HNUM²

You should know what MST3K stands for.  If not, erm… You should.  The MT10 is for My Top 10.  This is my 10 favourite Mystery Science Theater episodes.  Well, one of them.  The 10th in fact.  It’s

The puffy guy who’s a big blurry sex machine. I’m just talkin’ bout

Mitchell is an overweight, alcoholic cop who is going up against some mobsters.  Or something.

And Joel (in his last host episode) and the bots find plenty to mock about it.

After the intro segment in which Crow and Tom destroy Joel’s toothpick Monticello model, the “being audited by the Fraternal Order of Mad Science” Mads send their new temp worker, Mike, to get the video for the guys on the SOL.  After seeing what movie it is, Mike finds amusement in it.  Little did he know…

The Small Mouth Bass in a wind tunnel movie gets off to a great start with a nice reference of another MST episode “Watch out for snakes.” It carries on from there with plenty of amusing references and oodles of comical observational humor.  As they often do, they pick up on one trait and there are running jokes throughout the movie.  This time, it’s  Mitchell being overweight, unhealthy and unfit.  Most of the jokes are hits.  Like when Tom  makes Mitchell out of breath after a few brisk steps, and when “The Chubby Blue Line” wakes from a dream about Fluffernutter.  Occasionally they’re just filler. The “whacka-che-whacka” type Mitchell “theme” they sing is damn funny, too.  Even the lowbrow stuff (fart and toilet jokes) and the puns (“so long chum” after guy gets knocked off the boat) are pretty amusing.

The episode also teaches us many things.  Like Reynolds Wrap is great for keeping things fresh, but if you’ve got a Mitchell you want to keep out, Reynolds Wrap in place of a door is not going to work.  And down-shifting an automatic makes the car go faster.  And you can’t grow steaks.  And that prostitutes don’t like you kissing them after you arrest them.

Some other choice lines. “The inspiration for ‘Cop and a Half.’” “Wasn’t John Saxon in this movie?” “He’s talking to Commissioner Gordon.” “The lunatic is on the grass…” “Yeah, but where you come from, beer’s an entrée”

As for the host segments.  They are pretty amusing.  In a misunderstanding, Gypsy thinks Joel is gonna be killed.  The SOL stuff mostly focuses on her trying to get Joel out of there.  It’s not too funny, but where it is funny is the stuff between Mike and TV’s Frank.  the segment with the keys is probably one of the funniest I’ve seen.

Of course, it ends with Joel escaping from the satellite.  Bet people were pretty bummed at the time. The laid-back commentaries from Joel were definitely very funny mostly.  But at least there’s plenty more MST3K with Mike.  And Joel may have landed on Yahoo Serious so it’s definitely not all bad.