Mystery Science Theater 3000: Catalina Caper [fragment]

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Catalina Caper [fragment]
Comedy Channel
October 13, 1990
Riffing
VHS
B+

Let's get the housekeeping out of the way first.  Although I taped this off of Comedy Central, it did originally air two or three years earlier on the Comedy Channel, as a couple jokes indicate.  (C. Channel would merge with Ha! to form C. Central, so to me they are distinct if related entities.)  This is fairly early in the cable run of the show although the main elements are in place and it doesn't feel as alien as the KTMA prehistoric episodes do.

The regulars, at this point, are

• Trace Beaulieu as Crow T. Robot and Dr. Clayton Forrester
• Frank Conniff as TV's Frank
• Joel Hodgson as Joel Robinson
• and Kevin Murphy as Tom Servo

I'm omitting Gypsy until she actually appears.  But I am tagging Michael J. Nelson because he's head writer.  Co-writer Jim Mallon also directed.

I put "fragment" because I would sometimes leave out the skits that are separate from the riffing, such as the invention exchange here and maybe another scene or two.  So I'm judging this just by what's on the videotape.  And it's very good.

It does admittedly start out relatively slow but as the jokes become running and the references get more accessible, things really build and I found myself laughing out loud and wanting to quote specific riffs.  In fact, there are lines from this that I think of sometimes that I can't exactly place, like the one about not wanting to live in a world with adults.  There's even a Trump reference, but during the fan letter sequence, where a couple has fallen in love by watching MST3K and they've invited Joel and the Bots to the wedding, and one of the Bots jokes, "It's in New York and it's the Trumps," although Donald wouldn't marry Marla till '93.

Anyway, there's a lot to savor here, from Tom's crush on "the Creepy Girl," including a ballad (Kevin Murphy is a wonderful singer, as he'd show in, for instance, the Rifftrax of the Twilight series), to almost any line about Jim Begg.  The chart of the "plot" is also classic and I just wish there had been a close-up.  I also wish that they had made at least one Exidor reference, considering how much Robert Donner is onscreen, but that's OK.

I was never a MSTie, a hardcore fan.  I enjoyed the show but didn't feel the need to collect every single episode I could.  So there's going to be a gap of about a year until our next episode, by which time the C. Central merger will have happened.