Mystery Science Theater 3000

Rejoice, MiSTies! The Satellite of Love is back, and so is the Gizmonic Institute and all of those terrible movies we love to make fun of!

Under the guidance of Joel Hodgson, Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return feels like old times. Sure, some things are different. Of course the cast is new, with Jonah Ray taking over command as Jonah Heston, this edition's poor hapless guy who's being tortured with bad movies. His companions are the same (primarily Crow and Tom Servo), but they're voiced by different people (Hampton Yount and Baron Vaughn, respectively). And the Mads (mad scientists) are new as well, with Dr. Forrester's daughter Kinga (Felicia Day) taking over, ineptly assisted by TV's son of TV's Frank (Patton Oswald).

You may need to adjust your set... just a little. We actually get to see poor Jonah's "origin" story...and amusingly, due to crappy recording technology, he has to literally act it out every episode. But at first it's a little jarring to hear the theme song grind to a halt right in the middle.

And whereas the old series used to show silly bits over the opening theme, the new one shows Jonah's kidnapping as a smug Kinga sings about how she'll send him cheesy movies, the worst she can find. Yes, with minor modifications, it's still the same catchy, loopy song. Cha-ching!

There are a few other things to get used to. Gypsy's throaty falsetto voice has been replaced by a midwest woman, and of course Tom and Crow sound different.

And the most important part, the movies? Well, they're actually improved. They're more recent and in color, but they're still B-movies. I have to admit being concerned that the series got off to a REALLY slow start with the first episode's riffs on "Reptilicus". I don't think I laughed once during Jonah and the 'bots' mockery, because the writing just was unfunny, weak, and frankly kind of desperate. Things improved in episode 2, and by episode 3 there were genuine belly laughs to be had. Guess it took them a while to get back into the groove of things.

So if you're still wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts, repeat to yourselves it's just a show -- you should really just relax.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 is back!

One of the problems with reviving a cultural monolith like MST3K, is that it needs to be done perfectly or it will be deemed a dismal failure.

This reboot does a pretty decent job in updating many aspects of the show to 2017. The DIY aesthetic is still there and exploited pretty well. The cast is very solid. The change to Gypsy was a long time coming and well-executed.

The films that have been chosen are not particularly stand-out awful, but definitely fodder for riffing.

The main issues I have with the rebooted series can be ascribed to growing-pains as the cast and crew (re)acquaint themselves and fall into a groove. Although fondly remembered, the first two seasons or so of MST3K are far from stellar for similar reasons: the chemistry needs time to brew, everyone needs to get the feel of the format, and they need to find their strengths and exploit them.

The Host Segments are somewhat weak. While they have always been hit or miss, in this series they are rather disposable. This might be remedied once the crew decides on the relationship between Jonah and the Bots. Joel was "the Father" and Mike was the "Brother." Jonah is kind of awkwardly tossed into there and they simply abide.

The Riffing is pretty good but way too fast-paced. While it is naturally scripted (for maximum effect) it is way too jam-packed and the Riffers stumble over themselves trying to get as many in per film. It really weakens the impact of jokes and kills off the all-so-sweet illusion that they're organic. Some of their strongest riffs were the prolonged gags that they gave more than a second's notice to. As a consequence of this rapid-fire pace, they really miss opportunities to focus on exploitable moments or they create awkward transitions that really do not sell what could have been apexes of the episode.

As I said, the quality is there: they just need to see it and grow into it. So time will tell if they do so. Their pacing of riffs is perhaps their key area that needs improvement.

That said, for a reboot: they have updated the series and format well and just need to fine-tune it and surpass the growing pains.

Mst3k is one of my all time favorite shows. Joel has never been a favorite of mine, but I really do enjoy the episodes when he is a host. When Mike became host, however, I think they polished the show exactly where they wanted it. Almost every joke was on point and hilarious.

Throughout the entire run, there was almost a humble way of presenting it. They didn't need famous people or cameos at all and it seemed to do really well with the limited characters. It didn't need anything else. For a show with such a zany and not-so-serious premise, the story was great that you could follow it. If it had a cast change, they would make a comment or explain why a certain thing was a certain way. They would always acknowledge questions. The show also ended on a great note.

With the new season, it seems like it was painfully rushed and sloppy. The story is lackluster and doesn't answer a lot of questions you may have. For example, they have a lot of callbacks to previous episodes and seasons and seem to go into detail about certain things, but gloss over why the bots are back on the SOL in the first place. I know "it's just a show and I should relax", but with them including details to link the story to past seasons and then gloss over why the bots are back doesn't make too much sense.

I actually don't mind the new cast. Jonah makes a good host that reminds me of Joel and the actor for Crow plays it very well. Tom Servo's voice however is rough. It seems like he is just trying to imitate Kevin Murphy's Servo most of the time. It is obvious because he doesn't seem to have a personality so far. I don't think it was a good casting choice, but it is the very beginning of the new season. Speaking of voices, Gypsy's new voice is terrible. I don't think that because it is a woman's voice, but because it makes the character no longer that interesting. Gypsy, to me, was always great because it was obviously a man imitating a woman. With this new voice it just doesn't add anything new. Also, her dropping in the theater to make a joke is super distracting.

The new mads are decent. I like Oswalt's character, but Kinga is far too overacted. Even for this show she is over the top and doesn't strike me as genuine like the past mads. She is rarely funny and doesn't scream "evil" to me. I may just have to get used to her because I found Pearl Forrester to be perfect in every way. I absolutely loved Mary's character and her timing.

As I said before, the riffs are too quick and the jokes are lackluster at best. They almost talk over one another and don't let the jokes breathe. They cram too much. Also, all these cameos are awful. They don't add anything to the show and it is not needed. I am hoping it gets renewed for another season as I think there is a lot of potential. Hopefully Joel lets Jonah make it his show a little bit rather than a rehash of Joel jokes. Overall it is a decent watch, but I don't think it demands repeated viewings.

EDIT- I feel I need to knock off a point from my initial review. At the time I was more forgiving but season 2 drives home a serious problem with the new series. There are too many jokes. For every two good jokes, it feels as though there are twenty bad ones in between and hurt the two good ones. The original series worked because it played off the movie, this is nothing but a distraction from it.

One of my favorite TV shows of all time get its second wind and the breeze is good. With a new cast and Joel behind the wheel, they have sought some great material for their 14 episodes and have given the series a nice new coat of paint. It took some time to get over the new voices for the bots, I'll admit, but nothing a little more exposure won't fix.

I love their selection. Two of them I have seen on Netflix before, Starcrashers and The Loves of Hercules, and Reptilicus is in my personal collection of $1 VHS tapes. With such quality, there is a plethora of ribs to be made. There is an android Texan for God sake, we have already crossed the camp line and I'll be damned if we aren't going to see that to the end. The other movies are strong contenders as well. In Cry Wilderness an obnoxious brat of a kid befriends Bigfoot and has to save his father from... all the while everyone throws as many insults as possible at the sole native American. Wizard of the Lost Kingdom has a doughy swordsman sort of avoid using swordsmanship to protect a bratty wizard kid. Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II has a fat wizard teach a bratty kid magic while David Carradine desperately tries to avoid swordsmanship to protect them. I am beginning to sense a trend. But Yungary... has a giant monster dance with a bratty Korean kid. But they don't just pick on kids, The Time Travellers has a bratty man child, son of a...! If I were to pick a best episode, it would have to be Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II because woof. Between the teen actor getting hit with puberty hard and the cast forgetting to act, it is just non stop fodder for Jonah and the bots. Carradine's constant heroic entrances and sudden departures are especially hilarious, half the time he doesn't even do anything. Just show up, kill a couple guards, then out the window as everyone stands around and watches. The weakest movie of the season has to be Avalanche, it starts strong and ends well but for a stretch the movie just doesn't have much to ridicule. Mainly because nothing happens, the movie stalls on endless exposition that makes one wish the avalanche would come sooner. Even then, I wouldn't call it a terrible episode, the end is ripe with cheesy goodness as Rock Howard frets over his endangered mother who might be his age and Mia farrow is as wooden as ever.

The humor is pretty diverse. The sketches have that family friendly, perhaps even PC at times, quality that was very reminiscent of Joel's seasons. They try to be inoffensive and sometimes slap on the hand of the movie for being behind the times, such as shaming Rock Hudsen's character in Avalancehe for being a poor role model. The theater however feels more like Mike Nelson's run. They tear into the movie ridiculing it for all of its faults without remorse. Bad special effects, terrible costumes, the wizard kid runs like he may have some special need, nothing is safe. Even Gypsy gets into the act, though why I can't quite understand. Her appearance has more flair then the others but her jokes just don't deserve the build. She shows up, drops something off, and leaves with a somewhat disappointing quip while Tom and Crow are left with the A material.

There is one glaring flaw I have with the new season/series, and unfortunately its the mads. I like Felicia Day and I like Patton Oswalt, but Kinga Forrester and TV's Son of TV's Frank just don't seem to cut it. There is no activity with the characters, while their fathers were very active in their segments their kids are very wooden. They deliver their scenes like a stand up routine, they just stand in front of the camera and deliver their lines. The invention exchanges are especially weak, their inventions rarely if ever call for them to do anything beyond spin a wheel or talk. Their predecessors made love to the camera, I kind of wanted more from them.

Despite the review title and some of the things I'm going to get into about the new season, I am still giving it an 8 out of 10 because more than just being happy it's back, I'm happy it's on people's minds again. For close to twenty years MST3K was a niche show, a cult classic. I mention it to somebody and more often than not I just got a blank stare back at me. Now with the successful Kickstarter (of which I am a backer) you can find MST3K everywhere. It's streaming on several platforms, the DVDs got put out faster, there's real merch now, people know what I'm talking about and they want more and that can only be a good thing. That being said however, here's what I thought about the new season. Overall I liked it. Not as much as the original series but that's to be expected. It's certainly different, which doesn't mean it's bad, just different. It's like that Twilight Zone episode where the guy wakes up and everything is both the same and different at the same time.

The Good:

-The writing is top notch with the movies themselves and with most of the host segments.

-The rapport between Jonah, Hampton and Baron. The jokes flow really well between the three.

-Also really enjoyed Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt as the new Mads.

-Hampton Yount as Crow in general, he's like right smack dab in the middle between Trace and Bill as Crow as far as voice and personality are concerned.

-Being new while also calling back to the original series. For instance they brought back Pearl, Bobo and Brain Guy a few times (although what was with Bobo's mask? Did they lose the original or get that on sale?)

-The movies riffed were a great selection. Definite favorites were Wizards of the Lost Kingdom II, Yongary, Starcrash and Cry Wilderness.

The Not Exactly Good, Not Exactly Bad But I Got Used To It:

-Moving the opening to before the credits instead of after. I guess with no commercials it makes that change necessary.

-The new opening credits in general. Why does Jonah apparently have to recreate it every time? Just roll the opening, it doesn't need an explanation too.

-The new door sequence.

-Baron Vaughn needs to distinguish himself more, at least in the theater because he sounds like Jonah a lot of the time.

-Speaking of Tom, the fact that his arms are stiff now instead of loose springs.

-The increased mobility of the bots in the theater, which seemed to be done just because they could rather than have it be organic.

-The increased amount of riffs with more pop culture based jokes. You can tell how young the writers room is, which isn't good or bad, just an observation.

-The lack of Minnesota based jokes.

-Gypsy's new voice, though she didn't actually show up a whole lot outside the "payload" bits.

What I Did Not Like:

-Speaking of Gypsy, the stupid nonsensical "payload" which served no other purpose then to get Gypsy in the theater. Why when that never had to be a thing before?

-The new SOL bridge. It's just so flat with no dimension to it and I miss the hexfield viewscreen. If the movie could make the bridge bigger while still maintaining it's distinctive look, there's no reason this shouldn't.

-The extra people in Moon 13. They never needed anything more than the main Mad and one or two sidekicks, everything else just seems like superfluous nonsense that again they added just because they could instead of stopping to think if they should (which is pretty much the main criticism I have of the season as a whole).

-No shorts. Given it's on a streaming platform instead of TV I can see why there aren't any but still, I think one could have been done.

-Like others have mentioned, the shear amount of riffs they have with this basic thought of filling every non-dialog second with a joke, some of it even being blurted out before whatever it is they're riffing actually appears on screen. It just makes it painfully obvious these guys are reading a script instead of supposedly watching the movie for the first time. The show (outside of KTMA) has always been written so why is it Joel, Mike, Trace, J, Kevin and Bill were able to make the riffing sound natural and these guys can't? The answer is there's too many jokes! Not everything on screen needs a joke. The pacing got better as the season went on, but they can afford to tone it down a bit. Hopefully with season 12 on the way they'll take this criticism to heart and find their groove so that it sounds more relaxed and natural. Also it's ok to speak over dialog occasionally.

-The "meta" ness of the whole thing. For example they make blatant references to Kickstarter, that this show is streaming, that it IS a show and that they're back from a previous show, the Mads have the MST3K logo on their sleeves, etc. I haven't seen every episode of the original series, but I don't remember them being so blatant about "this is a TV show" or even mentioning the title despite half the series had them reading fan mail. It was really off-putting.

-On that note, I miss the "homemade" aspect of the original show. The biggest concern I had when the Kickstarter to revive the show was first announced and Joel said it would be filmed in Hollywood with a new cast was that it would lose it's homemade charm. One of the things I liked most about the original series was how everything was done in house. Like all the songs were written and sung by the cast, the sets and props were done by Best Brains and if any other characters showed up they were always played by somebody from the crew. Unfortunately those fears were realized between the overabundance of Paul and Storm songs and guest stars, most of which had nothing to do with whatever else was happening in the episode, the more mobile bots, which aren't even controlled by their voice actors anymore, the aforementioned new sleek bridge set, and the overly produced miniature scenes, particularly the opening in episode 1. You can plainly tell those scenes were done by a professional stop motion studio instead of a bunch of guys with spray-painted crap found around the house. Again, it felt like they only did it because they had an abundance of new resources instead of asking if it should have been done at all. Less is more in this regard, especially with this show.

-This may be just me nitpicking, but I had this sense that they were deliberately not acknowledging Mike's time on the show. Not so much Mike's time as a whole since like mentioned earlier Pearl, Bobo and Brain Guy showed up several times, but Mike himself. Like bringing back Gizmonics and the invention exchange, which was Joel's thing and having Jonah be more Joel-like in general. Like before MST3K Joel was a prop comic, that was his thing so the whole invention exchange was an extension of that. When Mike took over he started to do it but it was clear he wasn't a tinkerer like Joel so they dropped it. Why would Jonah be doing it? I don't know anything about Jonah's history before he joined the show but I know he's not a prop comic. I know there isn't the best history between Joel and Mike behind the scenes but still, with Jonah clearly doing Joel's stuff, it just felt like they wanted you to forget about whatever Mike did on the show. I'm hoping as time goes on Jonah becomes his own host with his own characteristics instead of just being a rehash of Joel.

Overall though, I did like the new season and I don't feel I wasted the money I kicked in, I mean I got a whole bunch of neat swag to go with the new episodes so it's all good on that front even without the new season itself. It had some good things, some bad things but ultimately I'm happy with it and I'm happy it's getting another season. Hopefully Joel et al read these reviews and take the criticisms to heart.