{"id":24685,"date":"2018-07-05T08:30:37","date_gmt":"2018-07-05T12:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/?p=24685"},"modified":"2018-07-05T15:45:52","modified_gmt":"2018-07-05T19:45:52","slug":"weekend-discussion-thread-episode-guide-first-draft-1113-the-christmas-that-almost-wasnt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/?p=24685","title":{"rendered":"Episode guide: 1113- The Christmas that Almost Wasn\u2019t"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Movie:<\/strong> (1966) Santa has to get a job — as a department store Santa — to earn money to pay his overdue rent bill.<\/p>\n

Opening:<\/strong> Jonah wants to sing a Christmas carol, but picks the one song people don\u2019t know the words to
\nInvention exchange<\/strong>: Kinga still plans to marry Jonah, but Synthia isn\u2019t helping; J&tB have the Re-Gifter; the Mads have “Humbug FM”
\nSegment 1:<\/strong> J&tB review classic Santa toys
\nSegment 2: <\/strong>J&tB try to explain the creepy toys
\nSegment 3:<\/strong> Santa and Baby Whipple visit
\nClosing:<\/strong> Christmas slide show
\nStinger:<\/strong> Hohohohoho, hey Sam, this is fun! Hohoho!
\n

\u2022 Overall a pretty good episode, and a nice addition to the stable of MST3K\/Rifftrax\/Cinematic Titanic Christmas movies to choose from every year.
\n\u2022 There’s a brief reference to the upcoming wedding, and a reminder that Synthia is there. Setting things up for the next episode.
\n\u2022 Instead of a medley of tunes from the legacy series, during the breaks the Skeleton Crew plays its version of \u201cPatrick Swayze Christmas.”
\n\u2022 I love a good running gag. I really do. They can be frustrating, at times, to some viewers, but I think it usually works if the underlying joke is funny. That’s the problem, I think, with the “I’m a baby” running gag (of which there were, by my count, 20 mentions). The original joke just doesn\u2019t land for me. I don’t think he looks at all like a baby. Sorry…
\n\u2022 The scene with the kids pouring out of houses to give Santa money must have felt very familiar to Joel.
\n\u2022 At one point, when it looks like something on the screen is going to explode, the riffers run for their lives…they quickly return.
\n\u2022 The line “fightin’s outta style,” had to have come from Firesign Theatre fan Joel.
\n\u2022 Segment two is a cute idea, hampered by the low-res images from the movie that were shown. A little hard to make out.
\n\u2022 Obscure reference: “Omar comin’!” (Fans of “The Wire” got it.)
\n\u2022 Is it me or were there a noticeably large number of “Dune” references in this one, for some reason?
\n\u2022 I love Joel’s completely offhand Santa. He’s not even trying to do a different voice.
\n\u2022 That was Elliot Kalan as Baby Whipple.
\n\u2022 Actor Salvatore Furnari was also in “Hercules & the Captive Women.” and Rosanno Brazzi played Don Lamanna in “Final Justice.”
\n\u2022 Classic riff: \u201cThey\u2019ve created their own Thunderdome.\u201d \u201cJonah, can\u2019t we get beyond Thunderdome?\u201d
\n\u2022 Fave riff: \u201cYou can always tell when a building used to be an i-Hop.\u201d Honorable mention: \u201cWow this tea kicked in fast!\u201d and \u201cYou sure you\u2019re not confusing children with spiders?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\n

Movie: (1966) Santa has to get a job — as a department store Santa — to earn money to pay his overdue rent bill.<\/p>\n

Opening: Jonah wants to sing a Christmas carol, but picks the one song people don\u2019t know the words to Invention exchange: Kinga still plans to marry Jonah, but […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[23,33],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24685","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-episode-guide","category-the-relaunch","odd"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24685"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26317,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24685\/revisions\/26317"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24685"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24685"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mst3kinfo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24685"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}