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Weekend Discussion Thread: Seeing the ‘Mitchell’ Ep for the First Time? Well, we’ve finally gotten around to episode 512- MITCHELL in the episode guide rotation, so let’s talk about it.Were you a fan then? Where were you when you saw it? (My story is in my episode guide comments.) What did you think? If you weren’t a fan then, what did you think when you finally saw it? And I don’t just want to hear about the host change. What about the movie itself? 100 Replies to “Weekend Discussion Thread: Seeing the ‘Mitchell’ Ep for the First Time?”Commenting at Satellite News
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My only film experience with Jo Don Baker until Mitchell had been “Walking Tall” where he played a clean cut family man respected by the community. Ha!
I didn’t see it until it came out on dvd. I didn’t get CC where I grew up. It has become one of my favorite Joel episodes though. The movie is so perfect for MST. Doughy lead character. Cheesy TV movie effects. Corny attempts at comedy.
And Joel’s departure? Perfectly done.
I didn’t see Mitchell until years later, but to be honest, it didn’t strike me as any worse than the million other rogue cop 70s movies that my Dad used to watch. The only thing that really struck me was the scene where Mitchell needlessly antagonizes the annoying kid. Even today, I don’t understand why they decided their protagonist needed to be so completely unlikeable.
I was 12 Years old when it came out. The phrase “wakachicka” was for ever ingrained into my vocabulary. I saw it at a family friend’s house and they kept walking in and catching bits of it and laughing especially the “I do this every time! Scares my cats half to death” riff. I felt so cool since the adults found it funny it made me feel validated.
I was a fan at the time, but I was at a disadvantage. At the time, my cable company had dropped The First Network Which Shall Remain Nameless. However, the daughter of one of my co-workers still had it, so she taped it for me. If my memory serves me correctly (Chairman Kaga), it wasn’t until Season 6 started that I got it back. I had to ration the ones I’d taped until then.
As for the ep, top notch stuff!
Not only is “Mitchell” my favorite episode of MST3K, the riffed version is one of my favorite movies of all time and one of my favorite TV show episodes of all time. It is definitely the most formative thing I have seen in terms of what I find funny. I enjoy it today as much as ever before.
My first MST3K episode was “Rocketship X-M” and I really became a fan when I caught “The Sidehackers.” So I was a big fan by the fifth season. And when I saw “Mitchell” for the first time, way back when it originally aired, I recognized its greatness right away. But I was only 14 and missed a lot of the jokes (and never managed to tape it). But when I bought the VHS release from Rhino in late 2000, that was when almost every line translated to civilian life. Since then, I doubt a day has gone by when I have not said a line from the episode, either to myself or dropped in conversation. “Hot merging action.” “Just another Wednesday night at Mitchell’s.” “Schlitz would listen to me right now.” “A very special Joe Don Baker Christmas.” “Word on the street is, you’re a jerk.” “Mitchell goes as big as his life.” “Big buttery moon up there.” “Well, she was going to smell like beer sooner or later.” “Reynolds wrap: keeps freshness in, can’t keep Mitchell out.” “I can’t wear yellow.” “Boss is such a dink.” And on and on and on.
I have never been bothered by the host change. I love Joel and Mike. Sort of like when you have kids, you love each of them differently but just as much as the other. Maybe if I had been older with access to those early chat rooms, I would have thought differently. The thing for me is, and the reason I am disobeying Sampo’s order and mentioning this, “Mitchell” is greatness through and through. The show’s peak in my opinion. What happened before and after has no bearing on how much I love this episode. And whether others love “Mitchell” as much as me or not, I would guess that most fans of the show feel the same way about their favorite episode.
Of course my main interest in this episode was Joel’s departure. ‘Mitchell’ itself was pretty much a standard 70s cop film, like ‘Dirty Harry’ but sillier. It’s amazing watching films like those. They did a lot of stuff that no police officer would get away with today.
Mitchell was the only film I saw before the MST3K treatment; I was probably nine or ten and it was on cable.
The first time I saw the MST3K treatment, I picked up the DVD in 2002.
The film was just pure 70s cheese and probably had the most coherent plot of any of the films shown on the series. But it was a loathsome film. Joe Don Baker has the charisma of a jelly donut and appeal of a fossilized mushroom.
I started watching MST3K in Season 5. My first episode was War of the Colossal Beast and I was hooked. I couldn’t wait to watch another one. The next one airing was the double feature of Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and Santa Claus. I was stunned when Santa Claus aired and I realized there was a different host. I did some research and realized the show had switched hosts recently. I watched a few more Joel eps in reruns, most notably The Lost Continent which became an all-time favorite. I believe the next Mike eps I saw was a rerun of Alien From LA and then a first run of Village of the Giants. It was obvious to me that I adored the show and that I loved both hosts. I became determined to see the transitional episode and tracked down Mitchell from a tape trader on Prodigy. I had no idea what to expect regarding the movie or plot for the host segments. I remember the tape trader saying something like, “enjoy Mitchell, he’s a hell of a guy.” I didn’t know the genre or anything, I kind of remember thinking Mitchell would be an alien or robot.
Actually watching the episode for the first time was riveting. I was so fascinated to see what would happen in the host segments and hung on every second. I kind of assumed the movie would be an afterthought b/c I was so interested in Joel’s departure and Mike’s arrival. And then, the movie began. The riffing was so strong, the movie was so delightfully bad and Joe Don was so perfectly unlikable that I became totally caught up in it. I still believe the best riffing in the entire show’s run is probably from Mitchell. They are firing on all cylinders and have the perfect foil in Joe Don.
Back to the host segments…I loved how they handled the Joel/Mike transition. It was perfect and I believe, in retrospect, by far the strongest transitional host segments. Samson, Night of the Bloodbeast, Laserblast, Revenge of the Creature and Diabolik were the seismic shift episodes and I felt they had varying degrees of success but none touched Mitchell. “I’m sorry folks, I can’t come back, I don’t know how it works!” was the perfect sendoff.
A truly brilliant episode from start to finish and probably the zenith of the entire show’s run.
Wow, totally agree. Great post!
I remember seeing this TV movie prior to MST3K and was bored by it. When shown on MST3K I found the movie itself to be goofy and typical TV movie fare for the 70s, ripe for a riffing. I also thought Linda Evans was very hot, until I saw her in this. The image of her on a pull out couch, metal bar to the small of the back, and a very oily Mitchel mauling her changed that in a hurry. Like John Derrick, I switched to Bo. Maybe this had something to do with their divorce?
I also agree with Droppo on the host change.
I have to admit the details aren’t burned into my memory; it’s a matter of “relatively confident” for me. Anyway, I’m “relatively confident” I first saw the episode (and the movie itself) on videotape in the late 1990s. MST3K didn’t air on cable up around here; I first became aware of the show through reading MSTings. Before too long, I was interested enough in the simple idea of the show that I got my grandparents to tape MST3K the Movie off the movie channel (it did get shown up here), and after that I started renting some of the Rhino videotapes from a well-stocked video store near my university. I’d heard “the movie may be entertaining, but the show is that much better”… except that it did seem to take me an episode or two for the Joel-era shows I was renting to really click with me. I got around to Mitchell not that much later, and again I’m pretty sure it agreed quite well with me; I’m about as sure I bought my own copy on videotape before starting to collect the DVDs.
“What about the movie itself?”
The version of Mitchell we saw was a version edited for TV. For example –
Linda Evans writes JERK on Mitchell’s windshield instead of BASTARD.
Mitchell tells the boy “Buzz off, Kid!” instead of “Piss Off, Kid!”.
And yet they left the bottle of baby oil on the bedside stand. Go figure.
Wait, the show changed hosts? I had no idea. Weird that nobody’s ever mentioned it before. Fans on the internet usually tend to nitpick the hell out of stuff like that…
ANYWAY, I was only dimly aware of the show’s existence in 1993, not having cable (let alone access to the “information superhighway”), and when I eventually got around to seeing Mitchell for the first time I had seen at least as many, if not more, Mike episodes as Joels by that point, so the passing of the baton was already couched in history for me. In another time and place, I may very well have suffered from a disproportionately emotional reaction, too.
I don’t have much in the way in personal observations, but one thing I definitely appreciate is that Mitchell is way up near the top of the list of movies that were perfect riffing fodder. MST3K featured only a handful of films that wouldn’t have been completely overshadowed by the goings-on aboard the SOL and down in Deep 13. Contrast Mitchell with, say, Timmy in Fire Maidens or the Mirror Mirror stuff in Last of The Wild Horses, or even Mr B Natural and whatever movie came after it (I can’t even remember at the moment). Featuring a lesser movie in this particular experiment would’ve been like testing a flashlight outside at noon on a sunny day. I wonder, did they purposely save Mitchell for the big episode, knowing that Joel was getting itchy, or was it just good luck?
Oh, one other thing: I somehow always forget that the movie takes place around Christmas. Probably because it’s set in Southern California. I often envy the weather down there, but I can’t imagine spending the Holidays at 70°F. (Well I couldn’t before this past winter, anyway…) Has anyone tried to make Mitchell an Xmastime tradition like Die Hard, or every Shane Black movie?
My second favorite episode after “Space Mutiny”. Such a wonderfully terrible movie, awesome riffing… I need to watch it again. Maybe tomorrow, as a Father’s day gift to myself. Mitchell would not be a good father, that’s for sure.
Favorite riffs:
1. The repeated “Our hero, ladies and gentlemen”.
2. Servo’s screaming during the Mitchell/random kid “discussion”.
3. “Baby oil???!!!”
I went in all set to enjoy Cheesy 70’s Cop-Show Mildly Upgraded Into Goofy Cheap Action Movie. (And I didn’t have any presumed burning grudges about JDB being a repulsive hideous Gollum, since he had actually sort of fun to watch as James Bond’s American-bubba sub-villain in 007’s The Living Daylights a few years earlier). Didn’t seem like it was particularly MSTieable fodder, but hey, neither did I Accuse My Parents, so it was a question of what the jokes brought.
Mike was just The New Kid, who everyone remembered from Glen Manning and Torgo imitations, so it was like first watching that new South African guy on the Daily Show–Yes, he’s not the original, but who is? Hey, give him a break, he’s playing the Lovable Archie-Andrews Minimum-Wage Part-Timer, like in the new opening song.
And then the opening credits, where we just see JDB’s eye on screen as we hear the song, and they immediately go in FOR. THE. KILL. Against Baker, not the character, or else that must have been one heck of an eye.
It’s that same squicky feeling of watching the writers work out some personal hostility that the audience isn’t party to, like when Jeffrey Katzenberg made the first Shrek to get back at his old Disney boss, and we see the movie open on using fairytales for toilet paper. Up to that point, the appeal of watching the CC episodes was the Letterman-like found-humor of watching the movie embarrass itself (why else would “Watch out for snakes!” still be so hilariously funny?), but watching someone else bring their own tantrum to the microphone to rub it in the audience’s face isn’t funny. Period. Whether or not it brings up old school-bullying button issues–oh, but I’m sure none of us have those–it presumes TOO MUCH that we’re on the audience’s side and want to attack the target as much as the comic does.
There’s an unwritten rule of comic audiences that “The comic should not personally enjoy telling the joke too much.” A), it takes away from the hip image that the comic is the all-purpose gadfly who’ll take on any target, to see him vent some personal grudge, and B) by asking everyone else to get behind him on the playground, it makes him look like the Gang Bully.
The Mitchell Debate is not, and has never been about, “Eww, Mike, I want Joel back!”, it’s not about “I’m anal and I don’t want to change anything!”, and it’s not about “They got rid of my favorite TV person in the world!”
It’s about “MST3K, this episode was BENEATH YOU. You have every right to be ASHAMED of the jokes in this episode.” And to those angry disgruntled fans who say “You’re wrong, it’s the funniest episode in the world!”, and want to join in with more parroting fan-cult jokes about JDB being a repulsive blob of baby-oil, would I be wrong in guessing what general age you were when you first saw this episode? (Like an age when actually getting behind the Cool Gang Bully on the playground to pick on the pickable kid seemed like the coolest bit of social acceptance you could find, because now you had a spiritual leader?) Or whether it was one of the first episodes you ever tuned in on?
The succeeding S6-7 and SyFy episodes also started turning the tone of the show from the relatable comic survival of “No, not more rock-climbing, make it stop!” to the arrogant personal spleen-venting of “(pfft!) C’mon, movie, start doing something, we’re bored with you already!”.
But maybe it’s all the backstage troubles that contributed to the Last Old Show And First New Show feeling it was Making Up For Lost Time. Even for a, quote, Joel Episode–although he spends most of the time leaving it, like he was more than getting ready to–t’s the Mike-iest Mike Episode of the entire series, and I’m not sure we want to know the reasons why.
One of the all-time funniest episodes of the Joel-era. You can tell the writers wanted to make sure Joel went out with a bang. Of course the film provides a lot of material.
I remember one moment from the film that always confused me. The part towards the end where the helicopter police just randomly drop Mitchell off at some bait shop near the ocean, prompting Servo’s “Mitchell, you should have thought about doing that before we left!”
It took a few viewings before I realized Mitchell is recovering the drugs he was supposed to be transporting while in “disguise”. Mitchell rather sloppily mentions it to one of the crooks just before his car blows up, but it’s so easy to miss.
When not knowing any of this it really does look like Mitchell is stopping off to use the bathroom. It doesn’t help that when he rushes back out, it looks like he’s adjusting his pants (he’s actually putting the drugs in his pocket).
Kevin Murphy getting hit by the Daktari Stool is on the LOOOOOOONG list of things that you go a few years without noticing….. and then some fan points it out to you, and now you can’t NOT notice it whenever you watch the episode.
Watch carefully in Segment 2, when Joel is looking for his magazine, you can see Jim Mallon’s hand pulling Gypsy’s mouth chord (what the hell was he doing with his hand that high above the table for?)
The episode also has one of my favorite “stylistic suck” moments from the show. The snow/static that interferes with Joel’s transmission is…… actual snow.
I was 8, it was the Turkey Day marathon, and I didn’t quite get the “riffing” segments – mostly I just watched the show for the skits. I was also not yet a regular viewer and totally unaware of the backstage changes going on. Joel escaping at the end and the next episode coming on with Mike on the SOL blew my little mind.
My cable company, in their infinite wisdom, didn’t carry Comedy Central when Mystery Science Theater 3000 initially aired. My only exposure to MST3K was through commercials and written reviews until a local TV affiliate picked up episodes of the Mystery Science Theater Hour (not counting MTV’s Comedy Weekend broadcast of Alien from LA). I enjoyed MST3K more than anything else I’ve ever seen on TV, so when I heard about Rhino’s VHS releases, I snapped up a copy of Mitchell without thinking twice. That was the case for all of Rhino’s VHS releases, actually.
Even without having seen the overwhelming majority of MST3K episodes, I thought of Mitchell as a favorite episode less than halfway through the VHS tape. I laughed until my throat hurt. This episode only served to raise my already high esteem of the show. I never heard of Joe Don Baker, but I certainly had an opinion of him when it was all over!
Because Mitchell was one of the first few episodes I’ve seen (with Alien from LA being the only Mike episode I’ve seen, and that as a distant memory from two years prior), the host change didn’t have the emotional impact on me as it undoubtedly had on longtime fans who spent years enjoying Joel’s work. Maybe if I watched the show for years and really formed an attachment to Joel’s tenure as host, I would have been more affected by Joel’s departure on that first viewing. (Now that I’ve watched the rest of the series, I can really feel and understand the gravity of the big goodbye.) That said, I thought it was a well-handled means of giving the reins to new host Mike Nelson.
The real meat-and-potatoes of the episode for me were the riffs, and there were so many great ones! The “eye on the sammich/waka-ja-waka” musical moment was a high point, all the random yells of “MITCHELL!”, the endless parade of drunken slob jokes, the riffs over the dinner scene, the horror over the love scene, everything.
The movie itself struck me as a headscratchingly mediocre film. Much like Crow’s riff of “Why would anyone want to do this with Mitchell, Joel?”, I was left wondering why anyone would want to see this during its initial release. The only explanation I can think of is that Baker’s 1973 film Walking Tall was a box office hit, so some producers thought that lightning could strike twice and try to make a quick buck off the heat generated by 1970s cop/detective films that handled this kind of material much more effectively. (John Saxon and Martin Balsam in particular gave the impression that they were in this only for the paycheck.) But, when you think about it, perhaps it was the generally uninspired nature of this movie that convinced the Brains that they had an instant classic on their hands.
Back to the episode, it’s my favorite Joel installment of MST3K, and so great was my love for this episode that I used my VHS copy to get new fans hooked to the show. In junior high as well as high school, I would hand off my copy of Mitchell to friends and say, “Give this show a shot. I think you’ll really find a lot to enjoy here!” In a number of cases, I succeeded. Even with the host change story in the host segments, I find that it’s quite a potent episode when it comes to recruiting new MSTies.
Too many good memories connected to this episode. I can’t tell you how happy I am that it exists.
No it’s because you’re a joel fanboy who thinks everything he does is automatically great but hate anything Mike related even if it’s something that Joel did too but that’s ok because Joel’s the greatest thing ever to you and can never do no wrong. Also your pretentious diatribes don’t mask the fact you’re a hypocrite
(And we’re all liars if we deny the goofy charm of Hoyt Axton’s theme song.)
And I would be a liar if I said I didn’t laugh at the last pop-in of “…MITCHELL!” on the end-credits song.
Because it’s a joke about the MOVIE. It’s watching an audience react in a goofy way. Which up to that point, we thought the show should have been about.
And since the Brains still thought that Mike is “The New Kid we have to just change a few name references for”, we get the old-school cheese of Brain That Wouldn’t Die next, followed by the supremely old-school Make-It-Stop of “Wild World of Batwoman”–But those days of a goofy rowdy audience were soon about to change, and if we thought the ugly personal invective of this episode was just some freak isolated exception…
And let’s not forget that John Saxon’s dune buggy scene that was left out of the MSTed version, which is only alluded to on Mitchell’s car radio, relaying something like “Walter M. Deaney died today when his dune buggy…” I can only wonder how the Brains would’ve tackled that scene.
Apparently, there is also a scene where Mitchell’s superior Aldridge swipes something from his desk, prompting Mitchell to call him a “cookie stealer.” If that scene was in the copy of Mitchell that the Brains screened, I want to believe that they stopped the tape right there and unleashed a barrage of food-related jokes for a good half-hour or so.
There’s no other way that they could have ended that last theater segment (and perfectly timed with the music, too), and all of us would have been somewhat disappointed if they didn’t go that way.
Joe Don Baker and Hoyt Axton — separated at birth? They do have similarities, but…. nah, I actually liked Hoyt Axton in Gremlins and I hate JDB in anything.
I didn’t see this movie for the longest time, since I didn’t really get into MST3K until the Mike years, then started watching every Saturday morning with my kids. Never saw Mitchell unriffed (thank goodness) but it is yawn-inducingly typical of the made-for-TV ’70s crap that we drowned in back in the day. Def a top 10 MST episode, one for the desert island.
I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t enjoy Joe Don Baker as Jack Wade in Goldeneye and Tomorrow Never Dies. That was better than his turn as the antagonistic Brad Whitaker in The Living Daylights, anyway.
And JDB was a genuinely intimidating presence in Charley Varrick, too.
Oh, EricJ, never change.
Or wait, yes, do change, into someone who’s not a troll.
(I…actually didn’t remember Jack Wade in TND. Although all that Michelle Yeoh onscreen might have contributed to my general distraction, and I’m still afraid to watch the rest of Goldeneye to see how squicky and wrong it gets.)
I think we have to come clean and admit a few things to ourselves:
For all the raving new-generation fans who say “Mitchell and Space Mutiny are the two greatest episodes in the history of Western Civilization!”, just how much of that love for Mutiny is “Huhuh, 80’s…”, and how much of the Mitchell love is “Huhuh, beer…?”
Okay. Back to Mitchell. Joe Don Baker was born in the tiny central Texas town of Groesbeck, right down the road from the slightly less tiny town of Mexia which gave the world Anna Nicole Smith. KnowIng that part of the world as I do there is nothing in my thoughts but admiration for anyone who could rise from such a beginning (and an education a North Texas State) to rise to any level of success in the artistic world. The high school mascot of Groesbeck High is a goat. They were going to change the name at Mexia High to the Mexia Mammories after Anna Nicole met her untimely end, but the Baptist majority on the school board nixed it. Forgive me, I digress.
Joe Don was given the job of portraying a slobbish, ill mannered cop and he put everything had into the roll. I suspect he relied on examples from his childhood for guidance. Give the man a break.
I’m so glad we’ve got folks who prolifically post here who never make me fail to say: “Oh, WAIT; it’s just a show…” ;-)
(…EDIT BUTTON!!)
Yeah, Walking Tall would…pretty much be the reason. The first Walking, and the cheap sequels, were pretty much B-fare, back when there were still B-movies, drive-ins to play them, and struggling B-release companies like Crown and Amer.Int’l to put them there. Mitchell was released by Allied Artists, so putting the Walking Tall star on the poster with another big phallic caveman weapon, a girl, some gunplay, and a car would pretty much appeal to the red-state audience on a Friday night, and back then, one good Friday is all you hoped for. (Yeah, and I remember Incredible Melting Man and Giant Spider Invasion from that time too…Oh, I miss those days. :( )
As to why MST3K, well, that would also be Allied Artists. And the fact that the movie sank into public domain when AA went under. (And I mean Allied Artists, no beer jokes please.) Hard truth is, most of our memories from both halves of the series comes from a cable-budgeted series that could only mostly show public-domain movies, and it might look better here than it would on a “50 Best Action Movies” DVD set at Wal-mart, but that doesn’t mean it was particularly selected with care. If the Brains did pick it out of an affordable crowd of representatively chintzy 70’s bubba-movies (aside from ones where Ron Howard pops the clutch and tells the world to eat his dust), it was picked for the opportunity of JDB jokes.
And that’s where the more enthusiastic fans have to start asking themselves some searing personal questions.
uh…no
It was the third of September. That day I’ll always remember
This was one of those few episodes that took me a while to warm up to. The movie itself is SO bad, so “70s-made-for-TV-movie” cheesy, with absolutely nothing and no one likable in it. Not to mention the incomprehensible plot (I still have no idea what the connection was supposed to be between Deany and Cummings, or why Mistretta and Gallano were intent on bringing stolen heroin in via Cummings’ port, etc.)
Then there was the sadness of losing Joel, which kind of tainted the whole episode for me.
So while I enjoyed watching it the first time thanks to the great riffing, it took me a while before I could watch it again. Seeing how well things went with Mike as host helped a lot — I could rewatch Mitchell without the sadness. And it was great! It’s now one of my favorites.
BTW, I’m 61 now, and was in my late 30s when Mitchell first aired. So bite me, EricJ.
First saw the episode in 1995. Thanks to Comedy Central airing MST3k every day, sometimes twice a day, I was able to primitively bingewatch the show. While I was excited to see the departure/transition I have to say this episode is NOT one of my favorites nor is it in my regular rotation. The ugly seventies-ness of the movie makes it somewhat unappealing to me but there’s some great moments/riffing to be had. I typically avoid the 511-513 stretch.
Joe Don Baker was gross in this but he was AWESOME in Charlie Varrick. Worth a look IMO.
#17 – Your issues with bullies/bullying are polluting your mind. You really should see a therapist.
Another one is the latter-day western “The Wild Rovers”, where he plays the more level-headed and sympathetic of two brothers pursuing the leads (played by William Holden and Ryan O’Neal).
I’d seen bits of the show before but I really got hooked on the show around 1998 when it was on the Sci-Fi Channel. I went to Sam Goody’s (remember that store!?) and bought Mitchell and MST3K: The Movie on VHS, because that was all they had. I’d never seen a complete Joel episode before that. I knew it was his last episode so was mainly was just surprised it wasn’t a science fiction movie! At the time I thought that was all they did. It’s also a funny episode so it didn’t leave me with the impression that Joel was worse than Mike or anything and it just seemed like “oh, the show has always been really funny.” I was really excited to see more Joel episodes after that and the ones I bought next, “Pod People” and “Eegah”, were also winners, but more typical types of movies for the show.
The movie just seemed to me like a really awkward white version of Shaft. It didn’t strike me as a super terrible movie at the time but the more you think about it afterward it really is strange. I didn’t know anything about Walking Tall so it’s like why would you make your hero this slovenly guy? Even that shot of him holding the spear on the poster is really awkward. Anyway, Mitchell is like nothing else MST3K ever did… until Final Justice. But at least Final Justice could make him look like a cowboy on the poster.
I genuinely enjoy Joe Don Baker and respect him as an actor. That said, he is oily and despicable as Mitchell (Though, to be completely fair, I believe that was intentional on the part of the filmmakers.) But bear this in mind: the Brains watched the movie, what, six, seven, eight times or more before the script was completed? So, to claim that their ire of Joe Don as Mitchell from the very opening titles is unwarranted belies at best a lack of understanding of their creative process and at worst a willful axe to grind.
I was 45 when I first saw Mitchell. And I would say it was about the 40th episode I watched. Although you are right about one thing – it’s not the “funniest episode in the world” to me, only about the 5th funniest.
New theory?
Mitchell is one of those eps with a weird quality. Every frame has burned itself into my memory. I hate to rewatch it because there’s NOTHING I get out of further viewing.
Some eps keep giving up their secrets. Not Mitchell. Anybody else have this reaction to this one or any others, that they stick TOO well?
Incidentally, there’s an obscure movie from 1970 called “Adam at 6 AM.” It was Michael Douglas’ second starring role. Joe Don Baker played a country boy who helps Michael Douglas get along on a summer job cutting brush. He was AWESOME. Credible, likeable, a solid performance.
What happened?
On the rare occasions when even the early Joel-era CC starts over-indulging on the personal attacks, like they did with the Sandy Frank jokes in Mighty Jack and Time of the Apes, it’s usually a more personal product of familiarity breeding contempt–The fact that they already had to go through the movies in the KTMA days, and go through the same ones again in detail during S3, would make anyone a little cranky. The Sandy Frank song in Apes was a bit of overly personal overkill, but at least we’re allowed to know where it comes from.
But it still illustrates the “Don’t enjoy the joke” rule of why a comic should be professional in doing his job and distance himself to only the key timed gags. When the Mike & Kevin era didn’t know when enough personal-avenged hostility was enough, and Baker was literally bullied with the “Munch, munch, chew, chew” Gluttony song in Final Justice (partly because the SciFi era wanted to pimp fan Mitchell-love to within an inch of its life), we’re sitting there and trying to back off a little saying, “Guys….This is YOUR battle to fight, not ours. We’re outta this, we’re neutral.”
OTOH, when it’s a movie-related joke timed to something strange happening onscreen, they’re reacting like we’re reacting and the joke is shared. But it has to be a found joke that CAN be shared–I don’t what they had to “go through” to do it, we don’t tune into watch three comics amuse themselves unless we get a little something out of it too.
I am really just relaxed.
Umm. No. They don’t.
First off, the opening credits don’t just show JDB’s eye on screen. They show a poorly-shot, blurry, slow-motion “action” shot of JDB as Mitchell framed within the MITCHELL letters.
All of the jokes about appearance are clearly reactions to this sequence, particularly the blurriness and poor framing. Not once do they mention JDB personally. NOT ONCE.
I don’t know what you were watching, but it wasn’t MST3K episode 0512.
I saw this one the night it first aired, and it was an exhilarating, hilarious experience. I was very curious to see what the next week would bring.
I was kind of surprised by the choice of movie, since we rarely had gone down that road before. Does Master Ninja count?
Anyway, I was at Joel’s “Riffing Myself,” and someone asked if Mitchell was picked for the final Joel episode on purpose. Joel said the answer was no, that it was just luck of the draw, that it was the next movie up. Isn’t that crazy to think about? Why, Painted Hills, Gunslinger or even Girl In Lovers Lane may have ended up as Joel’s farewell episode. How crazy that would have been. So there was no thought to it, just pure random.
And let’s not forget, we have Frank to thank for pulling this one out of the box of VHS tapes.
Another god awful post from EricJ.
Make it two god awful posts.
Dear EricJ,
Do not watch MST3K, particularly any episodes starring Mike Nelson. The show makes you unhappy and unstable.
Best,
Droppo
seriously dude, you need some psychiatric help.
Maybe the orderlies have just left him unattended. :-P