"Let's Make a Meal in 20 Minutes" & A Tribute to Future War (MST3K Special)

The Short

Well, you can't say there isn't truth in advertising.  Shorts are what we wanted, and what we got was very short indeed.  Let's Make a Meal in 20 Minutes only runs a scant four minutes, and while I'm not sure if that makes it the shortest short MST3K ever tackled (the show's timing with commercial breaks makes things complicated), the closest I can think of for comparison is when RiffTrax did a combo of Why Doesn't Cathy Eat Breakfast and paired it up with Petaluma Chicken because neither by themselves reached their normal ten minute threshold for short content.  On MST3K, maybe the last Commando Cody short is comparable, which cut itself short for time.  But still, just as we're in the swing of things, Let's Cook a Meal in 20 Minutes is already over.

Maybe comedy is like a good meal.  Leave them wanting more.  Let's just make sure we don't leave them starving either.

Let's Make a Meal in 20 Minutes has a narrator micromanaging Sally, a young 50's gal who looks like she'd rather be out with her friends than stuck at home cooking a meal for daddy and brother.  But here she is, and she has only twenty minutes to get the meal done or it's the basement for her again like the time they caught her with a boy at the soda shop.  The narrator lists all the steps for her to cook a good, nutritious meal straight out of the can and onto the stove, hot and ready to eat for the men who control her life.

I'd hesitate to call this instructional, because the instructions featured in the short are not very helpful.  The short exists to tell us the steps to prepare a meal are:  Figure out what you want, cook it, put it on a plate.  End.  I mean...it could be worse.  They could have just instructed us to tear open a bag of ramen and boil it for three minutes and just drink water from the tap.  That's the bachelor pad version of this film.  The ending meal doesn't look very inspired, as it's just a slab of chopped up corned beef with corn and green beans on the side.  Or maybe it's just that I don't like corned beef weighing me down.  The corn and green beans look fine though.

I think this short exists mostly to mansplain to women how they can be more efficient in the kitchen.  Yes ma'am, you too can save time on dinner and have plenty of time to do the rest of the household chores if you follow our simple guidance.  Get your buns in the kitchen and give it a try, won't you?

There is not much momentum to the riffing of this short because there is no time to build up any, so Jonah and the Bots just come in and fire whatever they got at it.  This short can cause some flashbacks to Michael Winslow in Police Academy, because a lot of their default humor is just adding sound effects to the film.  I'd normally wouldn't be very thrilled by this, but considering the constraints they're under here, it's actually pretty fun.  Crow dips into this type of riff quite a bit and even goes on quite the noise spree during a sequence where Sally is checking everything on her stove.

It's not all down to such gags, as the show's trademark sarcasm is still here.  It's a bit haphazard, because there is very little here to comment on when it comes to imagery, which is just a girl cooking.  They latch onto the one thing they can:  the narrator, adding in narration dialogue to make sure he comes off as judgmental and pushy.  I think Crow says it best as the narrator states that now we've learned it's possible for anybody to cook a meal in twenty minutes if you have the right techniques and tools as the Bot adds "...and you're a woman."  That's probably the unspoken theme of the short, he's just saying the quiet part loud.

It's not a great short, but it is a funny one.  It's just a brief little sample of Mystery Science Theater fun and I found it tasty, but am craving more.

Thumbs Up

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The Livestream

This stream was supposed to come out last month in between Robot Wars and Beyond Atlantis and it was supposed to coincide with the Vault Picks theme of dystopian futures as it offered episodes like Time Chasers, Warrior of the Lost World, and City Limits up for all who had Vault access.  Unfortunately they decided to bump this stream until after the Gizmoplex launched and that monthly theme had already went away.  It's just as well.  Technically Future War isn't about a future dystopia.  Like Crow says "This isn't the future and it's not a war."  Future War is a pretty solid episode though (read my review here), and it deserves to be celebrated.

The new segments wrapping around the episode are pretty cute.  Jonah and the Bots spend a bit of time discussing dystopian scenarios, and the Bots' let it be known that they intend to Logan's Run him as soon as he hits 30 (if anyone asks, Jonah is 27) while they also discuss their preferred mutations should any occur after the apocalypse.  They also do a fun riff on the Droppy the Water Droplet segment, where they discuss being spokesmen for the elements of the Periodic Table (part of me wishes Pipeline to the Clouds was the opening short to this stream, because that would have been perfect).  There is a bit of talk about the 90's culture, whether at the expense of the 90's movie or the 90's episode of the series, I'm not sure.  What I do know is that the most it amounts to is a lot of long dead catchphrases like "Talk to the hand" and "Peace out!"  The phrase "WHAZUUUUUUUUUAH!" (thank you for this, Scary Movie, hate you forever) gets Synthia and Pearl a scolding by Dr. Kabahl, who insists it's not coming back.  Speaking of the clonee/clone dynamic duo, Pearl notes the irony of the short presented as the Mads don't allow him to cook up there, then starts to ponder how he eats...or breathes.  Cute callback.

Still...if they don't get a food supply from the Mads...how is Jonah not dead by now?  Don't make me ask the science facts questions, show!

As always, tonight's livestream is headed by producer Matt McGinnis, who clearly hates this movie and even misidentifies it as "Future Wars."  He's seems bewildered and enraged by what he saw tonight, so welcome to the depths of 90's crap, Matt.  Some of us have been here for a while, lol.  C'mon Matt, you work on this show and you can't even handle Future War?  Amateur.

One thing working in Matt's favor is that his mic is working perfectly tonight.  The bad news is that he seems to have infected Conor McGiffin and Yvonne Freese.  He tries to introduce Conor, who does a skit reading fan mail with Servo, unaware that nobody can hear him.  It's both unfortunate and really funny at the same time.  While they work on getting Conor back in play, he introduces Yvonne to the stream, who is muted as well.  Matt's wondering if this is a bit, but it's actually happening.

I think Matt's playing dumb and is actually the evil mastermind behind this.  For once everyone else will experience technical difficulties and he'll be the normal one!  IT'S MATT'S TIME!

But everything starts to smooth out once they introduce Kelsey Ann Brady into the room, who successfully can be heard.  The hero of the stream!  But Emily Marsh decides to fuck with him a little bit and pretend to be muted, though her bit loses impact because we can hear her whispering what she's saying through her mic.  Jonah Ray gets a better reaction out of Matt, as he actually rides the bit of his mic being muted, then starts playing "Heaven is a Place on Earth," which really heats Matt up because they don't have the rights to use that song.

Torturing Matt aside, discussion rounds begin with tales about filming the series and how Emily has to stand on a trail of apple boxes behind the desk because she's much shorter than Joel or Jonah.  They then are asked about how they spent their downtime during tours, but since the last one was during Covid there wasn't much time outside the bus to speak of.  Emily, Conor, Kelsey, and Yvonne do relate stories of Covid testing by someone named Jordan that they speak fondly of, and Emily prods Conor quite a bit because of his habit of sleeping in.  Jonah ends the discussion with a sweet story about how he spent most of his tours by himself, but got a call from Kevin Murphy while in Minneapolis who took him fishing.

On the subject of tonight's movie, they're asked by someone what Future War "ruined" for them, which is probably instantly a worthwhile question as Yvonne's answer is "dinosaur puppets," then proceeds to demonstrate how she controls a dinosaur puppet from one of her non-MST gigs (one could say she "walks the dinosaur").  "This opens the mouth, this does the tongue" she claims to her hand-gestures, which absolutely sends Emily into hysterics.  They also talk about plaid outfits inspired by the movie.  Kelsey even has a plaid hat at the ready, which she says makes her feel like a 90's DJ (and her Jurassic Park shirt is helping complete the image).  Jonah has a special plaid shirt with a Necronomicon from Evil Dead imprinted on it.  They then discuss what action hero they would want to combat the Future War, and the names thrown out include Chuck Norris, Charlize Theron, Emily Blunt (which inspires a debate over the title of Edge of Tomorrow out of nowhere), Mulan, Uma Thurman, and Bruce Campbell.

Guys...the correct answer is clearly John Wick.  Get it together.  Or the Power Rangers.  The Power Rangers would probably annihilate the Future War.

This is the first stream since the Gizmoplex soft-launched that Joel hasn't participated in at all.  Probably because it's a no-good, stinkin' Mike episode and who cares.  It's probably for the best, because as broken as this stream was, it probably would have crashed from too many people.  But it's another round of laughs with the new cast who certainly look like they're being driven insane by all the livestream material they have filmed over the last two weeks.  Kelsey is sent into a laughing fit for almost no reason toward the end, which starts to get infectious.  "It's the Witchin' Hour!"  This leads into the big finish where everyone impersonates each other, which predictably ends with everyone doing their best Joel imitation simultaneously (and even Matt joins in).  It's Joel Fest 2022, which means our head honcho is here with us in spirit.