TVSquad

You may not have gotten the day off for this momentous day in American history (damn you, socialist government!), but today marks a very special anniversary: the first ever episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The show officially hit the airwaves on a local Minneapolis station, KTMA, on Thanksgiving Day in 1988 by a young, fresh-faced Joel Hodgson. The rest, as people who rely on cheap cliches to heighten the dramatic effect with their weak words, is history. You can read the rest at the Satellite News site, the most exhaustive and interesting MST3K site on the Internet.

Every fan of the show and even occasional glancers remembers where they were when they first discovered this kind of cult comedy classics. For me, I discovered it with my old man who hates it when I call him my old man during the hilarious Pod People episode, arguably the funniest episode for the show and the worst movie the show has ever skewered.

Actor, comedian and classically trained suit wearer Joel McHale has taken his talent for riffing to the next level.

The star of The Soup and the upcoming NBC sitcom Community has joined forces with Michael J. Nelson's Rifftrax.com to provide a running comedy commentary for the perennial craptastic 80s classic Red Dawn. Nelson announced the guest commentary on the Rifftrax site and his Twitter blog earlier this week.

Rifftrax, for those who may not be familiar with the site and are therefore in no way cool, is the comedy website that provides downloadable MP3s of funny movie commentaries featuring the voices and talents of the minds behind Mystery Science Theater 3000 including Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy. It is the only reason I still own all three Matrix films, that and the fact that my desk is missing part of a leg.

It's hard to see beloved characters leave your favorite shows. You have created a bond with them, perhaps even projected their values onto yourself in an effort to raise the self esteem you had before, say, you fell down the Law & Order rabbit hole and started to believe the shows were actual news and not just "ripped from the headlines." But change is inevitable, and sometimes, it works out. Here are a few that worked (at least for me).

1. Current cast of Law & Order: I know, I know, who could replace Lenny Briscoe? No one, really. But the current pairing of Anthony Anderson and Jeremy Sisto as NYPD partners is the best the series has produced. They changed the feel of the show. Perhaps because we're still getting to know them, they are less predictable then previous tandems, and both evoke a certain hard-nosed quality that seems a bit more gritty and real. Plus, Anderson has chops as a stand-up comic, and could easily fill the wisecracker role, if need be.

Here are a couple of names that should make MST3K fans excited - Joe Don Baker and Joe Estevez. Yes, those two names guarantee a certain amount of cinematic terribleness, a feast for Joel, Mike, and the Bots, especially Baker, whose bumbling, making-love-to-banjo-music cop movie Mitchell is one of the best.

MST3K XIV includes four episodes from three different seasons, including two from the final season, Season Ten:

The Mad Monster from Season One: With the old cheesy set that Joel and Trace revealed at an M.I.T. lecture they accidentally delivered two weeks early. If they'd known they had two more weeks, they'd have put more work into the concept. When it was originally released, The Mad Monster was probably fairly advanced and stylish from a technical standpoint. But it's still poorly acted, and MST3K seems to have a special place in its collective hearts for bad werewolves. Also includes the short Commando Cody & The Radar Men from the Moon. A fiery Invention Exchange: Joel's "Hell in a Hand Bag" anti-theft device and Forrester's monster role playing game with a fire-breathing Godzilla. Tom Servo also hits on a blender.

Ah, great news for fans of Mystery Science Theater 3000: Volume 11 of the popular DVD series will be released in February!

No word yet on which movies will be covered. Fans can keep checking Satellite News, the official Mystery Science Theater 3000 web site for updates.

In the meantime, Mike Nelson has added a bunch of new movies to RiffTrax, his downloadable commentaries. The list of movies available now includes Plan 9 From Outer Space, Cocktail (hey, I voted for that one!), Star Trek V, Road House, The Fifth Element, and Night of the Living Dead (the original). MST3K cohort Kevin Murphy joins Mike on the commentary for Star Trek V.

[via TVShowonDVD]