually a good one.  On top of that, this segment does beg the question -- was Kevin Murphy pupeteering Crow instead of his usual Tom Servo?  And was Trace Beaulieu handling Tom Servo instead of Crow?

This next one is a short instead of a host segment.  Apparently a tourism film to promote the Canadian National Exposition or something Johnny at the Fair chronicles the exploits of young Johnny (who else?) as he runs around the expo meeting famous people and getting free rides and free food while his parents search for him frantically... well, as frantic as you can get in a 1950's film designed to convince people to come to the expo.  Wait...  was 'come to the expo and lose your kid and then have a lousy time while you freak out looking for him and imagining the worst' really the message they wanted to send?  Anyway, as you can imagine, Joel and the bots have an excellent time making fun of little Johnny's adventures and the riffing for this short is a lot more fun than the movie it's paired with -- episode 419's The Rebel Set.

We're back to host segments for 'Grumpy Hugh Beaumont'.  Back in season 2 the gang tackled the snoozer film The Lost Continent and the host segments for that one were livened up by a visit from Leave it to Beaver's dad Hugh Beaumont (Mike Nelson)... as one of the horsemen of the apocalypse.  Well, in season 4 Hugh returns courtesy of episode 420 -- The Human Duplicators.  Hugh may no longer be a horseman of the apocalypse but he's decidedly older and grumpier... much to Joel and the bots' dismay and much to the delight of the viewer...  Sadly, I can't find an embeddable copy of this video so just check out the third host segment for the episode -- you'll be glad you did.

And here we have another short which was far funnier than the film it was paired with...  Circus on Ice is... well, I'm honestly still trying to figure out WHY this short film was created in the first place.  It doesn't seem to fill any tourism function and it's not really educational and it's past the days of the old newsreels when they would splat just about any odd thing onto film but no matter it's original purpose here it becomes comedy gold.  Joel and the bots indulge in quite a bit of dark humor and some risque riffing but it's hysterically funny -- far more funny than the weird and nearly incomprehensible Monster A-Go-Go it's paired with.

Finally, we come to kind of a tough one for me.  You see the short Hired! -- obviously a training film created by Chevrolet pre-WW II to train it's sales managers -- actually originally came in two parts and the riffing team did use both parts.  Part one was paired with episode 423 Bride of the Monster and part two was paired with the next movie in line -- Manos, The Hands of Fate.  The riffing on the first half of Hired! is pretty good really but the riffing on the second half is superior in my opinion.  Still, I almost included the first half of the short here as well if for no other reason than the second half makes slightly more sense in context when you've seen the first half.  Also, because one of the host segments for episode 423 also makes more sense when you've seen the first half of Hired!  In the end, I'll leave it up to you if you want to seek out Hired! part one or not.  It's pretty good stuff but the real gem here is actually the host segment...

Joel and the bots take the events and characters from the short and turn them into a really great parody song medley.  'Hired! The Musical' is one of the best parody musical bits the gang has done in a good while as far as I'm concerned.  Mike Nelson outdid himself on the songs and Joel Hodgson manages to pretty well control his often wayward voice to turn in an acceptable singing performance.  Kevin Murphy's tenor is, of course, the scene stealer.  The gang manages to do a perfect parody/satire of a musical in less than four minutes -- that takes serious talent!

So, that's season 4 wrapped.  Onward from here!

"But His Bosses Didn't Like Him So They Shot Him Into Space"

That's right, I'm back with more MST3K! I know, I know, I've been slacking on the blog but... stuff. It happens.

Anyway, we're going to do this way the same way as my previous MST3K post(s) -- this post will cover my overview of season 4 and the two subsequent posts will cover my favorite episodes from the season and why and my favorite host segments.

So... on with Season 4!

Really, I don't know where to begin... mostly because the creative team had reached a kind of plateau. The cast and crew were mostly stable (we'll get to the "mostly" in a minute) and they had been working together for such a long time that they operated like a well-oiled machine. They churned out 24 episodes which filled a two-hour programming block without a visible hitch and while not every episode might be a laugh riot there wasn't a clunker in the bunch this season and at their weakest they were still entertaining. They had reached a point of consistency that few shows could boast.

One area where improvement could be seen was with some of the tougher movies. The gang tackled some of the arguably worst bad movies. You see, bad movies can basically be broken down into two categories -- ones which are so ridiculously bad they are actually entertaining in their badness and ones which are so bad they are boring and/or incomprehensible. In season 4 the writing and riffing team handled some real snooze-fest films. Titles like Fire Maidens of Outer Space, Monster A-Go-Go, and the infamous Manos, the Hands of Fate just to name a few. In season 3 the gang had struggled with the more boring and/or incomprehensible films like Castle of Fu Manchu (where they used crying and complaining to try to cover the fact that they just failed to come up with some witty one-liners) and the two Master Ninja movies (using that word loosely) but in season 4 the worst of the worst are considered by many to be some of their best, most inspired, riffing jobs. Not only that but Manos had a strong showing despite coming at the end of the grueling season when the team had to have been feeling the burn-out.

One thing which probably helped defeat the burn-out was the addition of two regular writers for the series. Colleen Henjum and Mary Jo Pehl were added to the writing staff -- hence why I say the cast and crew were "mostly" stable.

There was only one departure this season -- that of Production Manager Alexandra "Alex" Carr. While Carr worked behind the scenes apparently she also had one role in front of the cameras... sort of...that of the uncredited "Magic Voice" -- the dulcet tones of the Satellite of Love's computer A.I... or something -- it was never properly explained WHAT Magic Voice was. Either way, with Carr's departure there was a change in Magic Voice's... uh... voice and fans of the show will recognize that Mary Jo Pehl took over the role -- still uncredited.

There wasn't a lot of innovation this season but we do see the gang say goodbye to the movie serial installments. For the first three seasons on cable the gang had often padded out their episode run times by pairing a shorter movie with either a film short or else an episode from a movie serial. With this season they did a couple of movie serials and experimented with a couple of episodes of a soap opera (General Hospital) to fill out episodes before finally and fully settling on the shorts from here on when they needed to pad out a run time.

While your actual miles may vary I found that the gang did seem to take a while to find their feet in season 4. While, as I said, none of the episodes are bad, the first three were just not extremely funny to me and it took until the fourth episode in before I felt like they really started getting inspired. Once they got past that point, though, they turned in some really terrific episodes.

The gang also had a really nice variety in their film choices this season. They balanced traditional sci-fi with some fantasy/myth movies and peppered in some wanna-be noir pieces, 'dangerous youth' films, and even a 'post-apocalyptic' style flick. It was a cornucopia of styles of bad filmmaking and it gave the season a nice diversity to keep the riffing fresh and different.

The one thing I didn't like and was quite happy to see go was the General Hospital experiment. The show's focus had always been on the "movie experience" so throwing in episodes of a TV series just felt wrong to me. In addition, it seemed like it was a little unfair picking on a soap opera. Movies tend to have long gestation periods and layers of people involved where one would think that someone, somewhere along the chain might say "You know what? This isn't very good" and fix the things that were going wrong -- doctor the script, get a new director, get new actors... something! A soap opera on the other hand, had to be written quickly and shot even faster since it went out on the air five days a week. Also, the very nature of soap operas are built on ideas of very little character development and mostly an illusion of change without there being much actual change. Soap operas also are completely built on the kind of overblown plots that the guys tended to make fun of in movies. And on top of all of that... I just didn't find the riffing that funny. It felt like the guys were always kind of struggling for inspiration with them and there were only a few gems of humor in the installments so I was glad to see them go.

So, in the final summation -- season 4 merely continued the same good work the gang had already been doing. Plenty of funny work and a relaxed ease that really shone through on camera. There are several points in the host segments where you can see things happen which were more than likely accidents or ad-libs but the gang has reached such a level of competency that they often take it and run with it -- incorporating the accident into the episode seamlessly.

Next up -- some of my favorite episodes... and why.

"...There Was a Guy Named Joel; Not Too Different From You or Me"

And at last it is time to look at the second cable season of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

Some appear to think of this season as the one with the "Biker Trilogy" -- so called because the riffing team would tear into three 1960's era biker movies in fairly close succession. Others think of this season as the "Robert Lippert Season" as four of the thirteen movies riffed here would be produced by Robert Lippert (and all would contain massive amounts of padding in the form of either long, aimless, walking scenes or long, aimless, rock climbing scenes. In point of fact, "Rock Climbing" would become a callback riff in later seasons and would crop up again almost 20 years later... but that's a story for another day...). For me, however, if I wanted to give season two a "theme" I would call it the season of nihilism... and we'll get to why in short order.

It becomes clear, right off the bat, that the show is not and really probably never will be still or static. There was almost always something changing even if the changes were small and subtle. For season two small and subtle was certainly not the case. With the departure of Josh Weinstein two new people joined the on-air cast to replace the one loss. Where Weinstein had portrayed both Tom Servo and the mad scientist Dr. Laurence Erhardt the decision was made to split the parts. Comedian Frank Conniff came on board as Dr. Clayton Forrester's new lackey, Frank, and Kevin Murphy went from behind the camera to in front of it (sort of) as the new puppeteer and voice of Tom Servo.

Despite being somewhat new to audiences both of these guys had a history with the team -- particularly Kevin Murphy. Murphy had been an old colleague of Jim Mallon, who became producer on MST3K, and Mallon had hired Murphy to help him out at the Minneapolis's KTMA where the show was born. Murphy had been on set from day one running the cameras and lights (if you watch the end credits for the KTMA episodes you will find Murphy listed as "Cambot"), helping with the scripting (what little there was back in the day) and as an extra puppeteer (since in the KTMA days Josh Weinstein operated and provided voices for both Tom Servo and Gypsy any time Servo and Gypsy had to appear on-screen together someone else had to operate Gypsy while Weinstein provided the voice. Most often that someone else was Murphy). When the show moved to cable Murphy went along, continuing to hold various jobs behind the scenes -- including being a regular member of the writing team. It was only natural, then, for him to finally move in front of the camera in the form of Tom Servo.

As for Frank Conniff, while he was not involved in early production of the show the tight knit comedian community in Minneapolis meant that he was known around. In point of fact, Trace Beaulieu knew him well enough to give him a shout-out back in the KTMA days. In the first tackle of the movie Mighty Jack Crow remarks that a character "looks like Frank Conniff". With his addition and Murphy's move to puppeteer the cast would remain stable for the next several seasons.

There were other changes for the opening of the second season as well. The Deep 13 set was given a little makeover and the Satellite of Love Bridge set was completely revamped.

As for the season itself -- the guys seemed to make an effort to vary their material. The first cable season was heavy on old sci-fi and horror films as well as featuring mostly black and white films (out of thirteen movies only three were in color... a fact that the riffing team themselves kind of acknowledged on-screen at one point). For their second season they mixed things up with seven color films out of thirteen, one (bad) comedy, three aforementioned biker films, at least one adventure film and one movie that.... well, honestly, I don't even know how to categorize Rocket Attack U.S.A. (No, seriously. It's part Cold War drama -- only badly done. Part spy story -- bdaly done. And part piece of propaganda -- really badly done). Of course, though, the tried and true movies were the sci-fi and monster flicks.

And here's where we get to the nihilism. Whether by accident or design a number of the movies shown for this season had really downer endings. I doubt I'm spoiling anything for anyone by remarking that five of the thirteen films feature deaths of either: all the main characters, the primary protagonist, significant secondary characters or, in one case, the annihilation of New York City. Not kidding on that last one.

For me, personally, films have to be really good to pull off a downer ending without leaving me with a lingering edge of depression. I'm no Precious Pollyanna who always wants the happy ending but a film has to earn the emotional payoff of a sad or bittersweet ending. And for the bad films featured on MST3K there's no way they earn that emotional weight. As a result, no matter how good the riffing is I'm always left with a lingering slightly bad taste in my mouth. The funny just rarely balances out the depressing weight of a bad film with a horrid ending.

On the whole, however, audiences can see the improvement the guys made over the first season to the second. The rate of jokes speeds up markedly and those jokes are more pointed and funnier. More to the point, the skits for the host segments take a big jump up in quality. There are still a few clunkers but most of the sketches earn a grin or a chuckle if they don't earn a belly laugh and at the very least they get points on the sheer cleverness of the writing.

The cast changes also fold in without a blip. The various members shift smoothly and quickly settle into on-screen chemistry that would become famous for years to come. It's actually a testment to the professionalism of the group despite the fact that many of them did not come up in the world of episodic TV.

In the final round up, for me, this isn't my favorite season. While I can see the improvements and I applaud them many of the movies left me cold and not even the jokes and pointed satires of Joel Hodgson, Kevin Murphy, and Trace Beaulieu could save them for me. Your actual mileage may vary though.

Favorite Episodes:

Lost Continent. The movie that would put rock climbing on the map. The film and the riffing start out kind of slow for me but as the actual action in the film picks up so do Joel and the bots' jokes. They even manage to make the interminable rock climbing scenes entertaining... mostly by threatening to lose their marbles.

Godzilla vs. Megalon. As a gal who grew up watching old Japanese monster movies on a small, local TV station on Saturday afternoons this episode is close to my heart. I was and remain a fan of all those cheesy flicks -- Godzilla and Gamera and King Kong Escapes (A.K.A. King Kong vs. Mechakong) -- but I take no offense when the MST3K team punctures them with verbal barbs. In fact, I enjoy it and there's a lot here to enjoy as the jokes are really very clever and Lord knows the movie gives them plenty of material to work with.

Godzilla vs. the Sea Monster. See above. This one isn't quite a sharp as the previous but it's still loads better than many of the other offerings this season.

There is one cautionary note which must be made here... the MST3K editions of the Godzilla movies can be difficult to find... legally. Back in the day Toho -- the studio who created and owns Godzilla -- licensed out the movies to various American companies. In turn those companies put together English dubbed versions of the films (some better translated and dubbed than others). In more recent years Toho has been not renewing those licenses when they have lapsed and thereby regaining control over their most famous movie monster.

In the last round of Godzilla films there was a concerted effort on the part of Toho to restore Godzilla to his fearsome, force to be reckoned with, status as opposed to the softer, more 'savior of mankind' status he had gained over the years. It was hoped that this would help the character be taken more seriously. Connected to that Toho has, since 2006, been digitally remastering all the old Godzilla films and releasing them on DVD in their original, Japanese, format in an effort to kind of erase the badly dubbed American versions. As a result while the MST3K team had the rights to riff the movie back in the early 1990's thanks to American distribution companies those rights have now reverted back to Toho and reportedly Toho has no desire to see either the bad English dub versions OR the MST3K comedy take on the films perpetuated. Without the rights to the films these episodes cannot be released on DVD.

While they do pop up on internet sites like YouTube or DailyMotion from time to time Toho usually quickly has them taken down for copyright violation. So while the two are some of my favorite episodes for this season watching them absolutely legally is technically impossible.

And as a personal note -- while I understand Toho's motivation I honestly don't think them allowing the MST3K versions of the film to be released would hurt them any. I've run into many fans like myself who can appreciate the movies on both levels. I actually like to watch the original versions in Japanese with English subtitles because they are often less silly and make more sense than the English dub versions -- as well as being more true to the Japanese culture that spawned the films to begin with. At the same time I get a kick out of the pure ham-and-cheese of the English dub versions which inspired the MST3K riffing team. It's not an either/or situation.

Now, on to season three... and backwards to KTMA..... Huh?

Mystery Science Theatre 3000 Season 1 Addendum

Since in my previous Season 1 review I didn't recommend any episodes which featured host segements I considered good I thought, through the magic of YouTube and some like-minded posters there, I would include a few of the better Season 1 host segments.

First up: A general fan favorite -- "Servo hits on a blender". This one is pretty much word-for-word a recreation of a host segment from the KTMA days.



Second up: "The barbershop skit". This one is another 'do-over' from the KTMA days but unlike the "Blender" skit this one was slightly re-written and expanded from the KTMA version.



And finally: "Tom and Servo Swap Heads". Honestly, the ending to this one is a bit of a let-down but the build up makes me laugh.

Next Sunday A.D.....

Mystery Science Theatre 3000: Season 1

Well, we've left the wilds of independent UHF TV behind and have jumped into the exciting new world of cable. And what is the result?

The first thing you notice is that the bigger budget has let the show LOOK better. The visuals and the music for the opening theme now have a slick, professional look but without sacrificing the deliberate cheesiness that was at the heart of the show – for example, using models for the overview of Gizmonic… and deliberately letting them LOOK like models – right down to seeing the string attached to the rocket to accompany the “They shot him into space” line of the theme song.



Once into the show itself we see the Mads get an appropriately Mad Scientist looking lair in “Deep 13” and the bridge of the Satellite of Love, while it still has a little way to go, looks quite a bit better than the KTMA version. All of the people look better too – we get much better and brighter costumes, better hair styling and better accessories – all of which help cement the characters. Even the bots get a makeover as Gypsy and Tom Servo are basically reworked from scratch and Crow is refurbished and his design tweaked a bit. Sharp-eyed KTMA era viewers will recognize that the original KTMA version of Gypsy is re-worked into the new Cambot for the opening theme. All is not perfect, though, as for the first several episodes the hinge on Gypsy’s jaw squeals horribly and clanks a bit as well – making it actually hard to hear the dialogue when she’s on-screen.

And that brings up the fact that the voices have changed. Trace Beaulieu doesn’t really change the tone or tenor of the voice he uses for Clayton Forrester much but he does make it more rounded and slightly pompous. His voice for Crow also evolves slightly over the first couple of episodes until he finally locks into the tenor and pitch he would carry for the rest of his tenure on the show. For his part, Josh Weinstein doesn’t really change the Tom Servo voice he chose in the KTMA days but he drastically changes the voice he uses for Dr. Laurence Erhardt. In the KTMA days his Erhardt was a low, slightly growly affair and for this season he flips and moves in the other direction to go with something slightly nasal, higher pitched and somewhat whiney… It’s not a change for the better in my opinion. And finally, there is Gypsy. In the KTMA days Weinstein provided both the puppeteering and the voice of Gypsy (except in those occasions where both Tom Servo and Gypsy had to appear on-screen together. In those cases Weinstein provided the voice but someone else did the puppeteering… although in one notable case make-up lady Faye Burkholder provided the voice of Gypsy) but now producer Jim Mallon begins providing the voice and the puppeteering for Gypsy.

The writing staff has also gotten bigger to help with the scripting process. Notably, Josh Weinstein "discovered" Michael Nelson on the Minnesota comedy circuit and approached him about "doing some typing" -- which ended up having a very bright future...

The scripting and rehearsing of episodes shows almost immediately. The skits flow more smoothly and there are fewer miscues and flubbed lines and there are fewer ‘stepped on’ lines in the theatre segments – almost completely eliminating the old problem of Hodgson, Weinstein and Beaulieu occasionally talking over one another with different jokes and riffs. The scripting also allows the guys to act as a team more often – building jokes and passing lines from one to another and speaking in unison as well.

The guys deliberately, however, didn’t make things perfect and that’s also good. There are still a few blown lines here and there and props which fail or fall off – mistakes made which end up in the finished product in order to retain the old “raw” feeling of the old days. And often the blown lines lead to even more jokes and riffs as the guys don’t completely forget their old ad-lib training. It also gives the show that feeling of anything can and probably will happen.

On the downside, surprisingly the riff rate is pretty low and slow in the first few episodes. Despite all their practice in the KTMA days and the fact that the scripting ought to have made things easier there is still a ‘clunky’ feel to the early efforts. As the season goes on, however, they get better.

They are still experimenting with the formats and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. They add new regular segments – like the Invention Exchange (which takes the place of the Mads just generally bantering with Joel in the KTMA days) – which work well and become a staple of the show, while others – like the “Movie Reviews” at the end, don’t seem to work out quite as well and eventually fade from sight. When these things work well they are generally solid to extraordinary but when they don’t work well they are one of the worst things in the world in my eyes – boring. For example, for quite a while there was a tendency to use at least one of the host segments for Joel and the bots to just stand around and talk about the dumb/inane/nonsensical elements of the plot and this tended to be, on the whole, boring, because they’ve tended to have already either directly or obliquely riffed on this stuff already in the theatre! It’s a retread, it’s usually not that funny, and we GET it already. Likewise the “pageants”. The first one they do – on the life of Ro-Man the Robot from “Robot Monster” -- is funny, mostly because it comes out of left field and is so surreal as to be kind of divorced from reality. You really do start to question the sanity of Joel and the bots on that one… but that’s what makes it funny. Later ones, however, feel forced and are actively dull with no real payoff.

So by the end of the season things can be seen finally locking into place. The guys had pretty much discarded the things that didn’t work and kept the things which did and were starting to cement all of this into a regular format. Unfortunately this also came with a big change -- the departure of the first cast member in Josh Weinstein.

According to reports and interviews Weinstein, who was only about 18 years old at the time, was not happy with the amount of scripting being done on the show. He himself was an improv comedian and thrived on the ad-libbed nature of the KTMA era. In addition he had conflicts with other members of the team and felt that his youth was partly causing problems for himself and some of the rest of the cast and crew so he opted to leave.

From some things I’ve seen and read around the internet it seems to me that Weinstein often gets a bit of a raw deal from fans. For me, personally, I think part of the reason he is unfairly compared to his replacement, Frank Conniff, is that Conniff had a greater amount of time in which to endear himself with fans and to build his character. Discounting the KTMA days, Weinstein only had one season – 13 episodes – in which to work on his characters and show viewers what he could do. For another thing, there were changes made to one of Weinstein’s characters – namely Laurence Erhardt – which were not, in my opinion, the best thing for the character.

For one thing, the Erhardt character was actually STRONGER back in the KTMA days. Despite Erhardt being called a “doctor” in the season 1 episodes he all too often comes across as just Forrester’s lackey. Case in point, in one of Weinstein's last episodes Erhardt sings that he enjoys "working for" Forrester. In the KTMA days Erhardt proclaimed himself Forrester's partner and there was a stronger sense of that partnership between the two – Erhardt often was the one to tell Forrester to send to the movie or to “give ‘em a commercial”. The change in the voice that I mentioned above also didn’t help. The lower, rougher, tone Weinstein used to use gave his KTMA Erhardt a sinister feel while the higher, whiney tone of Season 1 made him seem wimpy.

For another thing, people often point to enjoying the… ambiguous, shall we say?... relationship between Forrester and Frank without realizing that this sort of thing actually started in the KTMA days with Weinstein and Beaulieu cooking up some skits that played around with the nature of the “partnership” between Forrester and Erhardt. For some unknown reason though this was dropped for season 1 on the Comedy Channel rather than being expanded or built upon!

In the final equation I suppose I just feel that Weinstein gets a bit short shrift sometimes from fans. Taste is personal and God knows I’m not saying that everyone should run out and watch every episode available of the KTMA stuff because some of it is… well…. That thing I hate… you know, BORING. I, myself, like everyone who has been with the show. They each have their own style and each brought something new to the table and that is true of Weinstein as well. His Servo was acerbic, occasionally smug and superior, sarcastic with a very dry wit and of course, funny. Go back and watch “Robot Holocaust” and you’ll see that Weinstein was burning down the house in that one with clever line after clever line. And really, it isn’t fair to compare him to the comedians who came after him since, after all, each was a different comedian with a different style. Instead, it’s much better to see and appreciate what he did bring to the show for the short time he was with it… and it would not be the last the movie riffing world saw of Josh “J. Elvis” Weinstein… but that is a story for another day.

So looking over the entire first season I have to say that I was left surprised that the team didn’t hit the ground running considering all of the practice they got with the KTMA days. And I was disappointed in some of their innovations but thankfully much of what I didn’t like didn’t seem to hang around too long. If nothing else the writing team seemed to have a good grasp on what was truly funny and what wasn’t. By the end of the season things were really starting to hum and from here it should just be a matter of spit and polish. There is a bit of bittersweet in seeing Weinstein leave the show and to do it without a real farewell or acknowledgement and personally, there is a part of me that will miss his characterizations.

Despite the unevenness, the first season is still interesting as it is very clearly continuing the ‘comedy lab’ aspect of the show which started at KTMA as the team experimented and grew in their craft. I also noted that, at the very end of the closing credits there is a list of “Special Thanks” to various people and organizations and one of those on that list is KTMA TV-23. It was very nice of the gang to pay that bit of tribute to the station that first gave them their break and the stepping stone they needed to reach higher.


My personal favorite episodes?
Robot Monster: By this point the guys had done several installments of a "Commando Cody" serial from the late 1940's and most fans tire of the serials quickly but I love the riffing for the two serials which come here before the main movie. There are great lines like Crow's "What's the physics of a broken jaw college boy?" and "The Cody Institute for scientists who get pummeled." There's also a fun bit in between the two serials in which Servo and Crow can't take another serial installment and try to make a break for it only to have Joel go after them and drag them back, saying in exasperation "I'm surrounded by idiots... of my own design!" Be warned, though, the host segments are kind of weak. The movie itself is.... yeah, this one is BIZARRE and believe me it deserves every single one of those capital letters. The riffing team has a great time with it and it's even easy to come up with your own jokes for stuff they missed. But as a movie... this has to be seen to be believed that someone actually got money to commit this to film.

Moon Zero Two: Again, I found a lot of the riffing on this one to be really strong. The host segments are kind of weak but there are some great one-liners... as well as plenty of double entendres. The movie itself is... okay, it hasn't aged well and it's kind of weird but it actually isn't that bad. The filmmakers were trying to do 'Westerns in Space' -- they just did it really, really ham-handedly. A lot has been written about quite a bit of sci-fi basically being like old-time Westerns. Heck, the first line you get on the Star Trek theme is "Space: The final frontier." With Moon Zero Two you have a protagonist who is mourning the loss of the "frontier" in that no one is interested in exploring or expanding anymore. So that's your 'frontiersman at the edge of the frontier' motif of later Westerns. Then you have miners and a plot about what amounts to claim jumping and a damsel in distress who is named Clementine for goodness sake! Could you GET any more Western than that?! The big problem is that the special effects haven't aged well and kind of of suck, the 'Western' theme is handled unevenly and most of the time it has all the subtlty of a pile of bricks... dropped from the top of the Empire State Building... on top of the audiece's head.

The Black Scorpion: Yet another one where I like the riffing but find the host segments to be poor. In point of fact one host segment is entirely about stop-motion animation pioneer Willis O'Brien and it isn't funny at all... and isn't meant to be. It's informative and obviously a tribute to O'Brien. Kind of nice of the guys but just not fitting well considering they spend most of the movie riffing on the effects. But it's just stereotypical, classic, 1957's giant monster style sci-fi. In this case giant, mutated black scorpions from the depths of the Earth terrorize Mexico. There are, of course, giant bugs (of actually several stripes), heroic scientists, and a really, really, REALLY annoying kind named Juanito whom, by the end, you're pretty much right there with Joel and the bots rooting for at least one of the giant insects to eat.

Women of the Prehistoric Planet: First off, the title is a lie. Second off, this one is placed fourth in the running order of the show. This is also a LIE. If you choose to watch the season in order (as I did) DO NOT WATCH THIS ONE FOURTH!!! Parts of it will not make sense. According to internet research (so take with a grain of salt) the production team WANTED to do this movie fourth but couldn't clear the rights in time. As a result they skipped it and went on. By the end of their taping season, though, they had finally cleared the rights and so they scripted and taped this episode as the last one of the season... but left it with the original production number which placed it fourth in line. Watch this one last. Trust me. Anyway... Good riffing, lots of jokes -- some of which probably barely clear the censors, and finally some pretty good host segements. It's also notable for being the first episode to feature Michael Nelson in a speaking role... as the voice of the Isaac Asimov Literary Doomsday satellite.

Now you may notice that, out of my personal favorites here, most of the ones I picked I didn't like the host segements. That's one of the catch-22's with this first season. Some of the earliest episodes have some of the slowest and less funny riffing but they have the better host segments. Go figure. Also, many of the funny host segements that appear early on are actually re-runs of segments the guys crafted in the KTMA days. Some are almost word-for-word and shot-for-shot recreations but others have been re-written and cleaned up and are the better for it.


On to Season 2!

In the Not Too Distant Future...

MST3K is, for the uninitiated (and I can't imagine there are that many of those left in the world), the acronym used for the TV show Mystery Science Theater 3000. Said show consisting of one comedian (Joel Hodgson in the early seasons and Michael Nelson in the later ones) two robot puppets and a lot of bad science fiction movies which said comedian and robot puppets proceed to "riff" on.

The series lasted for a surprising 10 seasons and gained a cult following (although, with 10 season one might argue that the show wasn't all that "cult").

Despite the long run of the show I came to it very late in the game. Mostly this is due to the fact that my family didn't have cable for a long time and I was nearly off to college before they broke down and got cable. This is also due to the fact that when my family *did* finally get cable Comedy Central, which was producing the series then, was still a "premium" channel from our cable provider and one had to go up to the next price level to get Comedy Central, which was bundled with the likes of HBO and Showtime. And my parents weren't interested in springing for the extras.

So I was actually in graduate school before I got access to Comedy Central and MST3K. My roomates introduced me to the show but unlike the other shows they introduced me to (Red Dwarf, The X-Files, and Are You Being Served) MST3K didn't really "take" with me. I didn't understand the 'call backs' and it seemed as though I was also always coming in mid-episode and really not having any idea what was going on... Well, more so than usual. So, I wrote it off.

In the intervening years I've seen bits and pieces but, again, didn't really have time to sit down and devote myself to "getting" it.

Recently, however, the show was again brought to my attention. This time I was determined to sit down and really spend some time on things. So I watched a couple of episodes with Mike Nelson as the host and a couple of episodes with Joel Hodgson as the host and I "got it" more but I also still felt like I was missing something with the obvious call-backs. So, with the help of Google Video I set out on a safari... a hunt to watch the show from the very beginning in chronological order.

And when I say the beginning I mean the *beginning* -- starting with the episodes the crew first did on KTMA, a local UHF station in Minnesota.

And here's where we get to the part where rabid MST3K fans start howling for my blood.... In a way, I like the early KTMA stuff best.

Yeah, I said it.

"But," the fans will cry, "the later stuff was so much better! The voices were better, the writing was tighter, the jokes were funnier!" And you know what? They are. It's true. The writing is more on-target, the voice actors providing the voices of the robots are more polished and more certain in their craft, and the jokes... well, I won't say that *all* of them are funnier but they tend to keep on-topic a bit more and are often more pointed.

So, all that being true, why do I like the early stuff so much? Because of the rawness of it. The show was largely unscripted and it shows which means sometimes the actor/comedians fall a little flat and fumble for words or get stuck with pauses that go on a shade too long and the unscriptedness shows through but in contrast there was an... immediacy... for lack of a better word, there which lent things an unpredictable nature. You didn't know what was going to happen next because the very people doing the show didn't know what they were doing next!

There were also the reactions. At several points one actor or another would completely crack up at a joke someone else made. This actually ends up making things even more funny as you watch the cast struggle to get their own giggles under control. Laughter is contagious. This is especially true in some of the skits when viewers can clearly see Hodgson trying not to crack up.

There is also a kind of improv which can be seen when someone misspeaks or gets a common phrase slightly wrong which leads to another actor correcting them which almost invariably starts leading them on a bizarre (but funny) tangent.

There is also the lower production values. The fact that the Satellite of Love set is pretty much the main set with the mad scientists of Dr. Clayton Forrester (Trace Bealieu) and Dr. Laurence Erhardt (Josh "J Elvis" Weinstein) looking like they're being filmed in one of the broadcasting rooms of KTMA and the costumes are almost non-existent. And I like this as well. There's a kind of 'guerrilla filmmaking' to it and it reminds me of people currently on YouTube making their own little films with cheap computer effects and utilizing their friends and family members as cast and crew. These are people who make stuff out of the love of making stuff. These are people who believe in an idea enough to just fly by the seat of their pants in order to make it. And I really like people like that. Their product may not be the best in the world but I love them for their creative drive and the fact that they want to put something out there and see if anyone responds and if they do... great! If they don't well, then it's back to the drawing board. That kind of raw drive is there in the MST3K early episodes.

I also love the early stuff for the evolution. Viewers get to watch the show evolve over time. You can see the gears meshing and you can see how ideas and concepts change. For example, in the earliest episodes the Mad Scientists (or "Mads" as they later became known) don't appear at all outside of the theme song. Later they make brief appearances then finally they start making more frequent appearances with regular banter among each other as well as Joel. This is also the start of Beaulieu's character of Clayton Forrester calling Joel various pet names. You can practically see the actors throwing this out there, then deciding they like it and working on expanding it.

In short, if you've never seen the early stuff go and take a look. I love it. I love it for what it is and I love it for what it isn't. And if that makes me bananas well, then, dress me up in yellow and stick a Chiquita sticker on me.