Turkey Day 2019 (MST3K Special)

Someone's heart just wasn't in it this year.

Here's the thing about this Turkey Day, while I can appreciate that it was put together while the latest Live Show was still touring and a lot of the cast was unavailable, there isn't a whole lot to say about what's here.  The theme this year is that the Bots are bored while taking a break from the latest tour while all of the humans are visiting with their families for the holidays, including their handler Emily Crenshaw (played by Emily Marsh, who cameos in the first and last segments).  Meanwhile, the Bots due little minute long comedy bits and introduce the next movie.

On the surface, I can see this is partially an ad for the Cheesy Circus Tour show (which I got to see when they toured Boise for one glorious night).  It's mostly them selling their tour cast with Nate Begle as Crow, Connor McGiffin as Tom Servo, and Yvonne Freese as Gypsy's mini-counterpart GPC.  The bits are cute, but that being said, the problem I'm having with this crew being here is that Turkey Day is a celebration of the television series, which means not having the Bots voiced by the crew of the TV series feels very odd.  And people who weren't able to attend the live tours have no idea who GPC and Emily are.  This was especially off-putting as the revival show had recently been announced for cancellation just before this Turkey Day aired, and seeing a cast that is clearly not the TV cast doing these segments wasn't very reassuring or comforting about the future of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

But making all of this even more disheartening is the episode selection, which is not only full of episodes that have already had their Turkey Day love, but upon closer inspection is virtually identical to the 2013 Turkey Day marathon.  The only difference is Final Sacrifice is swapped out for Laserblast, which is likely because Shout Factory had lost the rights to show Final Sacrifice.  Even worse, Laserblast was featured on last year's Turkey Day.  This lazy recycling of a Turkey Day just makes the whole experience boring, no matter how good these episodes are.  There is no surprise here, no passion for the selection.  This is just not something I can be enthusiastic about.

Space Mutiny (3rd Turkey Day)
I Accuse My Parents (3rd Turkey Day)
Werewolf (2nd Turkey Day)
Cave Dwellers (3rd Turkey Day)
Laserblast (2nd Turkey Day)
Mitchell (6th Turkey Day)

Average Rating (out of 4):  3.833

Technically with episodes this good, this Turkey Day should be a winner.  But the little things cause it to wilt a little bit and grow stale.  The episode selection is a cut-and-paste job and the bumpers are under par.  It fulfils the Turkey Day needs, but there really should be more to it than this.  Add into the fact that Netflix and Joel had just recently announced that the series wouldn't be picked up for a thirteenth season, this Turkey Day seems tainted and just uncelebratory.