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Post by pufncraft on Sept 27, 2019 21:43:44 GMT -5
"Your first task: Become a drug mule in the Philippines." I just got out of the live show for "No Retreat, No Surrender" in Rochester. Lots of great jokes including an expert Poochie reference. It was a little strange that Joel was the only one from the show to participate in the tour. A few other changes included Gypsy now being called G.P.C., Pearl and Synthia becoming puppets who create another clone, Mega Synthia and Joel having a very cute assistant/replacement named Emily Crenshaw (pictured below). The show then ended with a heartfelt goodbye from Joel. I'm gonna miss seeing him live. Edit: The live show also kind of confirmed that the Crow, Tom and Gypsy from the live show/Netflix series are not the same ones who crashed back to Earth with Mike.
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Post by kidflash on Sept 27, 2019 22:22:04 GMT -5
Sigh. I missed out because the buddy I was going to go with hurt his knee and is on workman's comp.
Maybe I can make the Buffalo show.
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Post by Megalon on Sept 28, 2019 12:09:22 GMT -5
A few other changes included Gypsy now being called G.P.C. I'm just going to assume that G.P.C. stands for "Gypsy, but Politically Correct." I don't care what Joel says. That's what G.P.C. stands for.
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Torgo
Moderator Emeritus
-segment with Crow?
Posts: 15,420
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Post by Torgo on Sept 30, 2019 12:44:06 GMT -5
So, the Morrison Center in Boise booked the tour in February. That's only forty minutes away from me. I'm actually going this time!
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Post by Troy's Dad on Oct 7, 2019 10:15:05 GMT -5
I attended Saturday night's Chicago show at the Cadillac Palace Theater, here are some of my thoughts:
Overall, the show was a lot of fun but I will admit it felt very small and low budget compared to last year and especially the first revival live show. Joel noted how last year's show was at a church and this year's was at a far larger Chicago Broadway theater. He's not wrong, Cadillac Palace is larger than the Athenaeum Theatre and even the Vic Theater from the previous previous show. But I have to admit, the first two theaters suited MST3K Live. They filled the stage and it felt intimate enough despite still being a sizable venue. Shows sold out and you could feel the energy in the room. But the Cadillac Palace show saw several unsold seats, possibly a hundred ore more, and I was sat in the middle of a large empty patch of seats in the balcony.
The show itself only occupied the center and right of the stage, and felt very small compared to the space they had to work with. There was a lack of any Satellite of Love decor, just a simple curtain and a screen above it. The show lacked any special footage, aside from the logo, movie and theater doors. Joel and the bots sat to the side, rather than in the shadowbox from past shows. The cast itself felt small, just five people from memory, likely more behind the scenes who didn't take the stage.
The puppetry was imaginative, with black suited puppeteers moving the bots around. Lots more motion than simply standing behind a desk. But all of this was contained within a tiny stage within the stage and set back from the audience. Again, adding to the smallness of the show.
The movie riffing was great, and the movie was a lot of fun. Reminded me of The Final Sacrifice in that it is funny even without the riffs. Despite the lack of a shadowbox, it was great to see Joel and the bots lit and facing forward the whole time. I imagine this is what Rifftrax Live is like in person, and I loved it despite the simplicity.
The in-universe plot was kind of weak. From memory, the first live show with Jonah just happened to be another experiment in which the mads sent him down to earth to carry out the experiment. The second show was far better plot-wise, despite lacking a large number of Netflix cast members. However they goofed as the second live show followed the finale of the twelfth season chronologically in which Jonah escapes to earth and joins up with Joel for a riff off. However season 12 had yet to air when people saw the live show. The mads are missing (sent to their own MST3K experiment as we learned in The Gauntlet) and Synthia is leading the experiment.
For the 2019 show, Jonah is absent with no mention of where he is. Joel is hosting, with no reason for why he is taking over. The bots reveal that yes, the Netflix era bots are copies and the original series bots are still with Mike. The mads are Synthia and Pearl, who are puppets for no reason. They create Mega Synthia, a new much taller actress playing a sort of Super Shredder version of Synthia. In the end, Joel escapes again and leaves a plaque putting Emily Crenshaw, his assistant, in charge as the new host. No clue if this is setting up a future MST3K Live where Emily is the host while Jonah is the TV show host, freeing up the TV talent from the long commitment that is a live show.
Oddly, Joel called Gypsy "Gypsy" during the entire intro, but everybody called her GPC throughout the rest of the show. Maybe the big Gypsy is "Gypsy" and the mini version is GPC?
The merch was not as imaginative as past years. No cool poster prints or program books or scripts or oddball stuff. Just shirts, hoodies and the new LIVE logo on magnets and a poster. I did get a cool shirt that had some of the intro song lyrics and the LIVE logo.
I would rate the show a solid 8. It lacked the BIGNESS of past years, and while the cast did a fantastic job, they lacked the star power of previous shows. A big part of the WOW factor from the previous two years was seeing Jonah or Synthia or hearing Hampton's crow. Joel being the only TV talent this time out really puts him in the spotlight, and for those who saw the past two shows, the punch of seeing him in person has faded a bit. I don't mean to sound negative, but I'm just trying to convey how changing up the bot actors and mads every live show takes away from the familiarity and excitement. Not so much that it kills the show, but it does detract from it a little.
It was a lot of fun, go see it.
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Post by BoB3K on Oct 17, 2019 13:44:29 GMT -5
Great recap, thanks Troy's Dad.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Oct 18, 2019 3:34:51 GMT -5
a sort of Super Shredder version of Synthia. This is a wonderful mental image.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Oct 22, 2019 15:31:05 GMT -5
Per Grant, he has been "informed" that he will not be playing Crow, nor participating in the 2020 tour dates. So...I'm guessing he was too expensive? Is Joel traveling the country with unpaid interns?
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Post by Megalon on Oct 22, 2019 21:14:52 GMT -5
Per Grant, he has been "informed" that he will not be playing Crow, nor participating in the 2020 tour dates. So...I'm guessing he was too expensive? Is Joel traveling the country with unpaid interns? In that same thread, Joel responds to Grant's tweet: "Thanks for being so great about it, Your suggestion of using @natebegle to perform Crow in your stead, while you were off doing @puppetup, has worked beautifully. Simply put, I just didn't have the heart to break up the cast for #MST3KLive for the dates next year."
So Joel wants to keep the same group together, rather than change horses in midstream. I guess that makes sense, assuming it's the real reason and not just PR spin.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Oct 23, 2019 3:33:25 GMT -5
Per Grant, he has been "informed" that he will not be playing Crow, nor participating in the 2020 tour dates. So...I'm guessing he was too expensive? Is Joel traveling the country with unpaid interns? In that same thread, Joel responds to Grant's tweet: "Thanks for being so great about it, Your suggestion of using @natebegle to perform Crow in your stead, while you were off doing @puppetup, has worked beautifully. Simply put, I just didn't have the heart to break up the cast for #MST3KLive for the dates next year." So Joel wants to keep the same group together, rather than change horses in midstream. I guess that makes sense, assuming it's the real reason and not just PR spin.
It's genuinely hard to tell. It's also an industry where even good people try to phrase things in the best possible way, and business decisions get made that, ultimately, can't include everything. I'd genuinely believe it that Joel wants to keep the same group doing things without shaking up the pattern any, but I'm also certain that certain cast member options would be more costly than others. Having said that, I'm glad that people are being good sports about everything (and I also know that it can be a nightmare to have a live show change cast midway through things once certain patterns and routines get established.)
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Post by BoB3K on Oct 23, 2019 12:15:56 GMT -5
Speaking of 2020 tour dates, just yesterday I was looking over the tour page and the tour goes through March of next year! That's a long tour. And, that would imply there's no studio stuff happening any time until at least April of next year. (I'm still of the opinion that there is NO studio stuff going on right now cuz no ones paying for it.)
It will be interesting if anything even happens for Turkey Day this year. If you look at the dates, there's no break in there anywhere in November.
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Post by Megalon on Oct 23, 2019 13:39:20 GMT -5
It will be interesting if anything even happens for Turkey Day this year. If you look at the dates, there's no break in there anywhere in November. Yeah, I didn't realize the tour dates were jammed together so closely. There's a free day here and there, but I don't think they'll be using those to film Turkey Day segments. They'll probably be using them to wind out and travel to the next city.
Unless they filmed Turkey Day stuff before the tour started, I imagine Turkey Day might just be a marathon this year, with either last year's segments or no pre-recorded bumpers at all. But I'll be very surprised if they do nothing.
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Post by BoB3K on Oct 23, 2019 14:53:09 GMT -5
oh yeah, i'm sure they'll do something, like a marathon. I was meaning that it doesn't look like anything new or anything newsworthy is coming this year.
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Post by Triple_sSs on Oct 23, 2019 23:16:03 GMT -5
So I just found out that this year's live tour will be stopping by Salt Lake City, Utah this time in February, awesome!!! Just went and bought me a ticket. Glad I won't have to fly out somewhere like Colorado, which I did last year. I just hope it's not suddenly cancelled like the 2017 show in SLC was.
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Post by kmorgan on Nov 6, 2019 0:09:36 GMT -5
Just posted my review of the live tour performance in New Brunswick on Oct. 26th. It's in the "kmorgan's selections" thread, in case you're interested. In short, I really enjoyed both shows, and I really hope they're recording this stuff.
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