It occurred to me a couple of months ago that we were coming up on the 20th anniversary of the very first article I ever wrote about MST3K. We’re a little past the anniversary now; it appeared in The Philadelphia Inquirer in July of 1990. For some reason I can’t find it in the Inquirer’s archives, but the story also went out on the Knight Ridder wire service and was apparently run by a number of other papers. I found it in the archives of a paper in Buffalo, N.Y.
What I didn’t know until more than four years later was that, according to Jim Mallon, the appearance of this piece seemed to prompt other publications to do pieces on the show, and that it was the beginning of a wave of positive publicity that arrived at exactly the right moment to convince The Comedy Channel to renew the series for a second season. I’m not entirely convinced that it happened exactly that way, but it was damned nice of Jim to say so during his keynote at the first MST3K convention in 1994.
Anyway, since we’re looking at KTMA episodes in the episode guide right now, maybe it’s appropriate to recall my first attempt to push the show. Here it is, 20 years later, and I have to say, reading it over again, that it’s pretty dang snappy if I do say so myself (though I also give some credit to then-editor-now-TV writer Jonathan Storm, who cleaned it up for me, as I recall). I just wanted to have it on the record at the site.
“STRANGEST SHOW ON TV” COMBINES SCI-FI, BAD FILMS AND FAR-OUT COMEDY.
By CHRISTOPHER CORNELL
Knight-RidderUP ON the screen, one of filmdom’s dopiest monsters, Ro-Man, from a 1953 cinematic train wreck called “Robot Monster,” has singlehandedly destroyed almost all life on Earth.
The terror of that situation is considerably undermined, however, because the part is played by a guy in gorilla suit and deep-sea diving helmet. As we watch, Ro-Man’s boss is asking why some humans have escaped the devastation.
Before he can answer, we hear from the front row of the theater: “I think it’s these gorilla suits. They really slow me down!”
Moments like this make up what is undoubtedly the strangest show on national television. It may also be the most original comedic concept to hit the medium since “SCTV.”
Its full, ponderous title is “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” but to devotees, it’s known as “MST3K.” The show runs on the Comedy Channel, HBO’s new basic cable service, at noon Saturdays. It’s repeated at 6 p.m., then at 2 p.m. Sundays and once more at 3 p.m. Mondays.
“MST3K’s” oddball premise, as explained in the opening theme song, involves “a guy named Joel” (Joel Hodgson), who is stranded in an orbiting spaceship. It seems that a pair of evil scientists are conducting a diabolical experiment: monitoring his reactions while he watches “cheesy movies, the worst we can find.”
There’s more.
Aboard the spacecraft — called the Satellite of Love, after an old Lou Reed song — the lonely but resourceful Joel has constructed robot companions, dismantling sections of the ship to build his friends.
Among the mechanical menagerie are Tom Servo, a cynical little droid who looks vaguely like a fire hydrant, and a birdlike contraption called Crow, who has a nasal twang and penchant for wisecracks. Each week, Joel and his pals are forced by the evil scientists to sit in a projection room (we can see their silhouettes at the bottom of the TV screen), and watch cinematic spoilage such as “The Robot vs. the Aztec Mummy” and “The Crawling Hand.”
Here’s the best part: Although Joel and friends have no control over the movie they’re forced to watch, they don’t just accept the situation. To fight back, they offer riotous, non-stop commentary, which we can hear along with the movie. Suddenly, “Robot Monster” becomes not only bearable, but a zany, unpretentious delight.
The comments veer wildly from scatological silliness to ontological discourse, with random stops at every gray area in between.
One moment, they’re bashing the movie: As a scene ends, Joel gripes, “That last scene was blocked like a bad high school play!”
The next moment they’re plumbing the depths of our pop-culture subconscious with unexpected — and often unexplained — references to TV, movies and more: As a dead body is examined in the movie, Tom echoes “Jaws,” saying, “This was no boating accident!” When a character with a vaguely European accent begins speaking, the trio intones together, “Hokay, Meester Fawlty,” mocking the waiter Manuel from PBS’s “Fawlty Towers.”
Executives at the Comedy Channel are thrilled with the response that “MST3K” has gotten, including thousands of letters that arrived when a false rumor circulated that the show might not be renewed for a second 13-show season. “The show has already got plenty of loyal and vociferous fans,” said John Newton, the executive vice president of programming.
Newton said the show “tends to have a hypnotic effect on people.”
“In some ways, it’s an acquired taste,” he added. “Just from a single viewing, you can tell it’s out of the ordinary, and it doesn’t surprise me if some people don’t get it at first. But then they’ll bump into it again, and they say, ‘Oh, yeah, I get this,’ and they really do become quite enamored of it.”
When the Comedy Channel made its debut late last year, “MST3K” was promoted as a children’s show and relegated to early-morning and wee-hours time slots. The show’s growing popularity with adults, however, prompted executives to move it to more accessible times, Newton said, and to promote it more heavily. “MST3K” is largely the work of Hodgson, 30, a Wisconsin native who, after a couple of years on the stand-up comedy circuit, experienced a short burst of fame in the early 1980s. After four guest-comic appearances on “Saturday Night Live,” five stints on “Late Night With David Letterman” and inclusion in an HBO “Young Comedians” special, Hodgson found himself a hot commodity — and a little burned out.
“I really got sick of it,” Hodgson said in a recent telephone interview. “I didn’t like L.A., I was tired of my act, and I needed to get away.”
A turning point came in 1984, when Hodgson was offered a role in the pilot of what turned out to be a short-lived NBC series called “High School U.S.A.” “It was really dumb,” Hodgson said. “All the TV coming out of L.A. was really crummy.”
So, with effrontery rarely seen in the TV business, Hodgson told NBC programming boss Brandon Tartikoff what he thought of the show and turned him down. Evidently thinking the comments were only a bargaining ploy, “they came back and doubled the money within an hour; an insane amount of money for a single show. Then I knew I was in trouble. I knew I needed to get out of L.A.,” Hodgson said. He turned them down once again.
Not long after that — in what Hodgson calls “my commercial suicide” — he returned to happy obscurity in the Midwest and spent the next several years doing everything from working in a T-shirt store to co-writing an HBO special starring comedian Jerry Seinfeld. It was during this period that Hodgson met and became friends with Jim Mallon, then the production manager at KTMA-TV, a tiny UHF station in Minneapolis. It was also about the time that Hodgson began to conceive “MST3K.”
In 1988, Mallon approached Hodgson about ideas for a local comedy show. On Thanksgiving Day 1988, a prototype of “MST3K” debuted. The first episode got a Nielsen rating of 0.8 — about 4,000 people — but a cult following and a reputation in broadcasting circles grew.
Hodgson said the writing was done “just like you’d think we’d do it. We all get together — the more people the better — and sit down in the conference room and turn on the movie, and everybody just starts making fun, and we write it all down. It’s genuinely a good time.”
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Did you know that Jim was going to mention this article in his speech, or were you shocked/surprised?
That was nice to read, thanks for posting it.
Nice read, glad you posted it.
This is the blurb that got me interested. I read it as a 12-year old Scout in Boys Life: http://tinyurl.com/35y6sql
JCC: I was completely surprised. People sitting next to me say I went bright red. I remember nearly fainting. :-)
Interesting amount of repeats the show had in its early run on the Comedy Channel.
I first heard about MST3K in a video game publication. Maybe it was an early issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly. Anyway, it got my attention.
<3!!
I'm so glad the show thrived for so long- and still has such an intense following today.
That was a well written essay. The sentiment of your article still stands as strong as it did when written. Thank you.
Great article, Sampo. This is so cool. I think the first national, positive story was a month later in the 8-25-1990 TV Guide when they were listed in their Cheers and Jeers. Then People Magazine and Time were a month or so after that. You broke the ice and everyone else followed, and we can all thank you for your foresight.
Fun article! Thank you for posting it.
A great read, thanks for sharing once again. A few facts caught my eye- like MST3K was originally promoted by Comedy Central as a kid’s show? I mean, when I caught it in its original airings as a kid I enjoyed it, but I probably understood only 10% of the jokes. Comedy Central certainly never wound up carrying any kid friendly programming after it became a hit. And their pilot was seen by 4,000 people? For a local independent network on Thanksgiving Day that’s not too bad. Having myself volunteered for several years in college and community radio it’s always encouraging to know that people really are watching/listening independent programming!
If the KTMA pilot got a 0.8 rating (4,000 viewers) I’d be curious to see what the Nielsen numbers of the subsequent episodes and the KTMA finale were before the show went national. It would provide a neat and totally useless (but nevertheless interesting) snapshot into early MiSTie fandom.
That’s pretty neat. I knew that children watched the show judging by the letters they’d receive, but I didn’t realize that it was originally promoted by CC as a children’s show. I wonder if that annoyed the creators since it seems like CC saw puppets and a guy and assumed that’s what it was.
Sampo–
Thank you for sharing this with the group. I enjoyed reading it very much.
RE: MST as a kids show…
Its always been my impression that Joel first developed the show as a Saturday morning kiddy show gone askew. In the host segs for the earlier shows, I always got that impression.
Like the “How to make Gaos” host segment where Joel tries to teach kids how to make a folded paper Goas but the bots keep telling kids to eat Mucilage. Stuff like that.
I alway felt that the show was presented in a manner that included viewers of all ages. Hence the fan base where the age bracet is so wide. ;-)
Joel has cemented himself as a movie mocking master at this point, so it’s easy to forget he had a stand-up career before going into (independent!) TV. I didn’t know he worked with Jerry, baby!
Seen in flashback during #209, Joel manages to work in a critique of fellow prop-comic Gallagher: Extremely unfunny! Know what? He’s right: Did anyone find getting sprayed with watermelon debris that amusing? Guess that was a thing you folks who were grownups in the late 80s thought was extra funny ;-)
Ah well. Also great and prophetic writing, Mr. Cornell! I think it’s awesome that you used to work for Knight-Ridder. Did you ever get to drive KITT, or was there a list you had to get on first? Did he call everyone ‘Michael’?
Thanks!
“The comments veer wildly from scatological silliness to ontological discourse, with random stops at every gray area in between.”
Perfectly said, Sampo sir. Very nice article, thanks for sharing. I discovered MST on my own while flipping channels back in 1995 and since then it always gave me a buzz when a magazine would do an article on the show, but invariably it would always be more of a blurb and less of an article. I can’t really think of any print articles that were longer than a colomn. I can recall avclub dot com and chud dot com running some really good articles on the show recently, especially the avclub article. I don’t have a link handy (too lazy to look for it) but I’m sure it’s findable.
There needs to be more long form articles on the greatness of this show and it’s comedic and cultural importance to American pop culture and the landscape of modern comedy. Maybe I’ll get around to writing that article I’ve been planning someday………….. if I can stop being so lazy.
we really do owe you, Sampo–fade-away-jerk handshake coming your way!
Well stated Sampo! It’s hard to describe all of the eccentricities that make it such a fun show & you really summed it up! Ro-man & Crows remark are a perfect example of how riffing makes these movies watchable.
Neat article. Can you believe that there was once a time you would need to explain that Jerry Seinfeld is a comedian?
:mrgreen:
Nice article. It really describes the show well enough to get people at the time interested in checking it out. Thanks, Sampo, for keeping our favorite show on the air. Who knows? Maybe it wouldn’t have caught on as much if you hadn’t gotten the ball rolling. You came to it, and wrote about it, at just the right time, it seems.
I still have that Jerry Seinfeld HBO special (co-written by some fellow named Joel Hodgson) on VHS! (Truth be told, I didn’t much care for the in-between-stand-up sketches – though I liked the concept).
Now, it’s the stand-up I don’t much care for. :roll: Wasn’t as funny as I thought at the time. But I’m glad I saved it.
Fantastic article, Sampo! Thanks for posting it! I wondered what kind of reviews the show received in its early days.