MST3K (season nine closing thoughts)

Goodbye, season nine.

Similar to my feelings on season four, the guys are now humming along like a well-oiled machine on their new network. Instead of a pointless storyline, there's good variety in the host segments. The riffing feels like it's more than second nature to the trio in the theater (one-and-a-half nature, nearly). I'm enjoying their creativity in dealing with some of the over-long, unriffable credits. Pearl testing for pain leakage, Servo singing a song to himself, and abusing a cardboard cutout of Rick Sloane were all three thousand times funnier than making fun of a list of names.

It's getting harder to keep myself on schedule. In the early months of this project, my attitude was generally "I need a laugh, let's watch an episode." Lately, I approach most episodes with a sigh and a "let's get this out of the way." Watching MST3K has become a job, which wasn't unexpected but still isn't very fun. Once I get an episode started, things are fine. I fall easily into the groove of the show and approach it open to laughter. Werewolf demonstrated to me that I haven't lost the ability to really enjoy the show when en episode calls for it.

Luckily, having seen many of the episodes already, I know season ten is solid stuff. I'm looking forward to Joel, Frank and Mitchell all coming back, Ernest Borgnine scaring the shit out of a little kid and Gypsy starting her own company. Mostly, though, I'm looking forward to being done. Freedom!


The Numbers

Total Length

20 hours, 45 minutes, 35 seconds
(92 min average for 13 episodes)
(18 min average for 3 specials)

Years Spanned

1958-1995
(1975 average)

Shorts Years Spanned

1957-1962
(1960 average)

Time to Watch

22 days

Time to Broadcast Originally

197 days

Speed

9.0x

British Invasion

901, 905, 909 (23%)

Attack of the Mutant Animals

904, 905, 907, 909, 911 (38%)

Black and White to Color Ratio

3:10