MST3K (season KTMA closing thoughts)

Goodbye, season KTMA. I will miss your down-home flavor. Wishing a young fan a happy birthday in response to his voicemail is a host segment that will never be topped. I will miss the flubs, from the sneezing and falling over to Joel accidentally saying something that sounds worse than what he meant. I won't miss the lack of a script so much. I think the improvisation leads to more bad puns, comment loops and dead spots than should really be there.

My favorite episode for this season was K21. The riffing is the most consistent out of this set of shows. It also has solid host segments that were reminiscent of those that come later. The movie was not so great, but that's what the riffing was there for. I was glad to see JatB leave on a strong note. Humor-wise, they are definitely ready to make the jump to a national audience. All they need are some bot upgrades, a spiffier set and some slightly better theme song lyrics. K06, K10, K12, K18 and K20 were also in my top tier of KTMA episodes.

My favorite movie, however, was SST- Death Flight. I dunno, I just liked it. I'd happily watch it unMSTed in a year or so. I also liked Gamera vs Gaos, Gamera vs Zigra, Humanoid Woman, Fugitive Alien, and The Last Chase. After Humanoid Woman, in particular, I feel like a stronger person. That foam, man.

My least favorite episodes were K05 (Servo and Crow missing), K14 (bad movie + bad riffing), K15 (bad movie + really bad riffing), K17 (Joel missing). As you can tell from the spread of these episodes, the season was pretty uneven. The guys didn't just make an ascent into comedic greatest as they got more practice in. I can almost understand why they refuse to release any of these on home video. Still, I think a couple of them could hold their own as the bonus disc in a 4-disc Rhino set. I'd really like to see, at least, the host segments for K01. I'm curious as to how Joel introduced everything.

I wonder how many disappointed fans there were when the show never returned to KTMA-23? Everyone thought that MST3K was just on a hiatus and would be back in the fall. Even the final newsletter of the season pleads for people to write KTMA about bringing the show back. Suddenly, they switched gears and began making shows for a small cable channel. I know we didn't have the Comedy Channel, or even cable, back in 1989. I'd assume a lot of MST Info Club members were in the same boat. That must have been disappointing. I bet there are even some old codger MST3K fans who say the show jumped the shark between seasons 0 and 1! "Bah, things were better in my day. You'd always know the time it was and how cold the Twin Cities were when MST was good."

Me, I'm happy. I know it only gets better from here.

The Numbers

Total Length

1 day, 5 hours, 57 minutes, 49 seconds
(100 min average for 18 episodes)

Years Spanned

1965-1981
(1974 average)

Time to Watch

33 days

Time to Broadcast Originally

176 days

Speed

5.3x

Total Sandy Frank Films

10 (56%)

Total TV Episodes/TV Movies

6 (33%)

Episodes with Missing Riffers

K05, K06, K12, K17, 1/2-K18 (31%)

Black and White to Color Ratio

1:17