The opening sketch with the family photo is delightful.
10 Likes
Can I just say it’s so sweet how Joel, Crow, and Tom are cheering and supporting GPC’s show? Unironic applause and not a mean crack to be had.
Consider my heart’s cockles warmed. 
9 Likes
Their genuine good-natured amusement over the humor in GPC’s show is…
10 Likes
It is a light and bright episode. That is for certain. It all comes together in this one. The movie is an ideal fit.
8 Likes
I loved that the show sketch started with Crow shushing Joel. Of all the people…
4 Likes
Now that I’ve finally been able to watch Sampo unriffed, here’s my ranking of the Russo-Finnish flicks from MST3K. (Technically Sampo/Day the Earth Froze is the only one that was actually Russo-Finnish, but whatever.)
UNRIFFED:
Ilya Muromets/The Sword and the Dragon
Sampo/Day the Earth Froze
Sadko/Magic Voyage of Sinbad
Jack Frost
And for the heck of it, here’s my ranking of the MST3K episodes!
Day the Earth Froze
Magic Voyage of Sinbad
Sword and the Dragon
Jack Frost
5 Likes
I’ll be fair. I loved the “Gypsy Rose Me” segment. I felt so weird hearing her sing with that ridiculous voice of hers, but’s its nice to see her in the spotlight every once in a while.
6 Likes
PS: Here’s the album version in MST3K’s clowns in the sky album!
3 Likes
Ikr, Gypsy’s my favorite character and I loved that one-woman show segment, but I cringed a LOT over her singing at the beginning of her one-woman show because of how super awkward she sounds.
1 Like
Not enough can be said about how good the riffing is in this episode. There’s so many good jabs that were so memorable that I think this episode is the one where I culled the most sound-files of any MST episode except for Mitchell. Back in the day when the show was still on the air I made an entire Doom WAD file that did nothing except replace the monster sounds with MST3K clips and files from this episode were prominent. To this day the Alert sound for Doom Imps always makes me think of “She’s got a GUN!”
5 Likes
I recall a statement in the Colossal Episode Guide that MJP had written much of the Gypsy Rose Me skit as she was the one with the most experience watching One Woman Shows. 
2 Likes
Love all of the Russo Finnish experiments. Have a special fondness for this one as it was the same fairy tale I’d seen a version of on Nickelodeon’s old “Pinwheel” series as a tot.
(Pinwheel was a vaguely Sesame Street-esque series early Nick had that often ran European animated shorts between the live action segments. One was a variation on the Sampo story.)
6 Likes
I remember Pinwheel!
3 Likes
Ebenezer T. Squint was the best.
4 Likes
That’s pretty creative of her. I didn’t know she had that much experience watching tons of one-woman shows.
I did like that host segment in this episode, even though Gypsy’s singing in this segment… it’s too grating and jarring, (not exactly in a painfully bad way), but I still love her regardless.
Man, if Wii Party’s Party Phil was fully voiced, he’s sound just like Gypsy in this episode.
3 Likes
To be fair, ‘the most experience’ could be one show and the others never saw any.
2 Likes
One-person shows are generally pretentious, boring, and have very little value to anyone except the person themselves. The segment was a great send-up of the overall nonsensicalness of one-person shows. If its viewed as a skewering of the entire concept then it is a decent parody. If it is viewed as though it was literal, then it (like most one-person shows) is baffling, weird, and kind of dumb.
1 Like