I've learned over the years that it takes a while to discover the personality of a show, I have to live with it a while before it becomes a fully formed entity. Snap judgments on first viewing can shift years later. For example, Killer Shrews has never been funnier than the first time I saw it - on the other hand, The Magic Voyage of Sinbad was merely okay before it blossomed into one of my Top 10 favorites. I find I can rewatch Jack Frost over and again and it never fails to make me laugh, but I have to space out viewings of Attack of the Eye Creatures, as over watching murdered the humor.
With this in mind, I knew I'd have to give season 11 time, that it might take years before I had a good grasp of it. And so here we are, years later, and I thought now might be the right moment to re-visit the show and collect my thoughts. Now, I don't have it in me to do the work I did on the classic era of MST3K, where I took constant notes on every minuscule detail of the show - which can be tiring and frankly, sucks the fun out of the series. I started my website because I was bursting with excitement about the show, and I wanted to get all my thoughts down on paper (so to speak), but once it became work, something to over-analyze, it stopped being entertaining for me. So, I'm not going to do that with season 11. What I record here will be observations off the top of my head, after finishing an episode, without any notetaking. It won't be as in-depth as what I did before, but it will be more relaxing from my end of it. (Besides that, sites like mst3kfandom.com covers all that material)
1105 - The Beast of Hollow Mountain
1101 - Reptilicus
Primary Cast: Jonah Ray as Jonah Heston; Hampton Yount as Crow T. Robot; Baron Vaughn as Tom Servo; Felicia Day as Kinga Forrester; Patton Oswalt as Max (TV's Son of TV's Frank); Rebecca Hanson as Gypsy / Synthia; Joel Hodgson as Ardy
Special Guests: Wil Wheaton as Drake; Erin Gray as Martha Masters
"Reptilicus... Craptillicus!" That was my original opinion, and what a cute, and cutting quip. Sadly, I can no longer use it as it no longer applies, while Reptilicus is not a comedy masterpiece, it has morphed into a pretty decent season opener.
The "new" is set up nicely in this episode and from the start, we can see that production values are slicker, it's bigger (there's a house band), though that's not always better. There are too many cooks in the kitchen, riffers are no longer puppeteers. Also, at first, it was difficult to distinguish voices, individual personalities weren't as distinct, though over the years I can now tell who is who, on a first viewing, that was a major knock against the new cast and the show.
Hampton as Crow is the series ace, he has a touch of Trace in his voice, Baron as Servo was the weak spot, though he tries to liven up his character with exaggerated voice inflections, he sometimes tries a little too hard, and tends to ramble. But I've gotten used to (and like) him and wasn't as bugged by his delivery and timing as I was back in 2017. Jonah's a bit stiff on screen, better in the theater. I remember complaints about the movement in the theater (Gyps delivers the payload and drops a riff), but you know, Joel was a prop comic and used to bring that element into the theater back in the day (Batman-style "Bams, Pows!" during Project Moonbase), that's his thing, and maybe at first it was distracting, but not so much in today's viewing. Tom flying (Pink Floyd's Animals), and the bit with the 3D glasses was cute.
Outside of that -- the trivia tossed in between theater segs helped me to understand this new MST3K – Joel still has a lot of imagination (I’m guessing he came up with the new concepts? The Bone-Heads, bubble tech, iron butterfly, jet screen, etc) and I thought the Mads were fun.
Summary: Uneven, but plenty of chuckles to be had. Maybe I'm more into the rhythms of the cast, but the joke delivery wasn't as jarring, hurried as it once seemed, in fact, I noticed several dead zones in the quipping. The movie was great, just perfect for the show.
Best Riffs: The first riff of the new series... “Nothing says ‘international’ like a picture of the U.S. Capitol building.” (Servo, after seeing the AIP logo). I didn't make notes for any of the jokes that got big laughs out of me, but the "Sailor Moon" reference and "Stan Lee's in this?!" were funny.
Best Host Segment: Every Country Has a Monster
Amazing Colossal Grade: 3 out of 5
1102 - Cry Wilderness
#45 in Mighty Jack's Top 100
Special Guests: Mary Jo Pehl as Pearl Forrester, Bill Corbett as Brain Guy, Kevin Murphy as Bobo
Perfect movie and top-drawer riffing, though I noticed them laying on the quips one after another in this one. They really needed to come up for air, allow some spacing between lines, still, even in this I can't grouse too much, not when I'm laughing so much. I like how they get into the groove of the movie and its characters (laughing Jim, and the Indian racism, etc) they have fun with this thing. And eagle-eyed viewers will notice that a riff from the previous movie (about Fudgy the Whale) makes its way into the Mad's experiment in this episode (are they stealing ideas from the SOL? Will they get called out for this later?) Oh, and seeing the sci-fi era Mads was a special treat (Synthia giving affection made me laugh too).
Trivia: The kid who played Paul can also be seen in the Rifftrax short Harry the Dirty Dog
Best Riffs: "I've shouted at 3 different boy's schools, is this the right Paul?" - Jonah as Bigfoot | "Dad please don't carry me like an American Girl doll" - Jonah as Paul. Also, references to Large Marge and the Autobots, the line about Bigfoot giving Paul Lyme disease, and "Well, happy Easter", were a kick.
Best Host Segments: Playful raccoons get progressively more dangerous with their destructive antics, and Mads meeting Mads.
Amazing Colossal Grade: 4.25 out of 5
1103 - The Time Travelers
Special Guests: Elliott Kalan as Dr. Varno; Joel Hodgson as Larry
This was the 200th episode (201 if you include the movie), on my first viewing in 2017 I wrote that "I could count the number of times I laughed on one hand." today I'd need 3, maybe 5 hands. Danny and the creepy androids are on the receiving end of the funniest riffs, and Servo taking flight was used well, he tries to pull a lever, takes a peek at a girl (with Crow), and helps lift the rocket, which was a riot. The pacing seems smoother with this one, and though there are examples of Baron's rambling in spots, he does get Crow chuckling at a line. And as a comic book geek, I liked the X-Men, Ghost Rider, and the Blandtastic Four quips.
Aside from the flat and unfunny visit from Varno, the host segs are generally entertaining, and yup the Mads experiment (Afterlife Alert) comes from a riff in the previous episode.
So all told, it's aged well. I had a better time with it (that was not intended as a bad pun, lol)
Note: It's too bad they cut off the ending of the movie, I think they could have had fun with that (the characters get stuck in a time loop, faster and faster it goes - which actually was an effectively grim finish for the film). I also wonder if the person in charge of the SFX in this movie was a magician?
Best Riffs: "Cowboy boots, with granny panties and a bra made out of toilet paper? Works for me" - Servo (Crow giggles) | "Can someone please tase Danny for me"
Best Host Segments: They were generally pretty solid, however, no 'one' was a standout.
Amazing Colossal Grade: 3.5 out of 5
1104 - Avalanche
#36 in Mighty Jack's Top 100
Special Guest: Neil Patrick Harris as Neville LaRoy
Rip-roaring hilarious, season 11 finally hits one out of the park. I was laughing steady, start to finish, and the pop culture references made this feel like a classic era episode. Movie-wise, Danny from Time Travelers is back, there's Mia Farrow, Robert Forster, and an angry Rock Hudson, who shouts most of his lines.
Jonah and the bots nail it, rarely squandering riff opportunities when the movie presents them, and it presents them frequently, even before the late-arriving avalanche finally does its thing (that's a rich source of humor too, with the bots using props to hurry it along). And once the avalanche does let loose, it's an unstoppable snowslide of funny.
There's also a couple of killer host segments (and how special that Dr. Horrible reunion between Neil and Felicia).
Best Riffs: "This is extremely rare, it's a Keene painting of an Ocelot." - Jonah | "Turn around and try to reason with it!" - Crow as skier attempts to outrun avalanche | "The Daniel Clowes characters love it." - Jonah (Ha - they did look like they stepped off the pages of "Wilson") | "She's harder to kill than Wolverine!" - Crow | "Mark sounds like an overly sincere Jerry Lewis, and it's not helping at all" - Jonah
Best Host Segments: Neville and Kinga sing a duet, with some funny additions from Max, and the animal-disaster title crawl (Kinga punches Max in frustration, LMAO!)
Amazing Colossal Grade: 4.5, maybe even 5 out of 5, it's that good.
My opinion hasn't changed on this one, it's still a slow starter. I got a few giggles here and there (circus tents with werewolf children?) but that was about it... until a woman walks on screen and Hampton riffs, “Buster Keaton was into drag?” After that, the comedy floodgates began to open (as a Buster fanatic that line made me howl. And I kept laughing every time she popped on screen because she really did look like a female Keaton).
That final -laugh-filled- 30 minutes saved the ep for me. It helped that we FINALLY got to see the beast rage on (but what, no Tor Johnson quip? even after opening the door for one in one instance).
Oh and the Mads experiment comes from a line in the previous movie where they propose using hot water to melt the avalanche. Poor Max, poor, slow-to-learn, short-term-memory Max: like father, like son. Ha Ha.
Lastly, Baron was doing this gravely vocal thing that sounded like his chimp voice in "Carnival Magic", makes me wonder if he'd seen the film, or if that was in production before this one, and aired later? (he might have done that voice before and I didn't notice, could be a simple coincidence)
Best Riffs: "Hats off to you, fireball in the sky" Crow as Poncho | The aforementioned Keaton line, and anything associated with the creature's attack was a blast.
Best Host Segments: The Bots parade confuses and disturbs Jonah, Kinga, and Max
Amazing Colossal Grade: 3 out of 5
