Back in 1989, Joel Hodgson and his robot friends took their local show Mystery Science Theater 3000 to Comedy Central. The premise of MST3K was that they were forced to watch old B-movies, which they spiced up with wisecracks. That first season is rarely talked about, because the cast had yet to find their groove. However, the movies they selected were perfect for the concept. Wouldn't it be great if they could re-do those, with 30 more years of experience in riffing? That's exactly what they are going to do with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Live Riff-Along on Sunday, May 3, streaming live on multiple platforms, including Twitch, YouTube, Facebook, Pluto TV, Stirr, Xumo, Redbox, and Vizio. The show will feature a new short called Circus Day and the 1969 movie Moon Zero Two, which was part of that first season.
“We’ll be prepping—it’ll be our downtime,” Hodgson said. “People can watch us as we make it.”
And who better than the MST3K crew to act as role models for maintaining sanity and some semblance of normalcy during quarantine? Isolated from civilization with only advanced technology to keep them company, communications with the outside world restricted to the four (or six) sides of a viewscreen, whiling away the hours in front of filmed entertainments selected by malevolent overlords: These are the tragic lemons that a succession of test subjects have made into comedic lemonade for the past 30 years—and they did it all in clothes that were functional, yet comfortable, to boot.
Read about the production at the A.V. Club, and bookmark your chosen platform for watching.