I also am going to continue to reiterate that I'm not sure how consistent writing will be. There's a part of me that feels like I'm in a transition period with my hobbies again, and it's very well possible that things will shift again without warning.
Buuuuuuut.....
I'm trying to get back to things that used to bring me joy and see if that helps with, well, a lot of things.
I also may remove some old posts. Views have shifted on a number of subjects, especially as I've gotten older and realized some of my younger views were a bit insensitive. I'll be revisiting one of those subjects in the near-future in relation to gaming and what tends to be a hot topic in the gaming space.
The incels will likely be mad.
For now, it's time to take a trip back in time.
The year was 1990. I had a fondness for goofy monster movies (I LOVED the cheesy Godzilla movies) and we came across what seemed like another silly Japanese monster movie. It featured a giant turtle that could breath fire and fly, but at the moment we tuned in, it was doing some gymnastics-style shit that was just goofy to watch. This alone was enough to pull me in, but then some little kid started yelling nonsensically and some random voices yelled "Shut up kid!"
My mom and I looked at each other, perplexed. Who had said that? We then noticed the shadows on the bottom of the screen. A row of what looked like movie theater seats lined it, but on the far right side, there were three extra shadows. One was a man, but the other two weren't. We quickly realized this was where the voices had come from, making the whole thing even more interesting. We watched attentively as the shadows continuously lambasted the movie (which for those who didn't know was part of the Gamera series of movies) before they got up AND LEFT THE THEATER.
We were then treated to a sequence of doors before the camera pulled away to show the interior of a room. The three shadowy figures were now front and center and began having an earnest discussion about the movie they were watching. It was clear that the two non-humans were meant to be robots, but were simply puppets. After a little while, we had some names. The man was Joel Robinson, one of the robots, the gold one with the wire rack and bowling pin for a head was Crow, and the gumball machine one was Tom Servo. The segment was hysterical and convinced us we needed to keep watching. We had discovered our new favorite thing to watch.
We'd eventually find out the show was called Mystery Science Theater 3000 (or MST3K), and I can't state enough the profound effect the show had on me as a child. First, some background info on the show itself.
We'd spend the next few weeks trying to figure out when the show aired. We eventually figured out that Comedy Central aired it every weeknight at midnight, but showed new episodes on the weekend. This was perfect. We'd have a chance to catch up on previous episodes AND see new ones when they came out. I want to say the show was in the middle of its third season at this point, which is when it was really starting to gain momentum (personally I've always considered seasons four and five to be the best). It was Comedy Central's main draw as this was the era before South Park took over (along with all of the other shows it would become known for).
The premise of the show was simple. A man is trapped in space on the Satellite of Love by two evil scientists who hope to take over the world by subjecting it to the worst movie ever made. Joel is the test subject, but he builds some robot companions to help keep his sanity and make fun of the movies instead. The show itself strives to be just as low-budget as the movies it was making fun of, opting to use cheap props and tricks for special effects rather than the trend of fancy visual effects. The show itself was as simple as the movies it was making fun of, but that was part of the charm.
Joel was played by Joel Hodgson, Crow was puppeted by Trace Beaulieu, Tom Servo was manned by Kevin Murphy, and Gypsy was handled by Jim Mallon. On the scientist side, Dr. Clayton Forrester was played by Beaulieu while his sidekick, TV's Frank, was played by Frank Conniff. All of the characters were beloved, but Tom Servo was my favorite. He was snarky, yet sensitive, and while he sometimes made the most sense, he was equal parts ridiculous and loved to sing (and Murphy had a tremendous singing voice). Joel was the father figure while Crow and Tom often acted like children. They were almost always up to no good and often tried to one-up each other.
The show would open with a host segment where the bots were usually up to no good and Joel usually had to defuse a situation. Then the mads would call, there would be an invention exchange, and then the movie would be revealed. Once the movie started, there would be breaks every 30 minutes where Joel and the bots would return to the main section of the SOL, usually to perform a skit based on something in the movie (in later seasons, they'd deviate from this more and more). This would go on until the end of the movie, where afterwards they'd discuss what they learned and the mads would send us off with one more moment of lunacy.
At its core, the show was silly, didn't take itself seriously, and often looked worse than the material they were making fun of. But that was what made it so much fun. It was as much an homage to the idea that anyone could make a movie, even if it was really bad. And there were some REALLY bad movies that they took on.
There would be cast changes, network changes, and a Netflix revival over the course of the show's 14 seasons (including the KTMA public access days), but the jokes were a constant and often centered around both relevant and incredibly obscure pop culture references. You needed to have a little bit of smarts to get all of the jokes, and even then, some would fly over people's heads.
I grew up with the show and I can't state enough how influential its humor was to me. It molded my sense of humor into what it is even to this day. It was also influential in other ways, inspiring shows such as Beavis & Butthead (when they would make fun of music videos), and many fans refer to the art form as riffing (not to be confused with guitar riffs). The show was never super popular, but it was just well-known enough to occasionally creep into the discussion of popular TV shows, especially around season five when the show was arguably at its peak.
I have incredibly fond memories of my mom and I settling down to watch the latest episode during that period of time, relishing in the reprieve from our otherwise tumultuous home life. It was a source of comfort for both of us, even if I didn't get half the jokes they were flinging. I did begin to drift away from the show around season six however. By this point, I was a teenager and was moving towards other interests. Seasons six and seven remain the seasons I'm least familiar with, partly because I didn't watch, partly because the rights for the movies expired and were no longer accessible.
The cancellation still hit hard though. From all accounts, the show was still popular, but Comedy Central was under new management and shows such as The Daily Show and South Park had come into their own. A two hour show that had obscure references just wasn't going to cut it anymore.
While some accepted the cancellation (six seasons is nothing to sneeze at), many didn't and the power of the internet flexed its muscles. People began petitioning other networks, most notably the Sci-Fi Channel, to try and convince them to give the show new life. And wouldn't you know it? It worked. Sci-Fi picked it up and the show returned to us.
But it was different at this point. Conniff had left after season six, which was a sizeable blow (TV's Frank was easily one of the most well-liked characters on the show) at the time, but then Beaulieu left after season seven, leaving a pair of sizeable casting holes. Crow was given to Bill Corbett, while Mary Jo Pehl continued her role as Pearl Forrester, but in an expanded and revamped manner. Murphy picked up a new role as Professor Bobo while Corbett would also play Brain Guy, which would round out the new mad scientists. Mike Nelson, who had replaced Hodgson as the man in space during season five, continued in that role.
It was great to see the gang back and I was revitalized by the show's revival on Sci-Fi. Okay, Bill's puppeteering left something to be desired, but a lot of us were just simply spoiled by how easy Beaulieu had made it look (Crow was easily the most complex of the puppets). As time went on and Corbett adjusted, his version of Crow started to develop and for many, became the best version of the robot. In a lot of ways, I prefer Corbett's Crow because he took an already unhinged character and somehow managed to elevate it a whole new level of unhinged. Most importantly, the show remained fun, even if it had evolved from what I fondly remembered.
I enjoyed the Sci-Fi episodes, particularly once you get about halfway through season eight and into season nine, but like before, I started to drift away from the show again. I didn't see much of season ten and this time, the cancellation felt permanent. I was about to enter my twenties, and a show that had guided me since I was ten no longer really felt relevant. I still loved it and appreciated it, but I had moved on.
And that's where things stayed for a long time. The show was gone and in some ways, being held hostage by Jim Mallon, a former producer of the show. In fact, we'd come to find out Jim wasn't a very good person and was a big reason for a lot of the friction we had heard about over the years. But Mallon eventually gave up the rights to the show and Hodgson, keen to revisit his creation, began a kickstarter campaign around 2015 to try and bring the show back.
And wouldn't you know it, by 2017 the show was back, this time on Netflix. It had a new cast, a much more robust production (the bots were no longer simple puppets but rather complex and required multiple people to operate), and a new slate of movies to roast.
And it landed with a thud for me.
To be fair, I thought it was great that the show came back and a lot of people seemed to like it. It looked incredible, the people working on it were very talented, but it didn't feel like MST3K. I attempted to watch a couple of the early episodes and ran into the same problem each time. The pacing was just off. It felt like the emphasis was to try and pump as many jokes in as they possibly could and nothing had a chance to breath. The beauty of the original version of the show was in the timing of the jokes, not just the quantity. I was also never a fan of the overly produced style they went with for the rest of the show. Part of MST3K's charm was that it was as low-budget as the movies it was making fun of.
I know it's old man yelling at cloud syndrome though. Plenty of people loved the revival and updates. And there's no doubt there's some fun stuff in there. Plus the revival had Felicia Day in it and she's great in everything. It just wasn't for me.
Which brings me to the reason I'm writing about a show I haven't seriously watched in years. You see, Bill, Mike, and Kevin went on to form Rifftrax, which continued the fine tradition of making fun of movies, but in a different manner. Rather than being on screen, the trio is only heard talking alongside of the movie. They've been pretty successful over the years with it and are just as beloved as the previous MST3K episodes were.
Well, a couple of days ago as of this entry, the trio announced they plan to make four new classic-style episodes of MST3K. They, like Joel prior, were doing so via kickstarter, but they intended on making the episodes regardless of support. They were going to revive it in the older, more traditional MST3K style and would be reprising their original roles as well as bringing back a bunch of the original crew to help make it.
Not only did they hit the original goal within 24 hours, they surpassed it by a ton. I want to say the original goal was $20,000, but the campaign had already passed a million dollars within the first day of being live.
And so yet again, MST3K is coming back again, albeit in a much more abbreviated form. One that's much closer to the form that many of us loved. We don't know what the movies will be, nor do we know what else they have in store. It's only been a little over a day, but even I'm feeling the anticipation already.
MST3K defined so much of who I grew up into. For a while, I wanted to procure the parts needed to build my own Tom Servo. Then I realized half the parts were from obscure toys from decades ago that were already difficult to find and so I gave up on that dream (although I do remember coming across an ebay listing for puppets with alternative parts a while back). I pretended to make fun of movies in my room, mimicking the styles of all of the performers. As a kid, I couldn't wait for the next experiment to see what goofy skit they'd come up with next, and they rarely failed to deliver. They made bad movies fun to watch and provided me a safe space in an otherwise very scary time for me personally.
And yeah, I've missed it. It's hard not to. Bill and Kevin in particular are incredible human beings, especially given what's been happening in their own backyards (Frank has also been very vocal about how he feels about things in Minnesota). It will be great to see them back together and see what they come up with.
And hey, maybe some of my friends will indulge me and check out this silly show and laugh with me when the new episodes come about. If nothing else, I hope people see what this show has meant to me.
After all, a silly little cowtown puppet show might be just what the world needs again.
Join us in circulating the tapes once again, won't you?
