One Of My Favorite TV Shows Is Coming to Kansas City…..Kind Of

When I was about 11 years old, there were some changes to our local cable. 

We had all the normal channels, sure. But there was one channel that was split into two stations: VH1 and what is now Comedy Central.  It would be VH1 all day, and then at 6:00 p.m. switch over to comedy.  I have a vivid memory of watching this random show I'd never heard of and just laughing and laughing so loud that my Mom came into my room and asked, "What are you watching?" and I said, "I don't know!"

Well, that show turned out to be Mystery Science Theater 3000.  And the episode, by the way, was in Season 3, "Daddy-O".  Just in case you were curious. The idea of the show is that a janitor was captured and sent into space by evil scientists as an experiment.  The experiment being, which terrible movie will be the one that breaks his sanity.  So, to fight against this, our protagonist Joel built some companion robots.  They sit and watch the movies with him and they make jokes through it.  Sometimes the movies are just unwatchable, but they make it hilarious. And a lot of the jokes used references to books, other movies, music,... a ton of stuff, and I didn't even get it all at the time. It's very smart.

At first it was Joel Hodgson, Trace Beaulieu, Frank Coniff, Kevin Murphy and a few others.  Then Joel left and the head writer Mike Nelson took over.  And there have been some more cast changes, but the show was on from about 1989 to about 1999. This time of year would actually be the best for a MST3k fan, because Comedy Central would do a huge marathon of episodes on Thanksgiving called Turkey Day.  Now, there's been a Netflix reboot, and it's okay.  It's not as good as the original Comedy Central/SciFi episodes, but it's funny.

So the different cast iterations over the years have done various tours and special appearances, as well as special satellite viewings.   I even went to one, it was pretty fun.  Anyway, I got excited when my boss told me that there's going to be a new tour coming to KC in January. So I looked it up, and.... it's all people I don't know.  No Mike, no Joel, no Dr. Forrester, no TV's Frank, no Mrs. Forrester, nobody.  Apparently this tour is an introduction of sorts for the new co-host of the second season of the reboot on Netflix. That isn't even out yet.

Call me deflated.  I mean, I'm sure she's funny or she wouldn't be associated with MST3K at all, but... Do I really wanna shell out money to see someone I don't know in the name of just being a Mistie?  I don't know about that.  Maybe if I can see some clips of the show beforehand? Either way I guess I've got plenty of time because they're not coming until January of next year.

What do you think?  Would you go see a reboot of one of your favorites?

Keep Circulating The Tapes,

Behka