Episodes
Mac and MeAtlantic Rim
Lords of the Deep
The Day Time Ended
Killer Fish
Ator, the Fighting Eagle
Featured in DVD and Blu-Ray Sets
Oh boy oh boy oh boy! Netflix has renewed Mystery Science Theater 3000 for another season! I can't wait to see the next fourteen episodes of this series!
What was that? There were only six? Oh.
Netflix considerably reduced the episode order for the twelfth season of MST3K to "encourage bingewatching," because everyone has eight hours to spare during their day. Who needs sleep anyway? And to help give that push to make people burn through an entire season in one day, a story arc was introduced.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to...
Okay, so right off the bat MSTies are having PTSD. We haven't seen a season this abbreviated since the seventh season, which was the show's last on Comedy Central before it was cancelled. The addition of a story arc brings back memories of the demands the Sci-Fi channel put in place on the series as well, which most will agree didn't turn out very well, and even if you happened to enjoy them, they didn't really go anywhere.
There is something to what the show creates this season though: The idea that Jonah and the Bots have to watch six movies in one sitting as a challenge, and it encourages MSTies to take that challenge with them. It's pretty clever. I would have done it one sitting myself if I had the free time to do it when these six episodes dropped. But there's a problem, there is no payoff to watching these six episodes back-to-back. I'm not saying viewers needed to be rewarded, but the continuing narrative between the six episodes is barely existent. Each episode begins with Kinga and Max gloating about the Gauntlet and each episode ends with Kinga and Max gloating about the Gauntlet. Each episode is a mostly individual experience despite this, which makes watching the entire season in one sitting a mostly pointless task.
The one thing that kind of forms a continued narrative through these six episodes is a slight story in which Dr. Lawrence Erhardt returns to the series, once again played by J. Elvis Weinstein, who wishes to abide by Dr. Forrester and TV's Frank's last wishes by acquiring a copy of the "Idiot Control Now" song from Pod People during their services, and Kinga has Synthia hunt the song down. It's good to see Erhardt again to gain closure on the character, but the story is more goofy than fun and I didn't really get much from it other than a neat cameo. There just isn't enough here to make a full season watch worth its time.
What would have made it worth its time? It's hard to say. If they leaned too hard into serialization of the season the the episodes would have lost individual value so in the end it's probably best they didn't unite the episodes too hard. If the films chosen were more similar the season would have lost the diversity that MST thrives on. This was probably a scenario that was bound for disappointment unless you just wanted the experience of watching six episodes in a row regardless. But in that case, one could have just watched season seven in one sitting, and the episodes there are better too.
But ultimately the Gauntlet stands as an example of just how much Netflix failed this series. Netflix is a corporation that has a very specific requirement of what shows it carries, and that requirement is that it wants people to burn through them. Mystery Science Theater is not that kind of series, and while its fans are fanatics, the show has lengthy runtimes per episode working against it. Netflix had no patience to think differently with MST, so it tried to retrofit it into Netflix's patented "Watch everything in a single day" formula. MST tried. It doesn't work.
One thing that has happened in the years since The Gauntlet is that other streaming services have popped up and utilized the weekly episode release as counter to Netflix's chosen path, and they have had great success. Disney+ has had people hanging on week after week for shows like The Mandalorian and WandaVision, Paramount+ keeps viewers coming back weekly with new Star Trek shows, and AppleTV gets people talking weekly with the likes of Ted Lasso. More comparatively to MST, the streaming service Shudder has The Last Drive-In with Joe Bob Briggs, which hosts double features weekly and gets fans to light up social media every Friday night. These are shows that created communities that get people chatting week after week.
Netflix does not.
That's because Netflix sucks. It's the trendsetting streaming service, but it's probably the most boring one. Their formula relies on you watching as fast as possible, being moderately interested, then moving onto the next thing whether you're interested or not so you have something to do. I get bored and tired of their shows almost instantly, and really have no interest in supporting their service unless there is something specific I want to watch. I enjoy Lost in Space, Lucifer, and Disenchantment quite a bit, for example. Nothing else they do really catches my eye so I'm unsubscribed throughout the rest of the year.
So they're trying to change MST from the formula that works for it into a formula that has worked for them with other shit. That to me is the definition of not understanding the program you have and why people watch it. MST is and should always be a show about anticipation, thirsting for the next week to come so you can sit around for an hour and a half and laugh with your buds and watch a cheesy movie.
So when it doesn't work for MST, the show gets cancelled, because they don't know what to do with it. When MST got picked up by Netflix, it seemed like a big powerplay for the show at the time, because it was the service that just about every household had. But it became clear the objective of the series and the objective of the corporation were two opposite things, and this big swing at combining them was an epic fail.
Goodbye Netflix. I don't miss you in the slightest.
That being said, there are some things about the formatting this season that I like. I think dropping a host segment from the episode format works wonders, as now the episodes are given a three act structure that works well for the streaming generation of the series. The cinematography is a bit more playful than the stationary work of the previous season as well. Even the riffing delivery is an improvement, as the interplay between Jonah and the Bots feels more natural and interactive than they were doing previously.
The movie selection for this season is about as diverse as we've ever seen on the series. These flicks are all over the place, from different eras and with different target audiences. The earliest film is a caper movie with piranha from the 70's, while MST breaks into a new century with an Asylum knockoff from 2013. The movies are fairly bad, with Atlantic Rim probably taking the cake for worst of the season, though Mac and Me's cult status as a popular bad movie will draw a lot of attention to it. I will confess that I find Killer Fish rather enjoyable, and Ator, the Fighting Eagle is a doofus sword and sandal movie that brings a daffy grin.
For episode quality, the season is clearly bookended by its best episodes, as Mac and Me and Ator, the Fighting Eagle are easily the most enjoyable episodes of the season. Atlantic Rim and Killer Fish are proving to acquired tastes in the MST community, but I find them fairly enjoyable. The middle portion sags hard, as Lords of the Deep is a fairly nothing episode and The Day Time Ended is a promising movie that they don't do much with.
The issue that I'm having with the episodes this season is that there is no episode I'd describe as "great." This is the first season since the first in 1989 that hasn't had an episode that I just adored. There are episodes that make me laugh, but nothing that springs at me and goes above and beyond. Mac and Me is probably the best, as it's a stupid movie with a fairly hilarious commentary, but it doesn't inspire much enthusiasm from me. And that's probably the big issue I might have with the Gauntlet in general, because while I was unable to watch these episodes in one sitting when they were first released (I had family commitments that I was definitely not breaking on Thanksgiving), the episodes themselves gave me no incentive to go back and watch all six in one day because they just weren't good enough. There is some stuff worth watching this season, but they're capable of better. I've seen them do better. There is no Avalanche or Wizards of the Lost Kingdom this year. Maybe with a thirteenth season on the horizon that isn't trying concentrating on the "bingewatching" can recapture that magic.
Top Episode:
Mac and Me
Bottom Episode:
Lords of the Deep
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