Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Return Season 1 available now on Netflix.
Although Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended in 1999, its trademark mockery of terrible movies never really went away. Various former creators of the long-running series launched their own movie-mocking projects, including the very popular RiffTrax, which continues with live showings in movie theaters and an extensive catalog of movie commentary tracks available online. But the return of the actual MST3K, with 14 new episodes on Netflix, is still an event, and original creator and producer Joel Hodgson has put together a show that lovingly (and maybe a little too reverently) recreates everything about the original series.
Jonah Ray takes over for Hodgson and Hodgson’s later replacement Michael J. Nelson as the main star of the show, and like Hodgson and Nelson he plays a hapless technician kidnapped by evil scientists (Felicia Day and Patton Oswalt, playing relatives of the original series villains) and forced to endure bad movies. Hampton Yount and Vegas’ own Baron Vaughn voice Jonah’s robot companions Crow and Tom Servo, respectively, and everything about the series’ visual style, set design and costumes is carried over from the deliberately low-fi aesthetic that goes back to MST3K’s origins on Minnesota local TV. There are even built-in breaks where commercials would have gone in the past.
Longtime fans may appreciate the dedication to continuity, but the framing sequences were always the least interesting parts of the original series, and that’s the case here as well, although they do offer the chance for some surprise cameos. The main appeal is watching the three stars tear apart bad movies, and on that front (at least in the first two episodes), the new MST3K delivers. Ray, Yount and Vaughn may take a little time to perfect the chemistry that the various original stars (most of whom worked together for many years) had, but they’re still consistently funny, and that’s all that really matters. The show still has the same joke-a-minute pace, so that any gags that fall flat (or references that fly over viewers’ heads) are quickly forgotten by the next laugh. Even the approach to the humor, with plenty of callbacks (past favorite Zap Rowsdower gets a shout-out in the second episode), nonsensical songs and obscure cultural references, remains the same.
The movies are largely drawn from the same well as before—only one movie of the 14 in the new season was released after MST3K first premiered in 1988 (and that one is from 1989). Certainly it’s easy to mock the terrible fashions and hairstyles and technology of the past in addition to the terrible writing, directing and acting, but there are so many bad movies that have been made since 1999 (many of them available on Netflix!) that sticking to the more distant past seems like a missed opportunity. These are minor missteps that could be worked out over time, especially if this new version gets to run anywhere close to how long the original did. Bad movies are in endless supply, and making fun of them never needs to stop.
