Unfortunately, I had never even heard of MST3K at the time this special first aired. About a decade later, I downloaded it off the DAP website (God bless the Digital Archive Project). I'm such a big freak of MST3K now that just about anything mentioning the show will entertain me. While this does have some pretty solid behind-the-scenes info, I wish more time were spent interviewing the people actually involved in the show rather than continually having different people describe what the show is about. Watching Penn Jillette continually stuff his face with popcorn while attempting to form coherent sentences in the midst of his loud smacking and chewing, followed by showing him slumping down in his chair only to straighten up when we cut back to him a minute later, is not exactly riveting television. I wish somebody had just stuck the camera in the writing room for thirty minutes and let us watch the magic happen for ourselves, rather than having Doogie Hauser (sp?) explain the show's concept to us seventeen times. Why do we care that various people find the show funny? I wanted a little more actual insight.
Though my comments are largely negative, this is a pretty harmless, if not completely informative, documentary about one of the greatest shows of the century. It's fun to watch just for the sake of completion, and hey, maybe you'll even learn something from it.
