Seasons of Love: Mystery Science Theater 3000

I am kind of embarrassed to admit that I have been sleeping on "Mystery Science Theater 3000" for a substantial part of my life. I didn't have cable in the 1990s, when the series was in first run (seven years on Comedy Central, then three on Sci-Fi Channel) I saw a handful of episodes and clips in college, but for some reason it didn't register enough to explore further. In the last five or six years, however I've become good friends with several MST3K fans (or "MS-Tees") and even dated a woman who was a diehard fan of the show. I initally watched a few episodes with her to be polite and gradually got hooked.

During winter break and the recent polar vortex, and I had some unexpected down time. This allowed me to catch up on the select number of "classic" episodes available on Netflix, as well as some full episode uploads from YouTube. (Why fan uploads? That's a long story.) That's on top of the 2017 revival of MST3K, and I had the opportunity to see the live show with the new cast on the two occasions they visited Chicago.

For the unfamiliar: sometime in the near-future, a laboratory janitor and part-time inventor named Joel Robinson (played by series creator Joel Hodgson) is unwillingly sent to space by two mad scientists. (The scientists were called "The Mads" for short, and often more antagonistic than villainous.) While trapped on a bone-shaped space station called the Satellite of Love, Joel is forced to watch terrible movies as part of their elaborate experiment. Joel had two defenses against this bizarre yet unwarranted punishment: he would poke fun of said movies, and doing so with several robots that he built, primarily the pompous Tom Servo and the immature Crow. All of these characters would appear in short sketches, also called host segments, before and during the movie.

MST3K ran for just over a decade, and like most long-running TV shows, it was susceptible to cast turnover. Hodgson/Robinson left midway through the fifth season of the series, he was succeeded by the series' head writer/frequent bit player Michael J. Nelson, who played an amicable temp worker named... Mike Nelson. The entire original cast was gone by the end of the final Comedy Central season, and gradually the other writers on the show stepped in to either play new Mads or recast the robots.

The debate over whether Joel or Mike was better is an never-ending online debate on the scale of Diane versus Rebecca on "Cheers" or the two actors that played Darren Stephens (greetings from Team York). Jonah Ray, who plays the affable but unwilling subject in the 2017 MST3K revival, has also been thrown into the remonstration. The MST3K fan base is just as vocal and ardent as it was in the pre-internet days. But I digress.

"Seasons of Love" is supposed to be about one particular season of a TV series, and this latest entry offers a toss-up. The MST3K DVD box sets were assembled when and if the producers could get the rights to release the films, and even though the episodes/films were boxed chronologically, a season set has never been released. (God bless the person who assembles 24 episodes of a two-hour TV show into one collection.) In addition, there has never been a wall-to-wall great season, so I chose what I think are the two strongest seasons, three (1991-92) and eight (1997) in spite of some minor flaws.

For the uninitiated, choosing three and eight might seem random, but this wasn't a show that hit the ground running. Prior to basic cable, MST3K aired on local TV in Minneapolis; "season zero" (1988-89) is a rough draft of things to come, and even Hodgson himself admits most of those episodes are unwatchable. Upon leaping to the Comedy Channel (now Comedy Central) season one is more professional and palatable, but bewildering to anyone who caught on later in the show's run. The riffing was still mostly improvised, there are long gaps between jokes, and at times the SOL crew are talking over each other. After co-creator Josh Weinstein left, season two took another leap forward: recasting Servo with writer Kevin Murphy, and subbing out Weinstein's Mad with Frank Conniff, aka "TV's Frank." An average episode of MST3K got a lot tighter, in part because nearly the entire show was now scripted. Fans were told to "keep circulating the tapes." Positive word of mouth spread.

Season three was the concept fully formed. The core five of Hodgson, Conniff, Murphy, Trace Beaulieu (as chief Mad, Dr. Clayton Forrester) and executive producer Jim Mallon (as robot Gypsy) had built an impressive chemistry as season two went on. The episode order had been raised from 13 to 24, partially because of criticial buzz but also because the merger of Comedy Channel and Ha! resulted in a mass purge of lower-rated shows. The first episode of season three, a takedown of the 1984 fantasy epic "Cave Dwellers," is arguably the series' first true classic. The third episode, an ordinary horror film turned "E.T" ripoff called "The Pod People," also frequently appears on fans' top ten lists.

With one glaring exception, season three plays like a list of fan favorites: "Santa Claus Conquers the Martians," "Time of the Apes," "Daddy-O," not one but five riffs on the Gamera kaiju movies, and both "Master Ninja" movies. The aforementioned exception, an attempted takedown of 1969's "The Castle of Fu Manchu," is an intriguing anomaly. The original film is so unbearably boring and difficult to riff that Joel, Servo, and Crow break down in frustration. Indeed, a fair number of fans find "Castle" hard to get through in one sitting.

Season eight finds MST3K in a very different place. Of the core five, only Murphy still remained; Mallon would step away from playing Gypsy early on in the year. The move from Comedy Central to Sci-Fi came with two caveats: fewer films outside of the science fiction and fantasy genres, and an overarching story arc for the host segments. The movies selected were goofier and generally more colorful, and the characters evolved as well. Beaulieu gave way to Tom Corbett as the voice of Crow, and his take on the character was more acerbic if not slightly more mature.  Dr. F's mother Pearl, played by writer Mary Jo Pehl, was the new Mad in charge.

The premise was tweaked, too: Mike and the bots were on the run from Pearl, inadvertently destroying planets in the process. In the process, Pearl gains two alien henchmen, the dim Professor Bobo (Murphy) and the milquetoast Observer (Corbett). Where season three starts hot, season eight is okay from the get-go but saves its best for last: "Space Mutiny," "Time Chasers," and "Overdrawn in the Memory Bank" might be strongest winning streak of the series. "The Mole People," "Jack Frost," "Agent for H.A.R.M.," and "Horror of Party Beach" are also series high points.

Season one notwithstanding, there really isn't a mediocre season of the series. Season seven, where Beaulieu and Pehl overlapped, is only six episodes long but they're all first division. The two revival seasons have been fine; "Cry Wilderness," the second episode of season 11, is the closest to being an instant classic. As for a gateway episode, I guess "Manos: The Hands of Fate" from season four is fine; its the most popular episode of the series, though slightly overrated for that reason. If you're looking to jump in... hikeeba!

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Seasons of Love: "Chappelle's Show," Season Two (2004)

This year marks the unofficial tenth anniversary of what I'll call "Chappellemania." The mid-2000s were a lousy time for TV comedy --sitcom, sketch, or otherwise-- so for that time period I'd rank Chappelle's Show up there with "Arrested Development," "Scrubs," and Bush-era "Daily Show" among the few torch-bearers of the form. As a sketch comedy in 2004, Dave Chappelle was running laps around the competition: SNL was still struggling to find itself post-Will Ferrell, and MADtv was consistently inconsistent and relying heavily on one-note recurring characters.

The story behind the Dave Chappelle's rise to fame and confusing downfall is a fable told many times, a cautionary tale of too much too soon. After years of struggling, including a procession of failed TV pilots, Chappelle became an overnight success. However, writer's block and interference from Viacom instigated an apparent nervous breakdown from which Chappelle is still recovering. He gave us two years of great sketches and pointed social commentary (let's pretend the piecemeal, mostly Chappelle-free third season didn't happen) before disappearing into the ether. He returned to stand-up in recent years a humbled family man, but it just isn't the same.

So how does "Seasons of Love" tackle a sketch comedy show? By focusing more on the individual sketches, rather than episodes. Sketch comedy is inherently uneven, so it would seem unwieldy to judge the second season of "Chappelle's Show" by looking at an entire 30-minute episode (including the obligatory music video) as a whole. The first year is fine in its own right, but I'll argue that season two is a desert-island comedy pick.

Five Favorites:

"The Racial Draft," 1/21/04. The first home run of season two comes at the tail end of the season premiere. Combining Chappelle's yen for racial humor with the bloated media spectacle of the NFL and NBA drafts, various ethnicities claim dibs on racially ambigious media figures. Come for Chappelle's goofy Tiger Woods impression, stay for the self-deprecating Wu-Tang Clan cameo.

"Black Gallagher," 1/28/04. More or less a blackout sketch, this short, sweet, and succient bit lampoons the one-joke oddity that is Gallagher. Let's just say the Slegde-O-Matic is far from what the audience was expecting.

"Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories," 2/11/04. Arguably the best-known, most-loved, and most quoted sketch in the entire series, Eddie's older brother (and an okay comedian in his own right) details a nightmarish evening in 1982 with the R&B star, by then a full-blown coke addict and apparent sociopath. The madness of this particular night is augmented by commentary from the real-life James, who denies nothing ("cocaine is a helluva drug") and only intermittently seems remorseful. When James died suddenly six months later, Comedy Central conspicuously paid tribute by repeating this episode three times in the span of six hours. Pecularily, Charlie's perilous brush with fame led to...

"Charlie Murphy's True Hollywood Stories," 2/18/04. ...an encounter with Prince. Where Chappelle's imitation of Rick James vaulted the show into the pop culture stratosphere, this one-off encounter with the Purple One might have been the stronger sketch. A chance meeting at an after-party segues into Charlie and friends getting their asses kicked on the basketball court by the diminutive guitar god (Chappelle again, see above) and his puffy-shirted entourage. There was no Greek chorus here; you'd just have to take Charlie's word for it.

"Black Bush," 4/14/04. Topical sketches typically have a short shelf life, and it usually doesn't work as nostalgia. However, the last sketch of the season is a unique exception. Chappelle and crew reimagine the Bush administration's initial handling of Operation Enduring Freedom as if our 43rd president were a disingenuous black guy. (The cameo from Prime Minister "Black Blair" is a riot.) Just when it seemed like Chappelle's near-constant skewing of race relations was starting to wear thin, it roars back with a vengence.

Your thoughts?

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Seasons of Love: "The Simpsons," Season Five (1993-94)

I'm not sure which is more staggering: that "The Simpsons" was in its creative peak 20 years ago, or that the show is still chugging along, breaking one TV record after another as it survives into its 26th season. Sometimes I imagine an alternate universe where "The Simpsons" ended its run around 2002 or so, made two theatrical movies inbetween, and a revival series is now available for streaming on Netflix. We can spend days dwelling upon the show's current state of mediocrity and how it became a victim of its own longevity, but you can find plenty of articles and discussion board rants elsewhere on the internet. (Given its age, it's amazing that they've kept the original cast intact, and they're still crackerjack.) This is "Seasons of Love," and I want to accentuate the positive.

On paper, Season Five should not have been the The Simpsons' greatest year. The writing staff was in transition, with the remaining charter members of the scribes' room heading for greener pastures either after 1992-93 or during 1993-94. At least one episode (the Sideshow Bob vehicle "Cape Feare") was a holdover from Season Four, and it was the last season in which most of the episodes aired out of production order. One staff writer, Conan O'Brien, learned he was chosen to host a late night talk show and abruptly walked out on his contract midway through the production year. The number of guest stars increased, and one episode featured a principal character going into outer space (more on that later). It was the last season the show aired on Thursday nights, before a short-lived attempt to make the show more family-friendly without overhauling the show's general concept. If you were wondering why some of the 1994-95 episodes seem a little blander than the surrounding seasons, now you know why.

With that said, Seasons Four and Five are two of my desert island DVD sets, and all 22 episodes rank from very good to outstanding. Whittling down my list to five was tricky, so I broke a self-imposed rule and included a "best of the rest" list below. I look forward to your thoughts, if not necessarily the inevitable whining about the current state of the show.

Five Favorites:

"Homer's Barbershop Quartet" (episode 1, 82nd overall). The mythology surrounding The Beatles is skewed mercilessly in this charming season premiere. Writer Jeff Martin is a die-hard Beatles fan and it shows, and George Harrison has a brief but crucial cameo. Arguably the first TV show to do an '80s flashback (or three), Homer's small-time singing group hits the big time with a fluke hit song, but success takes its toll on his young family.

"Cape Feare" (episode 2, 83rd overall). Not only the best Sideshow Bob episode, but a showcase for recurring guest star Kelsey Grammar. Arguably Springfield's most erudite sociopath, Bob's parole forces the Simpsons --who had foiled his plots twice before-- to join the Witness Protection Program. The rake gag, originally written as time filler, is so stupid it's brilliant.

"Rosebud" (episode 4, 85th overall). "Citizen Kane" is the basis, if not necessarily the backbone, of an episode that focuses largely on Mr. Burns. After four years of one-dimensional villainry, we finally learn his backstory: his long-lost teddy bear Bobo represents his youthful innocence, and after the stuffed animal somehow lands in Maggie's arms, Burns schemes to get his beloved toy back.

"Deep Space Homer" (episode 15, 96th overall). This could have been a "jump the shark" moment, but despite the out-there premise the core of the story is Homer's dignity and the family dynamic. A series of coincidences turns Homer into NASA's first "everyman" astronaut, and his gross incompetence threatens to turn his first life achievement into chaos. The scene with the ants is a riot.

"Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song" (episode 19, 100th overall). This milestone episode could have been an extravaganza, but instead the writers chose to focus on the then-underutilized Principal Skinner. When Bart's irresponsibility gets Skinner fired, our guilt-ridden fourth-grader follows up with his nemesis, and an unlikely friendship develops. This is a profound, relationship-based episode, but not without its laugh out loud moments (Groundskeeper Willie in the vents, the Kwik-E-Mart gas station).

Best of the Rest: "Homer Goes to College" (episode 3), "Treehouse of Horror IV" (episode 5), "Homer and Apu" (episode 13).

Your thoughts?

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Seasons of Love: "M*A*S*H," Season Five (1976-77)

For my latest TV essay, I chose a classic sitcom that I've been watching since grade school. Picking a favorite season of M*A*S*H, however proved difficult. I had almost settled on Season Two, when the original cast was in peak form. I'll even argue that as a straight comedy with occasional dramatic undertones, some of my favorite episodes strike the balance. In a perfect world, the show would have skipped from Radar's departure midway through Season Eight to the epic (albeit overrated) finale, erasing three-plus years of maudlin "dramedy." Give me the early, funnier years please.

To me, the focal point of Season Five is Major Frank Burns. On the surface, his character steadily grew more cartoonish; Burns was the heel, the show's go-to villain and wet blanket. The subtext was that Burns was isolated; a major plot point in Season Five was Major Houlihan's engagement to Major Donald Penobscott. With his former mistress and only ally at the 4077th now betrothed to someone else, Burns was an island of growing denial and despair. Penobscott only appears on the show twice in the entire series, so he's mostly an intangible nemesis for Burns to shadowbox. (The fact that Frank and Hot Lips never formally broke up, adding on the sudden emergence of Penobscott, must have been quite jarring.) In "Margaret's Engagement," Burns struggles to find solace as he goes out drinking with his "friends" Hawkeye and BJ. By "Movie Tonight," Burns is threatening to kill both men.

The next season begins with Burns finally losing his mind --off-screen, of course-- going AWOL and sent home once and for all. It was a convenient introduction for David Ogden Stiers, and the beginning of a new, much more seriocomic era of M*A*S*H. Not so coincidentally, this was the last year of Larry Linville's contract; he signed a three-year deal with CBS after the second season, and maintained his desire to move on citing fear of typecasting. The writers and producers were clearly intent on making Burns and Linville go out with a bang.

Five Favorites:

"Bug Out" (episodes 1 and 2, 98th and 99th overall). M*A*S*H was famous for blending situation comedy with pathos, but with the one-hour season premiere they intentionally split the two and had them play off each other. Heavy shelling gives the 4077th no other option than to the evacuate the camp, but an unstable patient forces Hawkeye, Margaret, and Radar to stay behind. Where the "bug out" turns into a raucous caravan, the deserted base and impeding doom provide great character moments for the chief surgeon, head nurse, and company clerk.

"The Nurses" (episode 6, 103rd overall). The 5th season was arguably a greater revelation for Loretta Swit, whose Major Houlihan was relegated to playing a manipulative shrew in the show's early going. Not only was she "liberated" of Major Burns, she blossomed into a character of dimension. This episode was the tipping point: standing in front of a bunch of over-glorified extras that never appeared on the show again, Houlihan admits that it's very lonely being the only female officer in the unit. It was hard to call her "Hot Lips" after that.

"Dear Sigmund" (episode 8, 105th overall). Arguably the show's most memorable recurring character was Major Sidney Freedman, played with dry, disarming charm by Allan Arbus. An imaginary letter to his psychoanalytical hero, written during a rut, strings together a series of otherwise random happenings at the 4077th camp.

"Mulcahy's War" (episode 9, 106th overall). After four years as a recurring guest star, William Christopher was finally promoted to series regular in 1976. Though most episodes with Father Mulcahy at front and center were a sanctimonious bore --especially in the later seasons of the show-- this was one of the Padre's better outings. After a GI shoots himself to get out of combat, Mulcahy realizes he's too aloof to what is at stake and sneaks out to the front.

"Movie Tonight" (episode 22, 119th overall). Outside of the Burns example, this is a fun romp of an episode that uses the entire cast to its benefit. Movie night at the 4077th is hindered by technical difficulties, so the officers find clever ways to entertain the unit. The impromptu Father Mulcahy impression contest is a hoot.

Your thoughts?

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Seasons of Love: "Monty Python's Flying Circus," Season Two, 1970

First in a series

I was the first person I knew that was into Monty Python. I discovered them around the time of my 9th birthday; in hindsight that might have been too young, but their singular impact on me was much too great to let age be a consideration. I remember watching the show's 20th anniversary special (several years after its first airing, mind you) one night on PBS and it struck my curiosity enough that I started renting tapes from Blockbuster a couple of days later. The absurdity and silliness was what lured me in; the intellectual undercurrent was what keep me watching. Where most of my peers discovered "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" a year or two after I did, my gateway was the original series.

For the first of my "Seasons of Love" essays, I have chosen the second and arguably most immaculate season of Monty Python's Flying Circus. If MPFC instigated the "classic rock" era of British comedy, than the second series is Led Zeppelin II, Exile on Main Street, and Who's Next rolled into one. All thirteen episodes are A-quality or very close to it; I can count the number of sketches and bits I didn't like on one hand. If the first series set the tone for breaking conventions and destroying the familiar, year two reinforced the anarchy. The sweet spot between surreal interference and coherent set-pieces is hit more regularly, and without getting pummeled. The chaos is more fluid, more focused, and just about seamless. Where the third and fourth series grow increasingly hit and miss (especially after John Cleese's departure) the second series is peak Python.

To understand Monty Python at the peak of its powers is to see how the show's talent took specific roles and played that part to the hilt. John Cleese, the alpha male; Graham Chapman, the straight man; Eric Idle, cheeky and playful; Michael Palin, alternately nice and smarmy; Terry Jones, the pompous pushover; and Terry Gilliam, taciturn yet feral. Writing and creating their own material, the Pythons had totally different personalities: Cleese and Chapman collaborated on sketches that mixed foibles and juxtaposition; Palin and Jones co-wrote longer sketches that turned into meandering character studies; Idle kept it short and silly. The spine of the zaniness was Gilliam's intricate animation fills, stop-motion cutouts mixed with zaftig, macabre caricatures.

To bring home my point, here are (in chronological order) the five strongest episodes of season two:

"Face the Press," episode one of the season, 14th overall. Best known for "Ministry of Silly Walks," one of the few overly physical sketches in the Python canon, "Press" also features the Piranaha Brothers documentary spoof, which consumes the final third of the episode. A gag involving an absurd number of deliverymen installing a new gas cooker (er, oven) gives the season premiere a figurative and literally serpentine runner to bring everything together. "Dinsdale!"

"The Spanish Inquisition," episode two, 15th overall. AV Club suggested this as your Python Gateway to Geekery, and I can't disagree.  Palin is aces as the hapless Cardinal Ximenez, turning the titular 15th century religious persecution into feckless, mustache-twirling villainy. They aim for evil, but they settle for mild annoyance. Beyond the inquisition this is just a collection of sketch great sketches, including "The Semaphore Version of Wuthering Heights" and "Tax on Thingy."

"It's a Living," episode six, 19th overall. There's no recurring theme or wraparound this time, it's just a great series of sketches. "Timmy Williams' Coffee Time" is a dead-on parody of David Frost, a bite-the-hand-that-feeds moment for an early champion of Python's work. The final quarter of the episode is again dedicated a lengthier piece, a send-up of live election coverage --a Party Political Broadcast, if you will-- that pits the Silly Party against the Sensible Party.

"Spam," episode 12, 25th overall. Any Python fan worth their salt knows the title sketch and its accompanying sing-along, but this is another top-to-bottom cavalcade of scenes. "Ypres 1914" evokes Ernest Hemingway and features a great individual performance from Chapman. "Dirty Hungarian Phrasebook" is fairly quotable, and "Communist Quiz" and "Gumby Flower Arranging" later became staples of Python's live act.

"Royal Episode 13," 26th overall. "The Queen is watching," the show's announcer warns upfront. Any assumption that Python will play it safe is thrown out almost immediately; the tasteless "Cannibal Lifeboat" sketch segues into the even more abhorrent "Cannibal Undertaker" sketch, and gross-out humor dominates the proceedings. Inspired as it may have been, the perceived limits of good taste forced the BBC's censors to pay closer attention. There was a limit to what Monty Python could get away with after all.

Of course, by choosing five episodes from one season I can't touch every base. The other eight episodes of Python's second series have all sorts of great sketches, ranging from the game show spoof "Blackmail" to "The Killer Cars" to "How Not to Be Seen." "Scott of the Antarctic," perhaps the weakest episode of the season, is a tad arch and slow-moving at times, but its strongest elements trump the weaknesses. Regardless, whenever someone watches "Holy Grail" or "Life of Brian" want to know where to go next, season two is normally where I steer them.

With any luck, "Seasons of Love" will turn into a monthly feature on this blog. There are plenty of shows I like, past and present, that are worth writing about; at the same time, I'm also open to suggestions.

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