"The Bicycle Driver" & A Tribute to Santa Claus (MST3K Special)

The Short

Ho ho ho!  Nothing says Christmas Time quite like...bicycle safety?  Well, kids get bicycles for Christmas sometimes, so I...guess?  After all, we got not one, but TWO bike safety shorts for our yuletide livestreams this year, so this can't be coincidence.

This bicycle safety short melts my brain less than the last one, so I didn't have a hard time paying attention, despite it being far more boring.  It's covers some of the basics that they other short covered, like hand signals and traffic safety, but also takes a few moments to talk about details like reflectors during night rides and whathaveyou.  Is The Bicycle Driver a better short than Bicycling Visual Skills?  Better is a relative term, but also varies depending on what you're specifically referring to.  I think Bicycle Driver has more information packed into it than Visual Skills, but I'll give props to Visual Skills for trying to be edutainment, even if it failed at both the edu and the tainment.  Driver is just a bland list of rules.

"In the 'Driver' trilogy, this falls in between 'Baby' and 'Taxi.'"

We have Pearl in the theater again for another short! This time, instead of taking it on with Erhardt, she drags Synthia and Mega-Synthia into the theater with her!  What I like about this short is that it short is that it gives Rebecca Hansen and Yvonne Freese some well-deserved play in the theater, especially Yvonne, who's Mega-Synthia character was practically ignored all season.  This short by itself gives her more screentime as the character than the entirety of Season 13.

They do a bang-up job too.  We're served up some doofus education with some solid laughs at its expense.  There are solid jabs at the short's inconsistency, as one minute it claims the purchased bike is a birthday present and the next says the receiver needs to pay it off somehow ("Have fun paying for your birthday present, son!").  Caution is thrown to the wind with safety tips, as the mother asks her son if he can guarantee that he won't ride at night, only to have the response be "I can't even guarantee you I won't sell it for cigarettes."

So yes, it's a delight to see Pearl and her clone stooges doing a riffing session.  While I don't think The Bicycle Driver rivals Cavalcade as far as Mads shorts this season, the Mads are becoming the highlight of these little bonus riffs of the season.  I almost don't even want to see Jonah or Emily do another one.

Almost.

Get back in the theater, you slackers.

Thumbs Up

👍

The Livestream

Our Christmas feast of Mystery Science Theater 3000 continues with Mike's holiday special Santa Claus (review here), so it's good to welcome the second host of the series into the festivities somehow, even if he can't make it for the multi-host finale.  This swell episode is accompanied by new segments featuring Jonah and his Bots, contrasting yesterday's stream that featured Emily's crew.  We have Jonah learning about various demons in addition to Pitch, as well as him exchanging gifts with Joel.

In this third night of holiday magic, the stream brings us a portion of the Phoenixville show where the cast got up and sang songs from the series for the audience with musical guest hosts Paul & Storm.  This is all pretty self-explanatory, and I really don't think I need to discuss it much further.  Participants here are Jonah Ray, Emily Marsh, Baron Vaughn, Kelsey Ann Brady, Tim Ryder, Rebecca Hanson, Yvonne Freese, and Deanna Rooney, while Joel Hodgson pops in briefly for Patrick Swayze Christmas.

One thing I will say is that I think the energy of the room lights up more once they leave the Christmas songs behind.  The audience is so much more jazzed for the rapid lyrics of Mother Crabber and just watching Baron and Jonah's impressive wordplay with Concepts.  I'd personally say the fact that Baron and Jonah still have that number down at all is impressive and makes this event worthwhile.

But there is still more to come.

To Be Continued...