Writing this as a die hard fan from 1991 after stumbling onto Comedy Central during the MST3K Turkey Day marathon. Within minutes I started recording the show and never stopped. From 1997 until the early 2000s I ran an MST3K tape trading site during the VHS days. Because of this I had probably watched every episode 100's of times while dubbing copies. Yes this is pre-digital where you had one VCR playing the tape and another recording it.
On to the review.
I binged the entire first season and really enjoyed it. Jonah is very solid, he delivers lines very subtly and well timed like Mike Nelson and Joel Hodgson did. He never overwhelms the movie so you can follow along and rarely has bad quips.
The intro sequence is awesome which is a fresh redo of the original intro where Joel created a lot of the models used. This intro has some very slick models too with neat stop motion.
They were definitely inspired by the Joel Hodgson years and mimicked a lot of what we saw back from S1-5 of the original series. The invention exchange is back and the Mads really target Patton Oswald = Frank Conniff but Felicia Day is a hybrid of Trace and Mary Joe. I think they really had a great thing going for the first two seasons.
Season 3 is a mess. Netflix dropped the show after Season 2 but after a 6.5Million Kickstarter they self produced season three with 13 episodes. This is around a 500K budget per episode but Unfortunately it doesn't show.
- two bad green screen sets, one for the mads and one for the SoL.
- The intro is basically a PowerPoint presentation.
- Crow alternates between the original Hampton Yount and a female who I assume is the new co-host Emily Marsh or the Gypsy voice.
As for the new host, not good at all. Jonah was great out of the gate and I saw interviews with him and Joel and he really knows the show.
Emily just doesn't deliver. I just finished watching s03E13 Christmas Dragon and wow what a mess. They brought Joel back who is always great but the Emily segments are flat.
There won't be a season 4 I am quite sure. RIP MST3k.