Why Netflix's MST3K Didn't Work [YouTube essay]

[BoB3K]

Have you guys seen this?  I think I heard it referenced in some threads, and then it popped up in my youtube feed yesterday.  It's very interesting and I thought I'd start a new thread for it because it was actually made a year ago before any of this season 14 stuff came up, and he's mostly talking about seasons 11-12, although he mentions 13 near the end and surprisingly thinks its a step up from 11/12.

But, even more interesting are the comments, and there's a good amount of them, all from a year ago, and it's striking how much they mirror what's come up during this season 14 stuff.  Here's an example --

"It went from a show made by the stoners/weirdos/class clowns to a show made by hyperactive theater kids who want so, so badly to impress their older siblings.

The older episodes aren't always great and the new ones are never outright bad...yet why is it I can struggle through a season one episode in one go but it took me over two months to get through the six episodes of season 12?"


It seems like the biggest turnoff for old fans was the rapid fire riffs from hosts that seem to be just reading the lines. (Which I totally agree with.)

I would recommend watching it, although he does get into some detail about the two episodes he compared.  I would also recommend perusing the comments as it is amazing that they're from a year ago and not last week.

[Diet Kolos]

I started it, then stopped when it became clear the main crux of his argument was going to be "it got woke" or some variation thereof. Even if I agree with some of his points, the "coastal elites vs hardworking Midwesterners" thing rubs me as simplistic and lazy.

Also, close dissection of every single joke is a fruitless task. You start to get waaayyy into the mire of "what's funny" which can mean different things for almost everyone.

For me, 75% of what didn't work was structural. How the show was written, shot and assembled, and where the focus on production was (on the host segments and not on the movie).
25% was to actual riff content.

With better production standards it could have been pretty close to classic MST, particularly in the first Netflix SEASON. The riffs themselves aren't generally too bad (in Season 11. Season 12 is a different animal).

If my editing skills weren't rudimentary garbage and I wasn't so damned lazy, I'd put out a similar-ish video with my own long-gestating thoughts on why OG MST worked and what they're missing in this go-around.

But they are and I am, so it's probably not going to happen.

[BoB3K]

You should watch more then. That isn't his conclusion at all. His main conclusion is that the new team is just not as good at writing or delivering jokes, including the whole too many cooks in the kitchen thing with the 17 writers for season 11 and 10 writes for season 12. Like I said, in the end he even says he likes 13 better than 11/12.

He does mention the midwesterner mentality verses LA joke writers. But I'm not sure he means woke, he just means the feel of the jokes. And, I would tend to agree with him even though I don't mind a coachella joke in there along with a karaoke joke.

[Diet Kolos]

If he liked Season 13 more than Season 11 then I REALLY don't trust his opinion.

Especially if he cares so much about the content of the riffs. There's actual LAUGHS in Season 11. Sure, they're surrounded by pointless filler riffs and bad delivery, but they're THERE.

Season 13 is deathly dull, with riffs as interesting to listen to as the hum of a refrigerator.

[Diet Kolos]

That's why each reboot season needs to be treated as a different animal as far as the theater segments are concerned.

Season 11: Good intentions, TERRIBLE execution. Awful pace. Some very good riffs surrounded my endless filler riffs.

Season 12: Bad intentions, better execution. Slightly slower pace but still too fast. Dumbed-down, brainless fart-joke riffs.

Season 13: Good intentions, flawed execution. The correct pace. Boring, pedestrian, satire-free "kids gloves" riffs.

[Diet Kolos]

Watching a little more of his video, I guess that's my main critique is that he's taking far too granular of an approach at what they're saying specifically in every riff versus the more holistic view of how they're filming and writing it, why, and what their overall intentions are.

[BoB3K]

Oh he's definitely doing that. If you get bored of the video skip down to the comments. That's where the real interesting stuff is. Broader publics thoughts on the 3 NuMST3K seasons a whole year before this new s14 crowdfunder blew up the fandom.

[missionpanic]

Season 12 is weird because for all of the flaws they actually made fun of the movies. MAC AND ME is a bad movie and they mocked it for being bad. I would love know what exactly happened to make them decide to stop, especially in a season where you're dealing with a few of the worst films ever featured on the show.

I'd love a similar vid for season 13 with strengths/weaknesses but it's very niche. Most of my friends watched a few of the season 11 shows and checked out (these are people I've known since the original run) and they didn't hate it, either. Just lost interest.

[kmorgan]

The only real problem I had with Season 11 was the opposite of the KTMA shows. On KTMA, the jokes were sparse, while they tried to fit in too many riffs during 11. But, as the season went on, they started to get a handle on the pacing. As for the upgraded production values, I didn't mind that. Hey, if Netflix was going to kick in enough cash, why not use it to make the show look better and get larger tier guest stars. To quote Max Bialystock, "When you've got it, flaunt it!" As for the all-but-obligatory "story arc", I found it unnecessary, but not a deal-breaker. I thought Season 12 worked fine, and they were continuing to progress.
Personally, I thought they'd finally got it down for Season 13. Yes, they cut back on the production values (due to both financial and medical concerns), but I didn't mind that at all. They had a good selection of movies, talented hosts, funny jokes, the correct delivery rhythm, and White Dot. I wasn't asking for much, and I got what I wanted. Could it have been better? Sure, it could. But I wasn't going to switch it off.

[dudehitscar]

Dec 1, 2023 11:46:17 GMT -5 BoB3K said:

The older episodes aren't always great and the new ones are never outright bad...yet why is it I can struggle through a season one episode in one go but it took me over two months to get through the six episodes of season 12?"

For me his statement about season 1 episodes being easier to sit through than Season 12 is the complete opposite of my opinion.     I'll never understand that stance.

If that is how he feels then I am going to guess he wasn't a backer of Season 13. An important nuance is they don't didn't need the folks who hated the netflix seasons to fund season 13.. so his complaints don't quite represent the failure of the latest campaign.






every seasons has winners and losers.    Season 11 and 12 delivered quite a few of my favorite episodes of all time despite several complaints I have about those seasons.    Season 13 has no episode that ranks in my all time list.   Which was suprising considered the noted improvement in riffing pace/making each other laugh/etc.      


Still appreciate this persons long form effort to really get into the nitty gritty and show the evidence behind his opinion.  

edit:  hit post too fast.      The cherry picked riff to riff comparison between space mutiny and cry wilderness is just so meaningless and intellectually devoid of real merit and comes to the opposite conclusion I would make..      he states 'the riffs in cry wilderness don't feel like they have much to do with the movie at all'..    Which is simply absurd.   I've seen that episode at least 15 times in full in my life and they were having a blast with riffs based on what was happening in the movie.   His statement is pure nonsense.  

[kracker]

1 Hour and 17 Minutes? That's not an essay that's a whole documentary. And the fact that they can't make their argument concise tells me they don't know what they are talking about.

[sotrain515]

Whoa, I was just coming to post about this; I watched this essay and while I'm sympathetic to his points I think he overall chose a bad way to back them up.  That spreadsheet... the whole idea of "joke categorization" tells me this person maybe isn't the right man for the job.  I guess the old saying is true, "there's nothing funny about comedy."

Anyway, as Bob3K says, the comments are where the real juicy stuff is.  In particular, mr.layman1060 has a response to his own pinned comment that I found completely fascinating.  It confirmed so much of what I thought went wrong in terms of the writing, so I thought I'd repost it here so we could maybe discuss further.

@sardonicsays  Ok, let's do this.



I was an assistant writer on Ator: the Fighting Eagle



I am not in the WGA or in SAG, but a former friend of mine that I helped is in those; but hey I didn’t sign anything, and the word former is in there, the heck with it.



I was an MST3K person from way back in the day, though my antiquated TV didn’t get the Comedy Channel for a stupid reason, my TV dial literally only went to 36 and the Comedy Channel was on 54 so I just didn’t get it. The Sci-Fi channel was 33, so that’s what I caught. In high school, we even made our own knockoff MST3K called “Interstellar Conundrum Today!” and watched bad movies that the guy at Suncoast would just let us have for a dollar each.



There has always been this big Mike or Joel debate, and a lot of that comes down to their style in terms of performance and character, but there is a bigger factor: creative control of the property. I’ve got some tea to spill here and there, but let’s just say that I had an inside track knowledge on MST3K coming back at all, and let’s just leave it at that.



The Netflix MST3K is a Joel piece though, through and through and Joel really likes to have locked-in creative control of a property. Why then there would be 17 writers if Joel wanted that much control is beyond me.



The writer on the show calls us over and we do some riffing. By us, I mean me and like 4 other people, so those 17 writers, a lot of them have friends also helping so it’s jokes from maybe dozens or maybe a hundred people. They’re not supposed to do this, but it helps their profile to build this wall of humor.



The issue with this sort of humor is that you don’t get a spectrum, it’s just nerdy guys and their nerdy (mostly guy) friends. So, when you mentioned the McPherson Suspension System, nobody is going to float that in the room. But you do get a TON of “hey, remember this movie from 40 years ago that was also bad” but NOBODY watching is going to get that, but all the writers do and then they assume everyone will. References to other movies are soft jokes. But hey, I teach history and am an educator, so I’ve got more of a range beyond just obscure movies from 40 years ago and Marvel comics.



The movie is carved up into 15 or 20-minute chunks, so you’re not usually riffing the entire movie. Jeez, in high school WE would riff the whole thing, thus the running joke of “Big McLargeHuge” and “Beef Steakface” runs through the whole episode of Space Mutiny. (I have all of them on a shirt somewhere) One writer MIGHT get the whole movie to riff, but they might not.



With it carved up this way, the kinds of jokes will have a cut-off point of that style of humor from one writer (or team of writers) to another at a predictable point in the show.



We would have a timeline on a laptop to log jokes. Not who says the joke, but let’s be real, the Netflix riffers all have the same sort of comedy voice. It’s not like having Kevin Murphy sing something, because he's a singer, or Mike deliver something in that different sort of tone. Bill Corbet has more of an irritated voice, like when he complains about the hero being the hero in "Time Chasers".



What we're building is a wall of jokes and time codes by the time we’re done. Often different jokes at the same timecode, meaning hey, they’ll pick the best ones later when making the episode. Fine, lots of variety is helpful, so why not!



But with that many writers, this might be thousands of jokes per episode. Maybe even 10,000 or more of them to sift through. That’s why it feels overwritten because it absolutely is. It's joke joke joke joke joke and they don't have time to land or run all over the movie, your brain can't absorb joke power of that magnitude!



Also, the writer I wrote with would reject jokes he didn’t get, and he has the final say because he’s the official writer, making that corridor of humor really narrow. He didn’t get a joke I pitched when a guy asks a girl her name (and she was clearly not interested) and I said “My name is no” because of that famous (at the time) Meghan Trainor song of the same name. He had never heard of this song and because he didn't get it, he assumed that nobody would. We even played it on YouTube, and he was like no. Wouldn’t even put it in the wall of jokes he was compiling. But the show isn’t for you as a writer, it’s for a common audience, and you’ve got to cast a wide net. That’s why the show has this sort of bad, inside-joke college improv comedy feel.



It's also why the jokes feel overexplained. Because the performers aren’t writing them like in Space Mutiny, we would often write in explanations into the notes part of the jokes. Like “sing this in this tune: link to Meghan Trainor song” but a lot of those notes saying this is from X Y or Z feel like they made it into the performance in the final product. So many writers not being in the same room means that everything needs to be explained, but even to the audience. I also don’t know if this is a Joel thing either, but it might be, like if he doesn’t get the joke does it need to be explained?



Another major issue: Joel has the final say in a lot of things, even in pre-production. He also picks all the movies. He’ll have directives about what the jokes should be in the writing process. For “Ator: the Fighting Eagle” I was told to not joke about 2 elements.



1: No jokes about incest.

2: No jokes about how Ator’s first fighting style move is kicking people in the crotch.



If you’ve seen the movie, that’s most of the first 15 minutes. I managed to sneak an incest joke in there, when told they’re not brother and sister “Oh, now I’m not into it”, but they have a whole plot about him getting married to his sister and then they have a wedding, it’s so full of incest! Afterward, Ator meets his fighting mentor, and the first move he learns is a kick to the junk. Another thing we were told specifically NOT to joke about. WHY EVEN PICK THIS MOVIE JOEL?



But that’s about the first 15-20 minutes, so that’s what we had.



That just about ends my journey with this. But with the jokes written with that density, with nothing given time to breathe, it’s so taxing to watch that I didn’t even finish the episode that I wrote part of. A childhood dream of mine turned into “ehh… what else is on”

[sotrain515]

So much to unpack in this, IMO.

The reddest flag to me is the "10,000 jokes for one episode" estimate. To go from a writer's room of 10-12 Midwestern schlubs hammering out an episode together over 10 days to ~100 Hollywood(-adjacent) writers, most of whom never even spoke to each other let alone met, jotting down a "wall of jokes" (including explanations w/ links and delivery suggestions) that is then parsed by the joke-teller-in-chief (Elliott Kalan I presume?) and delivered to performers on the day(?)... Chuck Lorre in his darkest moments couldn't have come up with a worse process.

The tidbit that all the writers are a bunch of nerdy dudes who invited their nerdy-dude-pals to help out is perhaps less revelatory, but it still seems to be a core part of the problem. There was a much wider breadth of experience or at least tastes in the old show. You'd think it would be the other way around with how many more people were involved in writing nu-MST but as the commenter notes, with the same "type" in charge from Kalan on down, the show's voice feels much less varied.

Perhaps the most bizarre item is that the Ator team was told not to make jokes about incest or crotch-kicking. My guess is either they thought it was low-hanging fruit or maybe they didn't want to step on Rifftrax's toes too much. Still, it seems such a bizarre choice, like saying you can't make fun of how the puppet looks in Munchie or something... Maybe the topics were too "blue" for the wide audience Joel is going for?

Anyway, hopefully someone else found that comment as fascinating as I did!

[BoB3K]

I think the biggest thing is:

The movie is carved up into 15 or 20-minute chunks, so you’re not usually riffing the entire movie.

This is nothing new.  It's how RiffTrax has operated forever, even when it was still being written by MK&B (each would get a third of the movie to riff), and I thought it sucked back then-- How do you bounce jokes back and forth off of each other?  That's how you get the best jokes.  How are you ever going to get any jokes or themes woven throughout the movie?  Those are my favorite joke.  It's what really gives the feel that you are watching and experiencing the movie with the riffers.

It doesn't surprise me that this is how they do it at NuMST3K, but it is just more sad proof that we'll never have a true new riffing show until someone has the b@lls, or the laziness, to actually sit in a room with all the performers/writers and watch and write-riff the damn movie together.

[comedyc]

You lost me at Space Mutiny