Movie Sign!

If you are at least in your late teens, and live in the United States with some form of TV access, then I’d be very surprised if you haven’t seen Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3K) at least once in your life, even if you don’t know the show by name.

MST3K was, simply put, a show where a guy and two robots sat in a theater, in silohette form, and make fun of bad movies.  A premise that is genius in it’s simplicity, but this simplicity was deceiving, because under the surface lay one of the most complex and diverse stories ever told in the history of television.  Over the course of it’s 10 year run on television, the show had changed so much that none of the original cast was still on the show, and a great deal of the crew had changed as well.

Turn Down Your Lights (Where applicable)

However, despite the numerous changes that the show has gone through, there are two things about MST3K that has remained very consistent over the years.  First of all, the show had always been proudly low budget.  You could see the strings on the puppets, you could tell that the sets were made from whatever toys they could find at Goodwill, and the entire show was taped on 2 1/2 sets, never any more.  The second thing is that the show had always expected a certain amount of intelligence from the viewer.  If you didn’t understand their jokes, they didn’t slow down for you.

This goes back to what I’ve written about target audiences.  You want to pick your target audience and do what you can to please them.  You can’t please everyone, and MST3K went to great lengths to please their fans, who mostly consisted of nerdy film lovers.  People who could see through the sludge of Hollywood, and were eager to point out the cheap tricks of lazy filmmakers and tired of cliches and dumb mistakes.

This Is Un-Oppressed Art At It’s Finest!

MST3K was free art, in it’s purest form.  They didn’t have corporate meetings to approve jokes.  They single handedly MADE Comedy Central in the early years, and were thus granted large amounts of freedom in the way that they made their shows.  Thus they had no problem making the shows the way they wanted them.  And the fans picked up on this, and showed their gratitude by giving the show it’s own cult following, which still exists to this day!  If you don’t already know, you DON’T want to know how many people have tried to build their own version of the robots, or have tried to collect all 198 episodes through tape trading over the internet.  You DON’T want to know how many MST3K web pages have come and gone since the show started.  I’ll just put it this way, for the people who was into it at the time, MST3K was more than a show, it was a way of life.

Which brings us to the irony of the entire matter.  The show creators felt differently about it, and even mentioned in the theme song that it was “just a show”.  The show creators, (Best Brains Incorporated, or BBI) were simply being themselves when they made the show.  The show was little more than an extension of their personalities, committed to videotape, and yet it filled a void in the hearts of so many people.  Despite being on a nationally broadcasted show with many hardcore, rabid fans, BBI didn’t even think to have their names unlisted from the phone book until very late in the show’s career.

And The Fans Made Themselves Heard!

However, it was not at all one-sided between BBI and the fans.  Back in 1996, when Comedy Central cancelled MST3K, the fans of the show underwent a massive campaign to save the show, and actuallly managed to convince the Sci-Fi channel to save the show from cancellation.  This is not something that has happened very often, but it provided a precendant, and showed that fans have the power to persuade TV networks to save shows, which has happened with newer shows such as Family Guy and Jericho.  MST3K truly made a lot of contributions to television and one of them was a reminder that the viewers have the power to save and to kill TV shows.  Ultimately, MST3K was cancelled due to low ratings.

Perhaps it was the fact that MST3K viewers tended to tape their episodes once, and not watch them on rebroadcast that led to the low ratings?  Maybe the fans just couldn’t keep up with the way that MST3K was always being mistreated, being put into timeslots where no struggling TV show could survive?  Or maybe MST3K had just run it’s course, and it was time for the series to go quietly into the night, and to be remembered fondly by the fans who would spread the word of the show for people who weren’t around for the glory days?

I don’t know, but I will say this.  MST3K was the most real show that I’ve ever seen, and I’m truly glad that I was able to grow up with it.