Okay, off we go with :::makes gesture::: The Gauntlet.
Intro: Joel, ever the trend spotter, picks up on the “binge watching” zeitgeist and offers us fewer episodes than last season, and instead gives us shows that blend into on another and become one giant riff. Let’s begin.
Movie: (1988) In this blatant ripoff of E.T. filled with shameless product placement, a family of aliens is transported to Earth, much to the surprise of a newly arrived California family.
Opening: The bots have rigged “Back Up Travel Cambot” to a pneumatic system. Jonah, feared dead at the end of last season, is alive! And nobody cares to hear about his miraculous escape. From Moon 13, Max and Kinga introduce the “Gauntlet” concept.
Invention exchange: The Mads have created a smartness drug with terrible side effects. J&tB have created a cross between Spam and Pez, Spez.
Segment 1: Jonah tries to communicate by whistling. Max and Synthia and Crow and Tom try their best.
Segment 2: Crow and Jonah and Gypsy present a birthday party at McDonah’s. Kinga and Max try to join in.
Closing: J&tB are complaining when all three are sucked up and deposited in Moon 13. The Mads need Jonah to create six more holes for film canisters.
Stinger: The alien family goes shopping.
The new normal: Two internal host segments instead of three. For the first time, Crow and Tom get sucked up in the vacuum tubes.
(32 votes, average: 4.41 out of 5)
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Thoughts:
• We used to do a regular item in the ep guides called “CreditsWatch.” It was created when there were a total of a couple dozen employees at BBI and the end-of-the-show credits lasted about 30 seconds. Maintaining that feature now would be a full-time job, because each credit list contains HUNDREDS of people and goes on for several minutes.
Don’t get me wrong: I’m glad the show is providing work and paychecks for lots of hard-working and creative people, but you have to admit, of all the changes the show has undergone since it was acquired by ShoutFactory, the sheer population of the cast and crew is the most dramatic.
In fact, I have a challenge for anybody who wants to take it on: compile me a list, for every S11 and 12 ep, of every person in the credits who has the word “producer” in his or her title. Each ep appears to have DOZENS. In SKYDIVERS, there’s a riff during the movie’s credits that it’s a “I can’t pay you but I’ll put your name in the credits” credit list. Thanks to Kickstarter, these shows have a “I CAN pay you and in the credits you’ll be a producer” credits lists.
Not a criticism, just an observation.
• There’s a good deal of manhandling going on between Kinga and Max, but they also seem to have become a little more equal.
• When word got out that “Mac and Me” was to be riffed, I was amazed at the fan reaction. Sure, I’d suffered through it before, but I mostly remembered that it was stupid. But for a lot of MSTies, it was like they woke up on Christmas morning to the exact thing that they had asked Santa for.
• “Flush them the movie,” Kinga says. That’s new.
• This movie gave us an already-familiar catchphrase: “Pretty nice!”
• The product placement is relentless. Coke pops up early, McDonalds a little later.
• Naughty riff: Spiderman me, mom.”
• Callbacks: Watch out for snakes!” (Eegah.) McCloud! (Pod People.)
• Whoa, slam on Jugaloes outa nowhere!
• One of the movie’s strangest moments: the doctor, without consulting the mom, gives Eric a bottle of sedatives.
• Eden Prairie gets a shout out.
• A minor detail about the movie: It features the first professional performance by Jennifer Anniston. She was an uncredited crowd member and made $400, she says in this brief interview.
• Cast and crew roundup: Cinematographer Nick McClean was the assistant camera man on THE TOUCH OF SATAN. Production illustrator Mentor Huebnor was production illustrator for “Marooned,” which was riffed on MST3K as SPACE TRAVELERS.Sound editor Frank McKelvey was the composer of THE LEGEND OF BOGGY CREEK II. Re-recording mixer Don Digirolamo was stereo sound consultant on STARCRASH.
• Fave riff: “I wanna see the movie this composer THOUGHT he was scoring.” Honorable mention: “This is like a Pixar movie, in that exists and has a title.”
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Let’s start with the very good. Despite the further changes the show has undergone, one of my most favorite things has survived. The “Turn Down Your Lights (where applicable)” is still there!
I really liked the introduction Kinga and Max do for the Gauntlet. I’ve said many times last season that Patton totally channels Frank Conniff. Where here I thought that Felicia and Patton both channel the Frank and Trace chemistry in the way they cut each other off. It was fun.
We have a real good invention exchange here. Algernon is just loaded with everything riffable about any drug advertised on TV these days. But they saved the best for last. Synthia “Algernon made me so smart it that I realized it’s dangerous and I should stop taking it.” This gave me flashbacks the SNL classic parody commercial “Happy Fun Ball.” On the other side Crow is not too far off in calling Pez “nature’s perfect food delivery system.” They move quick but hit all the high points of both products. A good invention exchange indeed.
I was not happy to see “nightmare fueled world” tag added to the movie intro. It’s funny once. But this should be mixed up a bit.
Sometimes it’s the little things. During the first host segment, I noticed the English to Alien Phrase Book was brought you to you by your local Coke bottlers.
Finally, on a personal note this episode seems to have my name all over it. Yes, this is the one where my name is listed in the credit Revival League list. But the movie itself (bad as it is) has a couple elements that really hit home for. My preference in the Coke vs. Pepsi war is firmly on the Coke side so there is that. It does go deeper than that though. I have a very soft spot in my heart for McDonalds. In my young days I worked there 5.5 years. I worked primarily the closing shifts. (Most McDonald’s actually closed at night in those days.) I also made some really good friends at that job. After the high-level managers went home, we had more fun at McDonald’s than you ever should on those closing shifts. I don’t recall having breakdancing football players at the birthday parties though. Finally, my wife is a Hmong immigrant who came over at a very young age. Three years ago, she finally obtained her citizenship. So, the naturalization scene of this movie gave me the warm fuzzies. It’s inspiring to seem someone do that. So yes, this film was personally nostalgic. This is the first episode that hit me in that way.
Favorite Riffs:
The mother tucks Eric in bed and pulls out a baseball bat he has under the covers with him. Jonah “Eric put this away. I told you the Tooth Fairy is not real.”
As Eric sneaks through the house the Bots sing “The Bears” to the tune of the Pink Panther Theme.
Eric sucks Mac up with a vacuum cleaner. Crow: “Eric knows this will work because he saw the beginning of the movie.”
Mac’s family wave their magic hands over the lifeless Eric. Crow: “I should point out this doesn’t bring him back to life. We’re just preparing him for his burial. Sorry if you misunderstood. It happens a lot.”
I’m a bit late on this one, but here goes!
Like so many MSTies during last Thanksgiving, I plopped down on the couch and – in the presence of a very understanding family – subjected myself to *hand gesture* THE GAUNTLET. Having enjoyed Season 11 (and REALLY enjoyed the live tour later that year), I was excited to see how those experiences would combine with a less restrictive shooting schedule, familiarity with the formula, and the binge-watching concept in Season 12. Plus, the lineup of cheesy ripoff films (starting with cult favorite Mac & Me) was definitely appealing, and the smaller number of episodes never bothered me. All in all, I was pumped!
And only a few minutes into the movie, I was smiling ear-to-ear.
In my opinion, Season 12 starts out strong, and this episode is tied, interestingly enough, with Ator (the last episode of the season) as my favorite experiment in The Gauntlet. The decreased riffing pace, a more relaxed delivery in the theater, and an overall feeling of comfort from the performers does wonders for the show, and it’s a feeling that continues through the season. At the end of the day, I can honestly say that MST3K gave Mac & Me the riffing its long deserved.
In other words, it’s (and you knew this was coming)… pretty niiiice!
Some thoughts:
-The opening segment gives us our introduction to Travel Cambot, who foreshadows the finale’s live show setup. Also, while I’ll really need to focus in on the rest of the body to identify all the parts, I’m fairly certain his “flaps” (for lack of a better term) are paint roller trays.
-Let’s be honest here… were we, as longtime MSTies, expecting to actually get an explanation for Jonah’s survival? Season 11’s elaborate ending definitely left fans wondering just how the sam scratch our bejumpsuited fool could have POSSIBLY made it out of that situation alive. The cliffhanger worked; it got us talking, wondering, and having fun with possible explanations. The decision to not provide an answer is the very definition of “it’s a show, you should really just relax”. In other words, it’s a very MST thing to do.
But now I’ll always wonder.
-Man, there’s a lot happening in the opening! The chaos in the background of Moon 13 is a nice touch. The idea of binge-making the show – and the technical necessities of such a feat – are well communicated through the environment, and give this episode a feeling unlike any previous episode in the series. It’s essentially a prologue to one, really long movie. It’s definitely different, but it works.
-The intro also gives us our first look at Ardy’s new suit. Joel returns to do the voice, but, as in the last season, that’s not him under the new helmet. We get to see plenty of Ardy this season!
-Kinga’s line “I’ve moved on. We all have.” made me think of Pearl’s final line in Diabolik. Coincidence, I’m sure, but it’s just something I noticed.
-Kinga & Max’s invention exchange finally explains the dramatic shift in Synthia’s character between Season 11 and the comics/live shows. Algernon is, of course, a reference to “Flowers for Algernon”, one of the saddest short stories you’ll ever read.
-There’s something deeply unsettling about Spez. Maybe it’s the splat sound it makes when it bounces off the table. Also, it’s nice to see Tom’s classic arms back again!
-Right away, the riffing pace is a breath of fresh air. While the rapid fire delivery of Season 11 didn’t bother me during my initial viewings, I have to admit it’s made returning to some of those episodes a bit challenging. The 2017 live tour really showed that this team is capable of delivering hysterical, crowd pleasing material in a way that doesn’t feel cluttered and overstuffed. My greatest hope for this season was they they would take what was learned from the tour and apply it to the writing for the new episodes. And, by and large, they accomplished this in spades.
-When Gypsy delivers the still mysterious “payload”, none other than my man M. Waverly (a character to whom I devoted more time and money into researching/reconstructing than I’m proud to admit) is riding with her. Taking a note from Jonah, his resurrection is never explained. Growler pops up, too! The new bots will become regular guests in the theater this season.
-Say what you will about this ridiculous movie, there’s something eerily effective about the aliens. Their unnatural body proportions and movements are convincingly un-human, and the long shots of the family walking through the desert are simultaneously haunting and cheesy. Weird how that works.
-Instant catchphrase: Pretty niiiiice! It’s almost tailor made for these guys to latch onto.
-“Spiderman me, mom!” Eww.
-Segment 1 (one of only two we get per episode this season) is cute, and just the right length. I wonder who that is whistling?
-So many uses of the term “little creature”, yet no callbacks to “Boggy Creek”. Not surprising, but something worth noting nonetheless.
-“Swing and a miss” becomes a recurring riff this season. Not sure why, but it pops up once in almost every episode. This time around, it’s after an awkward encounter between the teenage siblings.
-How the heck did Eric know a vacuum would work?
-So much has been said over the years about the INSANE McDonalds sequence, I feel I have very little to add. I will, however, say that J&TB’s bit about how only Tom can see the clown is a hoot.
-Segment 2 feels a bit more like something from Season 11, right down to its brevity. That said, it’s pretty funny, with Jonah’s disturbing commitment to the role of clown Jonah McDonah being the highlight.
-Lots of attention is called to the whimsical “Spielberg-y” music, with the guys even singing the “Back to the Future” theme over one section of score. The similarities aren’t a coincidence: somehow, someway, this film landed master composer Alan Silvestri, composer for the BTTF trilogy, and probably best known today for his work on the Avengers films. Wow.
-I wonder how many “overly possessive fanboys” were genuinely offended by that Star Wars joke…
-Nice shoutout to Eden Prairie! A little something for the longtime fans.
-As it turns out, my mother is a trained Reiki practitioner! She got a huge kick out of that joke.
-One pun too many, and Tom gets his dome ripped off. Nice to see Jonah still not above maiming the Bots for comedic effect.
-When Gypsy retrieves the payload, Waverly appears and rides up with her. Was he in the theater the whole time? What was he doing during the movie? How does he eat and breath and other science facts?
-Perhaps fortunately, the MAC family broke their promise to “be back”.
-The closing segment sets up a running plot line in Season 12, and involves tubes removing Tom and Crow (who does a fantastic Howie Scream) from the SOL for the first time. J&TB end up spending a lot of time in Moon 13 this season, all leading up to a shocking finale…
-I have to admit, part of me was hoping that new instrumental versions of classic MST3K tunes would appear this season, but I’m happy the songs from last year continue to make appearances in the new episodes, especially considering the faux commercial bumpers were removed this time around. Still, I continue to wonder what new versions of “The Canada Song” or “Let Me be Frank About Frank” would sound like…
-Callbacks: “Watch out for snakes!”, a double reference: “Paul! Jim!” (Cry Wilderness), “Chief? McCloud!” (Pod People).
-Classic Bits: “Jim Henson’s The Shining Babies”, “Yoda tracks, two, three days old”, some Cryptkeeper impressions, “Attica!”, “Saaaay…”
Favorite Riff: “I wanna see the movie this composer THOUGHT he was scoring.” Honorable Mentions: *as MAC floats* “Dead.”; “Mysterious Alien Creature Sittin’ in a tree, M-A-C-Am-per-sand-Me!”
Not to be confused with The Shining Girls…
https://www.amazon.com/Shining-Girls-Novel-Lauren-Beukes/dp/0316216860/ref=pd_ybh_a_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=20EDY5NGZ60B3RRAS3V3
Upon rewatching this impossible strange episode, I realized that it does kind of fit in the MST3K canon, although loosely. (You would think this was more of a Rifftrax selection, but even they never touched it in all these years. That doesn’t mean they wouldn’t have, though).
Mac And Me is Gamera. The kid is in constant peril, with no consequence as the world burns around him. Then I remembered that this is an E.T. ripoff. So, E.T. is, is some way, Gamera.
I was going over the years of “we don’t do Plan 9 on MST3k because it’s low hanging fruit,” and I was applying that logic to the selection of Mac And Me. But once I realized it’s the closest movie in tone to the original Gamera they ever riffed, I accepted it being on the show a little more. I’m sure having rewatched Gamera (302) earlier this evening helped.
I’m trying to remember to accept this group of differs as it’s own thing. But since they are trying to be the old thing, it makes it somewhat difficult. I still enjoy the new episodes, however. I hope that they stop with the homage paying to itself in Season 13. I’d like to see this new incarnation grow on it’s own, not relying so much on “Idiot Control Now” call backs. I said it before, I’ll say it again: we already know why we love the show. We tune in for new additions to the show. I love call backs in the riffs, but in the host segments it feels odd.
The hosts segments. Still strong, but only two per show now. And they chop the credits right off. Wow. Those were some of the best bits, the credit riffs.
Now, I love MST3K and Rifftrax. I love the differences in the formats. I go to different ones at different times depending on how I want the format delivered. So when MST3K loses a host segment and all it’s commercial bumpers, it drifts closer to Rifftrax. And I don’t necessarily want that. I don’t overly mind it, but it just doesn’t make sense to me. No matter how many times it’s explained to me in different ways about how it’s meant to appeal towards a new watcher. That’s weird to me. It’s just like chopping off the credits. We’ve sat through almost 90 minutes, and they think we’re not going to sit through a few minutes more, even though we can see J&TB are still in the theater and riffing away? That’s strange robotic marketing approaches I never thought we’d deal with as fans of our retired cowtown puppet show. It’s oddly fascinating watching this all play out. The future.
She probably did. And, like her father would’ve done, she dug a spare head from out of storage for him.
I’ve only seen the first two episodes of The Gauntlet thus far, and have to say that ‘Mac and Me’ is a very strong start.
Dumb but watchable movie, which is also a shameless ripoff of a much more beloved film. Perfect the new series.
It’s taken me a while to get used to the new cast, but like Season 2 of the original series, they’re getting a lot better.
It certainly does take some getting used to the new MST3K being a huge production, one of the charms of the old show was that it was made by a literal skeleton crew and there was a ton of camaraderie, yet it manages to carry over to the new series fairly well.
” • Whoa, slam on Jugaloes outa nowhere!”
uuh, Juggalos are pretty much considered the cesspool of music fans.
‘Pod People’ was also reshot to be more of an E.T. ripoff (it was originally meant to be a straight-up alien monster film) and that episode became a classic.
I also have to say that the theater segments are getting less… I dunno, hectic? In season 11 it seemed like everyone was on amphetamines, trying to get their lines out as quickly as possible and cramming as many jokes as can into a single scene.
Compared to the Joel and even Mike eras of the show, it’s pretty damn jarring.
I like that they’re also trying to make their voices a bit more distinct from each other (another issue I had with S11 is I could hardly tell who was riffing)
of course, the much smaller silhouettes makes it harder to see who’s talking (this site desperately needs an EDIT BUTTON)
Just make sure your brain doesn’t fall out. :p
It sort of was. IIRC in a host segment from the Watch Out for Snakes Tour Edition of Eegah, it’s revealed that Tom had reconstructed him and dearly hopes that Crow never finds out that he was responsible.
New episode discussion starts about a month before the DVD release… To misquote Lugosi: How unfortunate. This will complicate everything.
Glad the Episode Guide is back! Great idea to keep all the old posts and just add to them. Enjoyed reading through them again. That being said, I have nothing to add to what I’ve already written, really: Mac & Me is still the worst movie I’ve ever watched all the way through & I hate it to the bowels of the earth; I hate it so very much that I probably will never watch this episode again, even though I believe S12 is a distinct improvement on S11. Btw, Ronald McDonald is Satan. And learning that this movie contains Jennifer Aniston’s first role by no means makes it any more appealing. Aw corntrare, as they say in Paris, France!
My brain fell out of touch with reality a long time ago.
Nice to see the episode discussion back. Will this be replacing the Weekend Discussion Thread?
Wouldn’t a Kickstarter credit be “you pay me and I’ll put your name in the credits”?
Used to be they’d run concurrently, didn’t it? (he wrote, with an inspiring disregard for grammatical constraints).
Said what you will about these new shows, I’m glad they were made. Fresh pop culture references!
I LMAO at the East Side Walk it out/West Side Walk it out cause it just sounded funny, then I randomly heard the actual Walk It Out song and LMAO even harder. It’s no obscure 1 season show from the early 70’s reference but hey I enjoyed it.
A good episode, but really hard on the eyes. A pile of rotting goat entrails would probably make for a more visually appealing spectacle than Mac and family.
And I don’t suppose anyone knows what these creatures ability to survive being distended by a vacuum cleaner was an evolutionary adaptation to. Was their home world plagued by predatory vacuum cleaners?
Am I alone in thinking that maybe it’s not a good idea to have canon questions answered in live shows that not everyone saw? Especially since it seems they weren’t recorded so there’s no chance of ever seeing them?
On the other hand, ummm… maybe we should really just relax… ? ;)
Having personally spent hours watching rotting piles of goat entrails, I can vouch for the veracity of this statement.
Terminator 17: Rise of the Roombas.
Maybe the beings from the 321 Penguins episode “Trouble on Planet Wait-Your-Turn”? Their planet was about to burn up, so maybe they left it and went on a rampage through the galaxy, sucking up any dirt in their path.
My 6-year-old daughter walked through the room while I was watching this. She saw Mac and yelled, “Is that the devil?!!”
I love this episode. It’s been mentioned, but I was relieved to hear that the jokes had slowed down.
The McDonald’s scene was historic. It was…pretty niiiice.
Yes, little girl. That is the devil.
After rewatching MAC AND ME I can now say that it is better than ATLANTIC RIM.
Oh boy, there’s a lot to go through here, so let me try and break it down.
These are the two simplest to deal with. One, international licensing means the potential for a larger fanbase, which means more people watching the show, which is what you want if this thing is to stay alive in any format. Two, the show went without a union for eleven years, and the result was a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of folks who now feel they did not get fair pay for their work, and a lot of people from the good all days that are just straight up not interested in coming back. It’s a ****ty way to do business and I don’t recommend it for anything.
Just an idea, maybe they’re biting your head off because you’re accusing them of being sycophants? Also: fans are always gonna fight with each other over minute differences of opinion. Even here. You can’t honestly tell me you’ve seen no Joel vs Mike drama in the past decade. It’s frankly why I don’t wade in to the comments much, but I felt this warranted it.
You’re forgetting a major part of this, documented in MST3KInfo’s own in-depth history of the show’s original run, which is that as more and more of the show left reruns, fans got angrier and angrier, to the point where there were organized over the phone harassment campaigns against Comedy Central executives to start repurchasing lapsed rights, which Comedy Central often refused to do because proven interest drove the price of those rights up.
Yeah, Comedy Cental already had Gamera in their library, and Manos, and what are you talking about? This is some KTMA nonsense, and guess what, your foolproof “fans will take care of it” plan means three episodes vanished entirely for over two decades.
These guys only make like ten minutes of content a week. They’re not talking over the entire movie. They can afford to chuck that. Not so when each episode is 90 minutes of original content–write that much and then see how you feel about the idea that a year from now no one will ever be able to see it again.
I hate to break it to you but those Rhino and Shout releases and streaming deals are what get new people interested. Fan copies are nice for people who already like the show, but then what? “So, where do I find more episodes?” “Oh, nowhere. I mean you can get one new episode a week on TV. But there’s also like fifty fan-favorite episodes that’ll be quoted forever and you’ll never know why.” That’ll go over great, yeah–or would’ve, like half a century ago. Access is big now. Get over it.
On behalf of rotting goat entrails everywhere, I take umbrage at the tone of this comment. You know, I really like having Shout! Factory TV showing MST episodes all day Monday and currently every night in October, but it’s horrific to have their “Mac & Me: Why We Love It” spot come up during a break! Aarrrgh, those ugly aliens! The party at MD’s!! And no robots riffing to soften the blow!!! “Why We Love It” my pasty white Scandinavian bottom!!!!
I have to admit that the format wasn’t quite what I was expecting. I figured that Kinga and Max would send Jonah and the ‘Bots the first movie (better known as “Product Placement and Ratfaces”) after the opening sequence, then she would immediately send them the second right before the end credits, repeating the process as the season went on — thus no further opening sequences; we’d go right into the movie each episode. So, I thought, therefore, there should be no downtime for J@TB, although, of course, we’d get our break between episodes). The urgency of “The Gauntlet” simply isn’t there, and it needed to be if that’s what Kinga was pushing for.
And Jonah spent a lot more time than expected at Moon 13. Hard to be a prisoner when the wardens bring you down whenever they felt like it.
And I still don’t much care for the Jonah-has-to-repeat-the-opening-credits shtick. Surely, Kinga’s fixed THAT little problem by now! Of course, Kinga may have purposely NOT fixed it so she could torture Jonah every episode. So, there’s a suction tunnel leading from both Moon 13 AND the SOL? Is Kinga sending Jonah back in time now?
Beyond that, from the moment I first saw Mac & Me, I knew this monstrosity would make a perfect target for the MST crew. The aliens look ridiculous; all the humans are utterly stupid; and the scene at the end was so utterly lame. And, of course, the product placements. The ENDLESS product placements! I swear, the producers HAD to have INTENTIONALLY made this film solely to be riffed – there’s no other explanation!
I think this was an okay episode. I wish they hadn’t shortened the episodes, and I do miss the extra host segment, though.
The above commentators made some good points (Wack’d and Johnny Drama). Bottom line, I hope what ever is causing the seasons to take so long to produce is rectified soon!