I’ve seen a lot of us sheepishly (and sometimes not so sheepishly) admit we watch MST3k to fall asleep.
I’m totally guilty of this, but I’m curious… is there one episode that puts you to sleep faster?
I’ve found “The Loves of Hercules” or any Gameras work well for me.
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I feel like most, if not all of MST3K puts me into that “I could fall asleep peacefully” mode. Not because I’m bored, but because it’s like a nostalgia blanket being wrapped around me.
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wow - good question, and I often do end my evenings with an MST3K or related episode. None that i find put me to sleep faster, and I do try to bounce around across all the seasons and different formats. Some weeks I focus on KTMA episodes, especially if I haven’t seen one in awhile, some weeks I pick the lowest-rated episodes across each season to make sure I’m not shorting them, and some weeks I only play live episodes from either Rifftrax or Cinematic Titanic.
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Not sheepish at all! I have a rotating selection of favorites that I have downloaded to a tablet, so I can slide it under my pillow and listen with the screen turned off. It has nothing to do with “which episodes put me to sleep” and everything to do with “what’s super familiar and comforting that I can drift in and out while hearing.” It’s usually a Fugitive Alien or a Rocky Jones, or maybe Beginning of the End or Phantom Planet.
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I’m here to tell you Hypno Helio Static Stasis really works. I still can’t tell you what happens in the middle of Radar Secret Service. I don’t try to fall asleep, I just can’t help it.
Perhaps I have a Heinder 90 deficiency.
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I’ve watched the beginning of that one at least a dozen times. 
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Lol I would, but Movie Signs would wake me up 
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I always stayed up late to watch. I didn’t get sleepy until the end credits music started playing, and then I was… 
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I’ve heard folks speak of this, though I’ve never quite understood it. Even when I’m sleepy and begin to nod off while watching, they’ll say something funny and I perk right up. If anything, MST is better than caffeine for keeping me alert and awake.
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I often switch over to the MST3k or Rifftrax channel to fall asleep. But what really REALLY helps lull me to sleep is that beautiful blue background with stars and the SOL in space. You can hear a low hum with it. That needs an endless loop on YouTube or something for people who like that type of thing.
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YES, for me this started one day when I was sick. Joel and the bots keeping their usual and familiar personas led me to be comforted when I had no one around to take care of me. It was like business as usual so I was able to feel like someone was with me and they were dependable. They didn’t get me soup or medicine, like I asked them… but their lovingly sarcastic remarks kept my spirits up. Since then, I have often fallen asleep to their riffing.
I have been a fan since 1995, watch them very often, but have still never made it through “the beast of yucca flats.”
“Time for go to bed.” Right?
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…Since MST3K/Rifftrax is a regular Friday night activity, I do tend to fall asleep sometimes because it’s the end of a busy week - but I’m also laughing my backside off, so it’s a good, happy tired.
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I go to bed watching the MST3K Twitch stream and I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fallen asleep to my favorite riffs. There’s just something calming about it.
But yes Radar Secret Service, how many times must I watch you before I see the whole thing
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As much as I enjoy them, the Coleman Francis collection is very easy for me to doze off to. Mostly it’s just Coleman as narrator–no pesky dialog to get in the way.
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What a great thread! MST3K and/or RiffTrax are a non-negotiable part of my sleep ritual. I don’t necessarily have a favorite for this purpose – almost any will do – but the slower/older movies certainly lend themselves to it (The Unearthly, Killer Shrews, any Coleman Francis, etc.).
I used to have to occasionally travel for work, which meant hotels and therefore no ready access to my MST/RT collection, and that simply would not do. I tried copying episodes to laptops/tablets, but playback would stop when I locked the devices, so I extracted the audio tracks from all 200+ MST3Ks and a bunch of RiffTrax and turned them into MP3s, which would not only play uninterrupted, but I could stack up a bunch of them in a playlist so I had riffing goodness playing all night long.
The experience wasn’t complete without the glow of the screen, but it was better than nothing and got me through those long dark teatimes of the soul.
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From the RiffTrax side, I’m a big fan of Attack From Space, Cat Women of the Moon, She-Demons and the whole Teenagers series.
B&W helps me relax, apparently.
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For that I’ll go with one I’ve seen a hundred times like Cave Dwellers. It’s enough input to keep my mind from wandering, but nothing so novel as to draw my attention.
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Not me personally but I know a guy 
…gal, rather.
The black-and-whites in particular knock her out.
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Fu Manchu…one of these days, I’ll make it to the end!
The last episode/experiment standing. Oh, except for that one KTMA that I think is still “lost” or whatever.
Wait a minute, Crawling Eye, that’s a good one to fall asleep to. Train travel. Yodelling in the canyon. Coarse-grain b&w print. Poor audio fidelity.
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For a while it was religiously the Netflix shows to up views - then post cancellation I’d cycle through any number of things. I usually skip theme and intro segments and get right into the theater. Older movies - black and white - seem to have that muffled audio that is very soothing for sleep
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