Movie: (1956) Pompous archaeologists find a lost civilization underground.
First shown: 2/15/97
Opening: Crow’s thinks his goofy eyes make him a “space child”
Intro: The space child is overthrown. While Bobo suffers through the 32nd Annual Lawgiver Daze, Tom offers baked goods and Crow takes a fall
Host segment 1: Mike tries an imitation of the gesture professor from the movie. It brings everyone down…down…down…
Host segment 2: Tom tries–and fails–to sing a ballad about his adventures in space
Host segment 3: Crow the archeologist, searching for evidence of a previous him, has a breakthrough
End: Crow believes there’s life beneath the floorboards…and he’s right. Meanwhile in Deep Ape, The Lawgiver is presented with a hunky gift
Stinger: “The Load” hits the wall
(252 votes, average: 4.32 out of 5)
Loading...
• We’ve had a number of examples where the riffing is good and the segments are good but the movie just drags everything down. Well, let’s also note when it’s other way around. I think this episode is a good one, but I think a lot of the credit goes to the wonderfully stupid movie. I mean, you got The Gesture Professor, Ward Cleaver, Alfred the Butler, John Agar and Nestor “The Load” Paiva. And you got ropes and asses, whipping the mole and all sorts of outlandish stuff. The segments are okay and the riffing is good, but I think it’s the movie itself that puts this one over the top.
• References here.
• Mike’s take on this episode can be found here.
• Pearl’s float is not very convincing — but, then, it’s pretty tough to approximate a full-scale parade in about 10 square feet of set space.
• The strange blue light still suffuses the set, and it’s especially strong in segment 2. Stonehouse was experimenting.
• The concept of “the sketch that never really gets started” is a long tradition on this show (see “The Emotional Scientist” or “The Life of Fu Manchu” or “Joel wants to be a soda jerk”). This episode has not one but TWO such segments—Mike’s attempt at being the gesture professor and Servo’s aborted folk song.
• Crow finally remembers who he is, and who Mike is. At last.
• Crow’s voice begins to settle down a bit in this episode.
• Robert Smith was the first actual guest star for the show.
• Ward E has a list of the pastries in the intro segment.
• That huge underground cavern and those Mole People should look familiar to you … they were briefly (and incongruously) seen in episode 515-THE WILD WILD WORLD OF BATWOMAN.
• It’s been widely reported that this movie’s original ending had Dr. Bentley and Adal happily strolling off together. The studio insisted that a new ending be shot two weeks after filming was completed, because there was reluctance to imply an inter-racial relationship. After all, Adal was a Sumerian. So she got clobbered with a column instead. Sheesh.
• By the way, Dr. Baxter, the gesture professor, was a University of Southern California professor of ENGLISH, not science.
• That’s Paul and Patrick, of course, as “pale day players.”
• Cast and crew roundup: Producer William Alland also worked on “Revenge of the Creature,” “The Deadly Mantis,” “The Space Children” and “This Island Earth.” Screenwriter Laszlo Gorog also worked on “Earth vs. The Spider.” Cinematographer Ellis Carter also worked on “The Deadly Mantis” and “The Leech Woman.” Editor Irving Birnbaum also worked on “The Phantom Creeps.” Special effects guy Clifford Stine also worked on “This Island Earth,” “The Creeping Terror” and “The Thing That Couldn’t Die.” Costumer Jay A. Morley Jr. also whipped up some gowns for “Revenge of the Creature” and “The Deadly Mantis.” Makeup guy: Bud Westmore worked on lots of MSTed movies. Hairdresser Joan St. Oegger also worked on “Revenge of the Creature,” “This Island Earth and “The Amazing Colossal Man.” Art Director Alexander Golitzen, set designer Russell A. Gausman, sound person Leslie I. Carey and music supervisor Joseph Gershenson worked on a bunch of MSTed movies too. Score composer Hans J. Salter also worked on “The Brute Man” and “This Island Earth. Score composer Herman Stein also worked on “Revenge of the Creature and “This Island Earth. Score composer Henry Mancini worked on “Revenge of the Creature,” “The Deadly Mantis,” “The Thing that Couldn’t Die” and “This Island Earth.”
In front of the camera: John Agar also appeared in “Revenge of the Creature and “Women of the Prehistoric Planet.” Hugh Beaumont also appeared in “Lost Continent” and “The Human Duplicators.” Nestor Paiva also appeared in “Revenge of the Creature.” Robin Hughes also appeared in “The Thing that Couldn’t Die.” Marc Hamilton also appeared in “This Island Earth.” Patrick Whyte also appeared in “Kitten with a Whip.” Eddie Parker also appeared in “This Island Earth,” “Bride of the Monster” and “Undersea Kingdom.” Regis Parton also appeared in “This Island Earth.” Ben Chapman was production manager for “The Giant Gila Monster” and appeared in “The Killer Shrews.” Robert Hoy also appeared in “Revenge of the Creature” and “Master Ninja II.” Bob Herron also appeared in “The Slime People.”
• CreditsWatch: Jim gets the “produced and directed by” credit this week and Kevin gets the “associate producer” credit. This is the last episode, for the duration of the show’s run. for which Jim gets a “contributing writer” credit.
• Fave line: “Disney’s Dominatrix World!” Honorable mention: “Why, thank you! Oh, you mean the flashlight.”
) to help our users cope with "trolls" and other commenters whom they find annoying. Go to our
Nothing too awesome that comes to mind for me in this episode it’s a solid movie with solid riffing. The ending of this movie just makes no sense for the reasons given above but it is odd when someone just goes out of their way to go die and whatnot.
I love this movie, love the episode too. These Universal flicks are the best! Was Mike’s “Dr. Baxter” being groomed as a possible replacement for Mike’s “Jack Perkins”??
On the plus side, I like the Gesture Professor in this movie. He seems like a teacher who’d provide a really interesting, if a bit goofy, lecture.
On the minus side, there’s John (ugh!) Agar, who wildly abuses his smugness privileges. I’m a bit surprised they didn’t do more movies with him.
Re: the altered ending, so did the guys who made that stupid decision later end up in charge of Grammercy and make even more stupid decisions?
Dr Baxter’s exposition about myths regarding worlds-within-Earth, though, are correct at least to the extent that I’ve read up on myths regarding worlds-within-Earth. The talk about the War of 1812 Veteran who sought Congressional funding for an exposition to the inner Earth, for example, is quite correct.
Interestingly, the drive that started out with that loopy Quest-To-Inner-Earth would, in the 1830s, result in the United States South Seas Exploring Expedition, the nation’s first really grand scientific exploratory mission, and which provided not just nautical data that would even serve some mission planning for World War II in the Pacific, but also bring back collections of animal and plant specimens that gave the Smithsonian much of its initial collection.
Dr Baxter was probably roped into this role because of his parts playing an exposition-delivery system for Hemo the Magnificent and those other late 50s Bell Labs Science Films. After seeing the MST3K treatment you can’t really watch those in just the same way, especially when he’s carrying on a conversation with the spirit of photosynthesis or some other modestly goofy thing like that.
3 stars.
I gotta kinda go with Sampo on this one. The whole ep: subject film, riffs, host segments, just kind of lies there. It’s not BAD or unwatchable, some of it is quite funny, it’s just a let down after the high energy romps of the prior 2 eps ( Creech & Leech ).
Favorite riff: Himalayan School Closings. Nepal Public & Private, Tibet Public & Private, Bhutan…..
Loved MJP mugging with the oiled hunk.
Note on the subject film. While watching ( twice over the last few days ) I did flash on The Time Machine from a few years later. In this case the Eloi and the Morlocks are reversed, but it’s the same sort of idea. PLus The idea of the beasts being devolved humans, and rising up in revolt, is pretty cool. This should go on the list of movies that could potentially be re-made as a good film.
Thanks, Joseph Nebus . I thought I recognized Dr. Baxter. It must have been those Hemo type films shown in assemblies. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was one of the reasons the Brains picked the film. I guess they showed them in the Midwest too.
The ending irritates me. Why did the mole girl have to be killed? I wonder if it’s the way scifi and horror films seem increasingly (from at least the ’50s or ’60s) have to put some twist at the end to stop a really “happy ending.” First one might have been the ending nof the original The Blob, with THE END? appearing on the screen at the film’s conclusion.
One of my favorite lines in this episode is actually from the intro.
“We’re in charge of food for Lawgiver Daze!”
“Well, no one told me.”
“Well, that’s no excuse!”
“Actually it kinda is.”
Nobody’s mentioned that the Brains evidently knew about this movie and were familiar with it long before this: they had two Mole People in Deep Thirteen in Seasons Two and Three. Also, they mention “The Mole People” in the riffing of “The Wild World of Batwoman.” It’s very bizarre when long after the fact, the Satellite crew act like a clearly familiar movie in question is brand new to them — similar to “The Beast Of Yucca Flats” being mentioned in episode 513 and then all of a sudden, they act surprised by it late in Season Six.
I also agree that the ending is awful. They even set up that Adal’s character is not one of the Sumerians, so why would “Interracial” even apply, if they were so concerned about that? Universal apparently thought that it was much more artistically correct to add a babbling professor yammering about goofy cosmologies.
I cracked up, though, when M&TB add “pilgrim” to the end of John Agar’s lines. His deliveries are so smug and pseudo-John Wayne. And his head does look like a dustbuster.
This is one of my all time favorites.
I use the phrase “The movie is nothing but ropes and assess” at least 100x a day.
This episode’s host segments rub me the wrong way. Mike’s aborted attempt at playing the gesture professor is another example of the bots’ sudden upswing in cruelty (“I’m somebody watching you do this sketch – where do I laugh, Mike? What makes it funny to ME?”), and Servo’s folk song that never gets going reeks of “We couldn’t think of anything for this sketch”. Personally, I would have loved to see a return of Hugh Beaumont in the Hexfield. We saw him in “Lost Continent” and “The Human Duplicators” – it was kind of an MST3K tradition. Yes, I know, Mike can’t be in two places at once, but why not do a sketch where it’s just the bots on the bridge? …Oh right, I forgot, no Comedy Central era references allowed in the SciFi era. Oh, heaven forbid!
At least the riffing in this one is pretty decent. I have to admit, “They killed Fozzie Bear!” always makes me giggle. Any instance where some shaggy fabric is likened to a Muppet gets a laugh out of me (i.e. Mike’s “Oh no, he made a saddle out of Grover!” from “Deathstalker”).
Down, down, down…
Dr. Baxter really makes the movie for me; everything else is a let down. I also liked Mike’s impersonation of the “Gesture Professor.” My favorite host segments tend to be those that directly mock elemnts of the movie itself.
It’s kind of odd that Dr. Baxter did the intro; he was not a scientist, or even a social scientist, but a professor of English. He was pretty well known at that time for narrating a series of classroom shorts about science, but I think they really picked him because with those glasses and that large bald head, he _looked_ like a professor.
Well, I see I’m at the complete opposite spectrum here. Mole People is, to me, the dullest and least interesting of the Universal International films they did and probably the one that, if I had seen these first instead of Jack Frost, might have made me lose interest. However, next week’s ep is one I really like, so I guess my argument about the UI films is pretty weak…
This episode also provided the name of a familiar trope.
This is a definite favorite of mine, and one of the 15 or so that count for me as a “comfort food” episode, where I can go to sleep very easily to it or watch the whole thing and be entertained. I consider it the “Ropes & Asses” Sci-Fi counterpart to episode 208 Lost Continent and its Rock Climbing (another comfort food episode).
I agree that the host segments are middling at best, though it is nice that Crow finally remembers everyone. The movie though is just pure riff fodder, and they dish it out and then some to this movie. John Agar becomes the first of many in the sci-fi episodes who just gets verbally pulled apart. I love it, but it seems to be done with a bit more venom than in the Joel/early Mike years. Also, I’d say Adal is one of the more attractive women in an MST movie.
Finally, someone did spend some time in the library before writing the script to this movie, even if it was for only a little while and they picked up some odd books. Joseph Nebus #4 is spot on about the stuff the gesture professor is dishing out. Along with that information, the first part of the film makes several references trying to connect the ancient sumerian text of the Epic of Gilgamesh to events in the movie. At the time the Epic was making a decent splash in academic circles.
What’s even more interesting is the frequent contention that the “great flood has been proven to be a historical fact.” By “great flood” it seems that they are referencing the “Noah flood” as in the Bible. There is a flood referenced in the Gilgamesh epic, but my guess is that someone got hold of the work of Henry Morris, who was a geologist firmly committed to putting a Young Earth Creationist spin on earth’s history. A lot of the strands of thought in this film point to a synthesis like that of Morris’.
Speaking of strands of thought, it looks like I’ve spent too much time thinking about this.
“I’m gonna carve pompous things on this rock.”
The entire rappelling sequence is riotously funny.
Also: “The death of Shirley Manson.”
Sitting Duck @13.
Interesting. “Load” interpretd as Burden, Weight. For whatever cultural reasons I’ve always interpreted their use of “Load” as shorthand for “Pantload”, a collection of poop unceremoniously dumped into one’s trouserological area ( see also “Diaperload” ).
i agree this is one of those films that starts out really funny but when you get to samarians it just gets dull. Foer some reason i always laugh out loud at crow finally remembers who he is. My favorite riffs were when rocks fall down and they are trapped “we got high hopes.” The line this movie is nothing but ropes and asses. I though of that line when i saw the movie the reader.
oh and a note to the annotatedmst.com guy.
it’s Will Steger ( explorer ) not Phil Steger ( activist ).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Steger
One of my favorite Bobo moments is his confused disgust over this year’s Lawgiver Daze being the 32nd Annual for some reason. I always disapproved of how Bobo was dumbed down after leaving Deep Ape. In 801-804 he actually seems competent and self-aware.
4 stars for me. I’m definitely a fan of the Gesture Professor. He puts a smile on my face that makes the somewhat slow and redundant(i.e. ropes & asses) sequences go down a bit easier. I only wish he’d pop up at the end of the movie to wish us all safe home.
Fave riffs:
“No wonder Ward and June stopped after two kids”
“You see, the groin pull was first discovered by the ancient Sumerians…”
“He died as he lived – a total load.”
Re: #16 Not a Medium, a Petite:
Some of the slang terms the Brains use (e.g., “femme” as an all-purpose insult) seem to come from the late 1970’s. Presumably, “Load” is in this category. My brothers and I used to use that term to describe someone who was fat and clumsy, which unfortunately seems to describe Mr. Naiva in this movie.
Okay, I take back what I said before – this episode’s riffing is way more than just “pretty decent”. I’m watching it again on YouTube and I keep finding myself laughing out loud! (Still don’t care for the host segments, though.)
“Odd, I seem to be not talking right now…”
Oops, I meant Mr. Paiva… :oops:
I apparently confused him with Pestor Naiva
Ah, the Mole People. This is one of those movies I’d heard about before MST3K days. I remember seeing the Mole People mask at a Halloween store as a kid, and the name and mask captured my imagination. Then we caught a glimpse of it in “The Wild World of Batwoman”. I don’t remember if they reference it in WWoB itself, but I’m pretty sure they say something in the ACEG. All that build up kinda made my expectations too high – after all it is still a 50’s Universal Monster movie.
The movie just seems to have a very thin story line and one that couldn’t sustain a full length feature. The result is “gesture professor” and his goofy prologue, and the endless shots of mountain climbing and the “ropes and asses” scenes. Now, MST3K can do a lot with padding and Mike and co seem especially adept at it. But once again the movie has that lack of momentum and dreariness that just saps all the fun out of what could have been a very fun premise (something proven in the far superior “Journey to the Center of the Earth”). Maybe it’s John Agar? He’s just as smug here as he was in “Revenge of the Creature”, and the scenes of him wandering around the Mole people kingdom and commenting on how superior he is just drag the movie down.
Again the challenge of the movie can fuel MST3K or just suck the joy out of the laughs. Now, I enjoy “Red Zone Cuba”, “Star Fighters” and “Racket Girls”. All three are exercises in dullness, padding and endless stretches of nothing. But I think what makes those work so wonderfully as MST3K experiments are the strange moments, the overall atmosphere of “the hell” that makes you question why they exist. There seems to be some kind of motive or joy to making these and it enables the crew to riff well with them.
But something like The Mole People really doesn’t have any real joy to it or even atmosphere beyond that of a Hollywood set. It just doesn’t seem to have enough to carrying the riffing and as a result I don’t laugh much. For me the best moments was the riffing during “The Gesture Professor” and the moments when the creatures rise up. I did enjoy the rise and fall of “the Load”. Other than that, the laughs were few and far between. I remember being disappointed when I watched it back upon the first airing. I was hoping that time would have made it a little better (as it did with “Revenge of the Creature), but this episode was still a bit of a slog to get through, and my wife fell asleep again.
The host segments weren’t bad, but not so great either. Lawgiver days was amusing and we see the beginnings of the brow-beaten Bobo we would come to love. We also get the moment where Crow remembers Mike after his little archeological dig. Again, nothing really great, but nothing that seemed to flail about too badly. And no one yelling “JEEEEDDD!” so that’s a bonus.
For me this one just doesn’t measure up. Average riffing, below average movie – 2 stars.
I thought this episode was really good. Pilgrim! Alot of the jokes did have to do with ropes and or asses. Of course that’s what the movie gave them.
Is Robert Smith a mistie? The Green Bay Packers own my soul,but if he is a fan that makes him cool even if he was a Viking.
Is this the episode that has the riff “They’re going to find the frozen carcass of a lonely goat herd.”? I always loved that line.
“Hi! Hello! It’s me, it’s the gesture professor from the begining of the film. I’ve just come to update you on some theories… Down, down, down…”
For me, episodes of the Sci-Fi season either knock it out of the park or end up medicore. This one is in the latter category and is the first episode to really bring about some of the elements of this era I don’t like, namely the increasing cruelty. This element is perfectly personified in the first host segment (with Mike as the “Gesture Professor”). The skit starts off hilarious as Mike’s impersonation of the professor is pretty killer and his opening remarks get the biggest laugh of the whole episode from me. But it’s just ruined by the bots negativity towards it, making lines like “Where do I laugh, Mike? What makes it funny to ME?” pretty ironic because that stuff WAS funny. The negavity towards it isn’t.
The riffing is decent but no where near as strong as the Leech Woman. The riffing on the gesture professor scene is perfect but it slows down once the film starts. The problem could be that the film has a lot of dialogue (mostly by Agar, who never shuts up) so it’s sometimes difficult to take in both the film’s dialogue and the commentary.
Something I noticed last time I watched this: sitting down in the theater for the last stretch of the film (after the skit where Crow finally remembers everyone) Mike turns to both bots and says something along the lines of “hey” and “whats up”. It made me giggle.
All in all, i’d give it a 3.5 if I could but i can’t…so it gets a three.
I rewatched this one recently, and it was better than I remembered. The riffing was up and down, the movie was dull, and I thought they beat the “Load” riff into the ground. That being said, giving John Agar the Joe Don Baker treatment was awesome (that didn’t get old to me) and the opening monologue was superb. I’d rate this one as a good episode.
I believe that Robert Smith is a MSTie. He is also one of the smartest professional athletes of my lifetime. He made millions during an 8-year NFL career and was smart enough to get out before he destroyed his legs. He was very active in Minnesota’s charitable community. Last I heard he was going to medical school and had written a thoughtful book about his career and celebrity.
As a Lions fan, I rarely have much good to say about any Viking or Buckeye, but Robert Smith seems to be an all-around good guy.
I love this episode and I like how the bots are getting a little bit harsher. To me it seems like they’re raggin’ on each other like friends do. I like how they are allowed to grow up a little, even as Crow remains a lunatic. I mean come on, Tom crying is always funny, and “You couldn’t tune a Kazoo, Servo.” is hysterical. For me this was probably the first SCI-FI ep. I saw, and I loved it.
Hey, ya’ll lay off John Agar! He just wants to share his vast knowledge with us! :mrgreen:
I love how Mike makes it a point to actually touch each pastry numerous times, then not even buy one. A pet peeve of mine.
Sampo, what did you eman by “strange blue light”? That blue light on the desk that seems to have no specific purpose?
What bothers me about Crow’s memory issues in these first three episodes is that the Brains are completely inconsistent with them. In 801, the problem is clearly that, after 500+ years, Crow has simply forgotten that Mike was around for a couple of years, early in his life (while otherwise, his memory stretches back at least to just after 706). In 802, he seems to have short-term memory problems (forgetting that he was vacuuming prairie dogs only minutes before). Here, his memory deficit is long-term again, but what he’s forgotten is that he’s been on the S.O.L. for 500+ years. And, for some reason, once he remembers this, he remembers Mike.
I know, I should really just relax.
Anything with Hugh Beaumont in it is good enough for me. The low point was Robert Smith’s cameo, I despise anything to do with the Minnesota Vikings.
Load, tell us about all the other times you were a load….
I’m guessing that Crow’s intro segment is a pre-reference to The Space Children. Seems very similar. Wonder if they decided it was just too slow for Season 8, and held it until Season 9.
Of course, the initial mountain climbing scene, I always think, “Rock climbing, Joel… Rock climbing…” Too bad there’s no scenes with Hugh_Beaumont trying to hide his total laughing break-down from on-screen stupidity.
Let me tell you, those old D-Cell flashlights would burn for about 1 hr and then start fading to orange, dimmer and dimmer. They didn’t just go-out all at once.
When they climb up thru the sunlight hole, what, they just popped up right next to were they fell in?
And that ending! The column falls, and they lean down, close-up on our victim, and she looks to the ‘hero’, as if some final words are coming… And NOTHING! Boooooooooo!
A movie with yet another “liturgical dance” scene; Mike’s “Haha, Shelley, I’m not getting sacrificed!” cracks me up every time.
I love the Gesture Professor, the way he frequently stands with firmly crossed arms, as though incredibly embarrassed by it all. Also agree that it’s always a treat to see Hugh Beaumont, even in awful movies.
#33
“I despise anything to do with the Minnesota Vikings.”
================================
Well, they do “favor” old quarterbacks. :lol:
Love the “load” and “ropes and asses” comments. The movie is very dreary and depressing, like a day at the beach when it’s cloudy and every woman is a hundred pounds overweight and spilling out of a singlet, except for the men, who are two hundred pounds overweight and wedged into a Speedo.
Randy
This episode is worth the price of admission just for the bit where Bobo gets on his knees and begs Pearl to kill him. Kevin’s utter desperation in that performance gets a huge laugh out of me.
The studio wanted a new ending shot with the girl getting killed because they didn’t want to imply an inter-racial relationship.
Thats the 1950s for you.
I wonder if the Brains knew of this and had that scene of Pearl cozying up to the hunky and African-American Robert Smith to get back at the movie?
Anyway, it seems that John Agar was the shows personnal nemesis for a while. They really had it in for him, and who could blame them? Nestor ‘The Load’ Paiva was more likable than him. Maybe it was good that the girl got killed at the end. I sure don’t want Agar reproducing.
Funny episode though I think weaker than Leech Woman and the magnificence that is The Deadly Mantis. The studio killing off the lead woman because of the implied interracial relationship pisses me off so much. Not just because of the absurdity and intolerance of the idea, but because they killed her off and not John Agar!
Re: John Agar, can you imagine the torture if they’d managed the get the rights to “Tarantula” or (even worse) “Invisible Invaders” or (even worser) “The Brain from Planet Arous”?
“You want it when…?
This movie is not even in the top fifty of gloomy and depressing MST3K movies. What are you people talking about?
In Mikes take on it he says Robert Smith is the only Celeb, wasn’t that Maltin guy on the show also? Or did that take place later?
Mole People was one of those movies that was shown endlessly on UHF channels in the 1960s and 1970s. I must have watched it dozens of times, so it was great seeing it on MST3K. I truly enjoyed this episode.
I started watching this today to get ready for this discussion, but I just couldn’t finish it. It’s just not that funny to me. I got “overloaded”. :roll: Enough with the load already!
Maybe I’ll finish watching it sometime. No big hurry. BORED…BORED…BORED…
The Gesture Professor was the only decent thing.
“Downess.”
#43 Castle Monster – Nice observation. The movie is gray for sure, but it’s got that mid-century, devil-may-care attitude about it. Archeology really is just sitting around a card table, making baseless, smug observations and letting the impoverished natives bring you stuff! It’s not nearly as gloomy as something like Track of the Moon Beast. Try watching that without the riffing….ugh. Same goes for Bloodwaters of Dr. Z and for me at least, Timechasers. I do not know WHAT some of you people see in that movie. The story (and concept) rank right up there with the acting – AWFUL. But that’s another episode, I guess…
Hmmmm….I really like this episode, sure there are slow spots but hey you get mole men! Freakin mole men. Great solid riffing.
One of my fave episodes, ’cause the movie’s so bad. I really like these ’50s movies with just a touch of history to them. Goes with the whole paranoia of “other creatures in this world, and we must be scared of them and kill them.”
Fave riff for me is during the liturgical dance scene. “Ishtar’s gonna fry someone’s ass for bookin’ her.”
When Mike wrote “our only guest star” about Robert Smith, he was writing not long after the episode aired. Maltin came along in season ten.
And to me, the best line in this episode comes from the sketches. Specifically, when Tom says he’s going to tell them what he’s done in space all those years…”and I’m going to tell it in the style of the old balladeers!”
The reactions are perfect.
Gypsy: “Oh boy!”
Crow: “Strap in.”
Mike “Dear God.”
All delivered rapid-fire, and all with such wonderful delivery that I crack up every single time.