MST3K (422)

422 - The Day the Earth Froze (w/ Here Comes the Circus) - What a relief. After suffering through the non-movie in the last experiment, it was nice to have a fun fairy tale from a far-off land to watch this time. Outside of the stories of Odin, Thor and company, I've never seen nor read about any of the other fairy tales from Scandinavia. I liked this one. Evil witches, magic cloaks, a smithy that can forge a horse, capturing the sun and wind... all great fairy tale stuff. Not a bad thing to watch on a lazy Saturday morning at all.

The riffing was also improved compared with the last show. There's more to work with here. This is especially true of all of the Scandinavia jokes the guys throw in. Filming the show in the part of the country with the highest percentage of Scandinavia ancestry, they've got an edge on this type of riff. I liked it also because the Minnesotan accent they use is also the same way da Yoopers in my state speak (both having Scandinavian roots). Reminds me of home.

What's the deal with all of the attention given to Gypsy lately? In the last episode, she had an entire host segment dedicated to her "not getting" Servo and Crow. In this one, she gets her to produce a one-woman show. In addition, Gypsy has suddenly gotten a heckuva lot smarter lately. Gone are the days in which she was only capable of (barely) uttering the words "Richard Basehart." Were they worried about the lack of female characters on the show? Perhaps the fact that the only female -- non-corporeal Magic Voice doesn't count -- on the show was depicted as incredibly stupid bothered them a little? MiSTies, from what I've seen, seem to be pretty evenly split between males and females. It might've been a noble goal to try to give half of the fan base a little better representation on the show. Then again, I never really found Gypsy that funny. I find her borderline-annoying most of the time, though I do think it's cute when she's in mother-mode.

Hey, a new contest! Well, not really, even though it has been a long time since we had one of those. Joel wants to know what a Sampo is, but encourages us to write it on a piece of a paper and throw it away instead of mailing it in. They only announced a winner for one, I think, of all of the previous contests in the past three years, so it was wise not to toy with the viewers' hopes this time out. Plus, the answer to the question is contained in the movie: it's a magical slot machine made out of rocks that doles out both coins and condiments.

"There's a flaming moose blocking traffic on I-35W northbound." (7/10)

film d. Risto Orko & Aleksandr Ptushko [as Gregg Sebelious] (1958)
short p. Eugene W. Castle (1946)
mst d. Trace Beaulieu (16 Jan 1993)