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Post by Diet Kolos on Apr 24, 2019 12:04:29 GMT -5
There are some numbers to back up the assertion of phoning it in past a certain point in Season 9: riffs per minute. Thankfully, someone did the legwork on this already. Project RIFF calculated the number of riffs in every episode, the runtimes of the movies, who said each riff, etc. The data isn't the most user friendly, but what's important are the results. Season 9 looks like this: 901 Projected Man 8.253 902 Phantom Planet 8.746 903 Puma Man 9.450 904 Werewolf 8.699 905 Deadly Bees 7.764 906 Space Children 7.274 907 Hobgoblins 6.898 908 Touch of Satan 7.471 909 Gorgo 7.535 910 Final Sacrifice 7.611 911 Devil Fish 7.754 912 Screaming Skull 7.297 913 Quest o/t Delta Knig 7.187 Notice anything? Riffs per minute fall WAY off after 904/905 and generally tend to fall throughout the rest of the Season. The data shows that 905-913 is one of the lowest riffed stretches of episodes, 2nd only to bits of Season 1. Season 9's average riffs per minute is 7.842. Season 8's was 9.439. For comparison Season 1 was 6.289. Let's look at Season 10. 1001 Soultaker 7.722 1002 Girl in Gold Boots 7.565 1003 Merlin's Shop Of Mys 7.342 1004 Future War 7.959 1005 Blood Waters of Dr. 8.143 1006 Boggy Creek II 7.724 1007 Track o/t Moon Beast 8.020 1008 Final Justice 7.719 1009 Hamlet 7.235 1010 It Lives by Night 7.891 1011 Horrors Of Spider Is 7.707 1012 Squirm 7.814 1013 Diabolik 8.137 The average is even worse: 7.768. And there's no clear drop off in Season 10, it starts low and has a few pops here and there. The point is, fewer riffs equals less writing equals less effort equals phoning it in. That's not to say some of these late episodes aren't funny. A lot are. They did have 10 years of experience at this point, so its not like they gave up the ghost and stopped actively trying to be funny, the point is that they didn't try very hard. And as far as Season 7 goes and the difference there, they were actively trying to woo another channel, namely Sci-Fi, they had a movie coming out, Jim hadn't decided 7 seasons was enough, etc. And you can disagree, that's your right, I'm just presenting what evidence is available.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 12:13:23 GMT -5
To swerve for a second, I've noticed Mike has expressed bafflement on more than one occasion (DragonCon 2002 and his intro to the Rifftrax release of Screaming Skull) about the fact that Sci-Fi cancelled MST3K only to keep broadcasting it for five more years. His position seems to be, if you liked us enough to keep us on the air, why not have fresh episodes as well?
It is kind of funny that Sci-Fi re-ran the show for so long, which would have required extending its agreement with BBI aka giving Mallon money. But I think the re-runs were performing reliably well relative to the expectations of an extremely undesirable Saturday morning time slot to justify whatever tiny amount Mallon could have possibly demanded. Though I share Mike's frustration, you can't compare that cost to the price tag associated with producing new episodes. As we know all too well, Sci-Fi wasn't spending one red cent to re-aqcuire movie licenses, so whatever money they were earning from ads at 8am was almost overhead-free.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Apr 24, 2019 12:25:17 GMT -5
I don't think the cancellation was really ever about the money on Sci-Fi's part. It was probably more about the frustration and inconvenience of having to license 13 different films every year. A process which by that point had become increasingly difficult and cumbersome to not only license in the first place, but also maintain those licenses for an increasing number of reruns. See Merlin' s Shop, Gorgo, etc. And at a certain point, it probably just wasn't worth the effort for them.
The fact that so much time and effort and money was sunk into securing those licenses for several years is probably why the channel thought it was worth it just to burn off the rest of the episodes over however long they had the licenses to a handful of them left and paying off Jim for a few extra years was worth it compared to the sunk cost of the movies.
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Post by Udvarnoky on Apr 24, 2019 12:29:18 GMT -5
I am prepared to blindly trust that riffs per minute data as accurate, and doing so I can see it only as interesting trivia. The idea of using it as evidence of writing burnout is pretty out there in my book, for a number of reasons and to a degree that I had better just leave it alone. The only thing I will say on the subject is the most obvious, and made especially relevant by the primary criticism of the show's revival seasons: quantity is not quality.
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Post by CrowTrobotfan92 on May 5, 2019 17:42:50 GMT -5
Sci Fi would have gone the same route as Comedy Central - they would eventually get tired having to find movies to license and keep renewing the rights to keep syndicating episodes.
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Post by discomoonmusic on May 8, 2019 21:31:33 GMT -5
Sci Fi canceled MST3k after S10. But what if the show didn't get canceled? Would you have liked to see more seasons, or do you feel that 10 seasons is enough, and that the show should end while it was still good? Yes and no. I mean I wished they had riffed movies like The Giant Claw, Escape from Galaxy 3, and some others that would have been perfect for a MST treatment. There were lots of movies also featured on a weekend night horror show series called Nightmare Theater, which used Elton John's Funeral for a Friend opening, and would go into a high-pitched, agonizing scream. Every weekend it'd be movies like you'd expect to see, bad b-movies. Made a lot of fun of those in that time. But there were some gems in there that would have been perfect for MST3K like Ghosts That Still Walk and Wild in the Streets. The Final Eye was another one that would have been super, as it was a very bad wannabe Logan's Run type film. Some of these movies are on youtube now in their entirety. So I feel that there was way more ground to cover. But on the other hand, I do recall Kevin mentioning that they were never showing the truly dark movies that were out there. That there were some really dark movies and minds that made them that they would have to suffer through and that the show really brought forth the best of the baddies. So to speak. So I agree that it was time to give it a rest. But the movies I mention are watchable on their own. Final Eye isn't really all that bad, either. Corny and dated as Hell, but it is okay. Very nostalgic.
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Post by TheNewMads on May 9, 2019 9:46:23 GMT -5
A Beez-hosted show would be so great that now I'm sad it never happened.
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Post by Diet Kolos on May 9, 2019 12:28:27 GMT -5
A Beez-hosted show would be so great that now I'm sad it never happened. Right?!? With all of her guest roles, she was clearly moving into that utility player role Mike had in the Joel years, and it would've been a natural move to make her host.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on May 10, 2019 13:14:02 GMT -5
The point is, fewer riffs equals less writing equals less effort equals phoning it in. That's not to say some of these late episodes aren't funny. A lot are. They did have 10 years of experience at this point, so its not like they gave up the ghost and stopped actively trying to be funny, the point is that they didn't try very hard. And as far as Season 7 goes and the difference there, they were actively trying to woo another channel, namely Sci-Fi, they had a movie coming out, Jim hadn't decided 7 seasons was enough, etc. And you can disagree, that's your right, I'm just presenting what evidence is available. I'm not going to disagree per se, but I will play Devil's Advocate a bit. The possibility exists, however remote, that the nature of the jokes involved themselves and the selection of the riffs in question may have lead to scenarios where the material was funnier without as many other lines in the way. This is unlikely; common wisdom for TV comedy writing is that you want more "laugh opportunities" per minute (Dan Harmon has noted that this might be why The Office or Parks & Recreation always seem funny; the ability to cut to a side camera interview for a character's reaction-joke is a time saver). Having said that, there's definitely a balancing factor of joke quality to laughter rate. And hey, some individual riffs just take longer to tell (Project Riff notes these curiosities, such as the "continuous riffs" or "repeated riffs" or even the "Conversation Riffs", though I doubt these would throw the numbers off too much). I want to keep this in mind because the cast and crew were still sort of in a "Well, *do* we want to keep this up if we're picked up again?" mode. Some of them were clearly all for it, others were less so (Kevin once responded with the note that restarting the show was a "loaded question" and that it's hard to recapture things and make them go back to how they were, but that he'd still consider it depending on the scenario.) Having said that, I'd definitely believe that some of the writers started working a little less hard. "Phoning it in" isn't really a fair descriptor, I think, but less work for the same pay can have certain benefits.
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Post by crowschmo on May 12, 2019 18:25:21 GMT -5
There was actually a timeline where the show wasn't cancelled, but some rich, privileged jerk went back in time and set off that whole Mandela Effect. Stupid elite.
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Post by vandilization on Oct 21, 2019 21:58:18 GMT -5
As I recall, wasn’t another network interested in continuing the show (?), but by that point, the sets had already been dismantled and it would’ve been too much work to get everything back in order for it.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Oct 22, 2019 12:41:05 GMT -5
As I recall, wasn’t another network interested in continuing the show (?), but by that point, the sets had already been dismantled and it would’ve been too much work to get everything back in order for it. AMC showed interest, as did some fly-by-night satellite channel I forget the name of.
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Post by jocksinclair on Oct 22, 2019 20:39:18 GMT -5
I strongly disagree with the idea that "# of riffs per minute" is a way of judging how long people spent on something. This only makes sense if you don't factor in the editing process involved in writing. I could just as easily point to the exact same statistics and say "See how lazy the writers were in the first half of season 9, they just wrote down every joke they could think of, whether it was funny or not, whereas later in the seasons, they clearly took the time to craft better jokes."
That said, the season 10 data doesn't even show a decline at all, and the season 9 data doesn't really seem like they're losing interest as the time goes on, since the low point is right in the middle of the season. I think you're really projecting.
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Post by mylungswereaching on Oct 23, 2019 13:11:09 GMT -5
I think that there is a sweet spot with the number of jokes. If you don't tell enough there is a wasted opportunity. That is the case in the KTMA days and to a lesser but still noticeable extent in season 1. But telling too many jokes and the rhythms off. It doesn't feel natural. It feels more like throw a bunch of jokes at a wall and see which ones stick. Season 11 had some of that.
I think that they were trying to hit that spot and weren't as worried about having less jokes if it felt more natural. If it flowed better.
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Post by Afgncaap5 on Nov 11, 2019 15:54:46 GMT -5
If we'd gotten a Sci-Fi Season 11, we would've gotten more of Mary Jo's Pearl and Bill's Crow, and they'd both sort of finally hit their stride, I think. I would've liked Pearl to finally get mad scientist funding to start working on side projects, but ideally ones that would've really embraced the super villainy streak that she had going.
I'm not sure it would've been great to keep the show going for too many more seasons after 10... but I, personally, woulda loved it.
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