Keeping It Short Week, Day 3: Why Mystery Science Theater 3000 is still the best comfort food

Hey hey, it’s still Keeping It Short Week, no posts longer than 250 words:

I heard of Mystery Science Theater 3000 long before I saw it, this obscure cable TV show that screened old terrible movies with robots making fun of them. 

I finally saw it in, of all places, a hotel room in Florida. I clearly remember one movie was the Soviet fantasy Jack Frost. It was the damn weirdest, funniest thing I’d ever seen. 

But boy, was it hard to actually watch more. It aired on cable channels I didn’t have money to watch, or weren’t carried locally. I finally found a few VHS tapes, and then DVDs, but even then, they were hard to find or crazy expensive. They were like buried treasure for quip-happy trash film fans. MST3K made me realise just how many awful, hilarious obscure movies there are in the universe. 

It’s all much easier now to watch MTS3K, thanks to the internet. A couple of times a year I get into a real MST3K mood and binge away. For days, I keep imagining myself as Tom Servo or Crow, yelling stupid stuff as life goes by me. Before hateful trolls took over pop culture, MST3K was good-hearted snark. 

I do miss the hunt. Kids today have no idea how hard it once was to find things you’d heard about that sounded cool. I can watch any episode of MST3K I want with a few clicks now, and I love them, but part of me misses the mystery part of that theater.