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Weekend Discussion Thread: Riffs that Got Run Into the GroundAlert reader Todd writes:
My choice: “By this time my lungs were aching for air…” Funny once. Sigh-inducing after the 10th time. Even Joel eventually disapproved. What’s yours? 175 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Riffs that Got Run Into the Ground”Commenting at Satellite News
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Now did anyone bring up “calgon” take me away.
“Me, take me away.” I was in tears, and am in tears, every single time I hear that.
Hope we’re gonna have a “Riffs that got funnier every time” thread. This might sound strange……but I’m a zebra.
RE: #150 –
Thanks, I thought I covered that area, seems like what I was remembering was related anyhew… in that Kentucky Fried Movie was making lite on those same commercials. I’m not well versed in season 8 anyhow (no thanks to Youtube & Viacom).
None of them gets old for me, I can hear them over and over and over and over hmmmmmm. :smile:
SLEEEEEEP! is still the funniest running gag ever (to #94, it doesn’t reference anything that I know of, just imagine trying to sleep with someone roaring that at you like Kevin Murphy does). And I was glad they had the same idea I did for shouting SLEEP at the Arwen/Aragorn dream sequence in the rifftrax version of Two Towers: I so called it!
Really I find these “run into the ground” jokes often more hilarious than individual riffs, even offensive ones like Cram School and the fat jokes (I feel a little, very little bad for JDB in Mitchell, but he asked for all the punishment he got the second time around in Final Justice, and this is coming from a man who deals weight issues as well).
I honestly cannot think of any running gag that ever got old. Often running a idea into the ground seemed to become a comedic exercise that got better each time it occurred. I love the “Biography” bit to death, “Are you ready for some football” is divine, “Chief?McCleod?” was wonderful. And Final Justice is one of my top 5.
Speaking of “Chief?McCloud?”, someone should string together a series of running gags and put them to a beat that I can dance to. I would myself but I’m too lazy to learn the software. You could start with this, which I just found:
http://chiefmccloud.ytmnd.com/
#121:
I HATE the AFLAC commercials, too. Far more than “Jim Henson’s __________ Babies.” In fact, I had a girlfriend whose catchphrase was the AFLAC duck’s noise. Needless to say, we broke up.
It seems to me like most responders missed the point. I think by “driving a riff into the ground” they meant over the course of multiple episodes. Although there are single movie offenders (like in “Final Sacrifice” when they keep referencing a football player I’d never heard of) the one they truly ran into the ground was…
UPSETTING SHORTS.
Every Japanese movie they showed had some kid in tiny shorts and EVERY TIME he showed up on screen someone always threw out, “…in my upsetting shorts!”. Funny the first time, not so funny by season ten.
I’ll just repeat the Jim Henson’s ________ Babies comment.
On the other hand, one running gag that never got old for me was the “Liiiuciiiiiillllllllllee” gag whenever a Mr Moonie lookalike appeared on screen. Odd, because I wasn’t that big a fan of The Lucy Show…
For me, I could do without ever hearing “I can see my house from here.” again. However, I could never get enough “Jim Henson’s ______Babies” riffs.
In defense of the upsetting shorts comments, they were always THERE. And they truly were UPSETTINGLY SHORT. I submit that the wisecracks about the shorts were more of a coping mechanism than anything else. Ow! The sawgrass! :cry:
I never get sick of SLEEEEEP!!! or JEEEEDDDD!
but that’s me.
The “Biography” jokes were testing my patience during the actual “Clonus” movie but it was all worth it for the end credit skit the guys do. Especially love ‘Peter Graves’ condescending hatred of his brother James Arnes.
“James Arnes: Ugly and Stupid. Tonight on Biography.”
How about one’s that were initiated by the mads. I really hated the “Deep Hurting” bit and the subsequent “Sandstorm” bit. I concur about the whole Chief, Mccloud thing aarghh. Also it “must be smuckers preserves.” some of my favs though are the songs being sung by people in (really old) Tenagers from Outerspace and the “I like it very much” killed me every time.
The only riff that came close to being run into the ground for me was “Chief? McCloud!” during Pod People. It definitely would have gotten old had they not mixed it up with other names. “Mr. Eddie’s Father? Leviathan?” Hilarious.
Not a huge fan of “JEEEED!” either. I guess I don’t have too many tapes where Tom is using that bit…
It occurs to me that kids who are somehow just getting into MST3K today (I guess “kids” could be carelessly defined as being born 1993 and on) might have a really hard time understanding and responding to the pop cultural detritus that comprised much of the show’s comedy mine. I’ve always thought the “Pepperidge Farm remembers” jokes were funny, especially because they nail the voice, but if you didn’t see those commercials how are you going to find that anything but weird?
I only bring this up because I’ve heard the Brains talk about their philosophy of the show as being “timeless” in the sense that they tried to avoid explicitly “topical” humor (though you can always find a few topical riffs in any given episode). I guess some of their stuff is timeless, especially the drugs and sex humor (of which there is, thankfully, a LOT), but so much of it is going to be lost in the crowded memory hole that is TV advertising.
I follow your blog for a long time and should tell you that your posts always prove to be of a high value and quality for readers.
I’m starting to realize that one person’s favorite running gags are another person’s least favorite… we’re a pretty varied group.
I personally think they made too many 90’s singer references and then-topical impersonations in later seasons (like the CRASH TEST DUMMIES impression being in a skit or two) but I’m not sure thats a running gag so much as a leitmotif. I also hated hearing “peed it down his leg” as an occasional stock phrase riff by Mike or Bill.
But I LOVED the phone voices Joel used to do, and never got tired of “hi-keeba” or “SLEEEP!”
How about for a future discussion ‘riff we don’t get’ then the following posters could enlighten the poster before them. just an idea.
“Attica! Attica!” gets old for me …
but depending on my frame of mind some riffs that are annoying are suddenly funny. It’s relative.
I always laugh when they pull out Herc’s “i’m so sleepy I can barely keep awake”
I agree with Nick ‘riffs we don’t get’ could be a good topic, although most of the obscure ones are explained on various MST3k websites.
Maybe ‘favorite totally random weird riffs’ would be a good one too.
I have to say I like running gags, its like a connection to the show that frequent viewers will only get. There are some that work better than others. I like the Larry Czonka references in Final Sacrifice because I watched him play when I was a kid.
I liked when someone got hit or beat up, Joel would say “hurts doin’t it?, tell your friends” or when a rocket goes up they would all say “good morning”.
Interesting thread. Re: the fat riffs, I think it depends on the context. I think they work really well in Mitchell and Final Sacrifice, are a bit overdone in Overdrawn, and way overplayed in Final Justice. In Mitchell and Final Sacrifice the slob factor gives more variety. Final Justice is mainly fat jokes and Malta-bashing, so there seems to be less variety in the riffs.
For the record, I’m in the dislike the Jim Henson’s _______ Babies riffs most of all camp. “Smuckers” bums me out as well, especially when Joel did a couple in quick succession.
Ok, it didn’t dawn on me until I watched “Time of the Apes” again, but you know, 20 references to apes throwing poop is not 20 times funnier than one reference to apes throwing poop.
…but would 20 times the poop be funnier?
It breaks my heart to complain about anything MST! But I understand where you all are coming from. For me, the only things that annoy are the really obscure references to people/things I know nothing about. (Can I really blame the Brains for this, though?)For the record, I love “Are you ready for some football?” in Laserblast, and the Jim Henson baby comments (“Jim Henson’s Gandhi babies” is a particular fave.) And Final Sacrifice is a personal favorite, too. “Je-e-e-ed” was irritating, all right, but gets redeemed by Servo pulling a gun on Mike and Crow to make them do his Beverly Hillbillies sketch at the end of Leech Woman. Some of Joel’s mannerisms are more likely to mildly irritate me than Mike’s (e.g., “Hikeeba”). Some of the host segments I can do with out–but you can fast-forward by them. Fat jokes, fart jokes–bring ’em on, I say!