All the love for the robots as they work out a whole Lifetime-ready melodrama for newlyweds Hercules and Iole as the credits roll.
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Donât mean to bring you down. If you like it, cool.
For me: I loved the riffing in those episodes. I just didnât care for The Mads having to do The Gauntlet⢠
shimmy every single time they said it. The branding got on my nerves. And Jonah and the Bots pretending to be depressed by this grueling task just hit me in the empathy. IDK what they were going for, but what I got from it was âweâre already tired and this is not fun.â
But if you take The Gauntlet⢠out of Season 12, so youâre just left with the movies and the riffing and the host segments that werenât about emotional distress⌠Those were some fantastic episodes. The extended musical riff in Killer Fish might just be my favorite bit of riffing in the whole series.
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The only thing I really didnât like about The Gauntlet [does the Gauntlet Shimmy] was how we lost a whole host segment per episode in the name of making the show more bingewatch-friendly.
(Needless to say, I hope the show goes back to the old number of host segments for the Gizmoplex era.)
That being said, I really enjoyed The Gauntlet [does the Gauntlet Shimmy again]. Lots of golden riffs in great episodes, and Mac and Me jumped right into my top 10 episode picks.
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I liked The Gauntlet. I view the new seasons as different rather than better or worse, and regardless of the pressures that went into making it, there was a lot of quality riffing and host segments. The classic episodes had more of a chance to breathe, I think, but thereâs a lot of value in experimentation, as well.
I feel like thereâs a season 13 is probably going to incorporate what theyâve learned in some cool different ways, too.
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The Gauntlet was, average.
It doesnât hold a candle to that other 6 episode season, which knocked it out of the park ep after ep.
And to be brutally honest, my first thought as I left the live show was that I laughed harder and more frequently during that, than I did the whole of season 12.
Crossing fingers for the Gizmoplex era.
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They ought to lock Jonah in a warehouse with a hot melt glue gun and a lot of random bits of plastic and have him build all the sets and the props. Not only would it have a nice low budget hand made feel, but life imatates art
To be fair, you laugh more when youâre in an audience because laughter is infectious.
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Iâd swear I heard the CDC say that same thing recently.
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Youâre not alone! I donât hate the gauntlet at all. âThe day time endedâ is a classic in my opinion.
Also, i can appreciate that as an experiment, they tried tightening each episode (removing a host segment) to make them shorter to make the season flow.
That said, Iâm glad theyâre returning to the regular format length for season 13.
I do wish they had also been able to record each gauntlet episode at full length, with the extra host segment back in, and we had a way to watch them as well (such as on the DVD or Blu-ray or digital download).
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That can be true, and I do enjoy live comedy, and that shared energy. However I also know what makes me laugh - what I find funny - and there are live shows Iâve enjoyed more than others (if the jokes donât strike my funny bone, no amount of audience laughter is going to help)
Plus most of my MST viewing has been by my lonesome so Iâm used to sitting in an empty room and laughing to myself. At home, alone with âJack Frostâ, for example is funnier than my live experience with CTS âEast Meets Wattsâ (which was good, and the audience was into it, but it wasnât my fave, and it wasnât the knockout MSTs âNo Retreat, No Surrenderâ was)
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Iâm another âmehâ voice for The Gauntlet. The episodes were good (some were great) and I laughed a lot, which to me means successful MST3K. But the notion of âbingeworthinessâ is ridiculous. What does that even mean? Permission to binge watch? Sounds like it belongs on a Corporate Gobbledygook Bingo Card.
If I want to binge, Iâll binge. But I donât hold it against the team; I suspect there was arm-twisting going on that came down to, âIf you want season 12, this is how itâs gonna go.â
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I think the âcrewâ bit is the biggest piece of this question. Even without overarching themes, itâs just a better guarantee to tell your writing bench âhey, keep your schedules free from June through Augustâ than having to wrangle a bunch of people together every couple of weeks once youâre finished with the last episode.
Same with the actual filming. Renting a studio for two, three weeks is easier than finding the same studio free on 13 weekends as you need it. With part of the cast on tour as well, being able to have everything already written means they can record all, or at least most, of their work before the tour, allowing them to then go on tour as episodes run (to a different extent, this is the same for Jonah, Baron, and Hampton, who all do a lot of stand up touring when there isnât a pandemic, and definitely for Felicia and Patton, who are both high demand actors).
Costuming and props? Writing ahead allows for consistency and saves time. Does Tom servo need three different ridiculous swords? Buy them all at once. Is there a costume in every episode? It may be quicker to cut one pattern five times to create the same base item than to cut one pattern five different times. Need balloons? Why go grab a pack for each episode when you know youâll need three episodes worth and can save money buying in a larger package?
And thatâs all before the thread explaining the three hosts is even stitched in. Feels like its all about creating a big headache at the fore instead of a hundred little headaches along the way.
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I think the key element would be actually being in space, though. Where there are few to no distractions from the marathon project. I mean, so long as the air and water hold out, and the Demon Dogs donât find you, etc. âŚ
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Whereâs batman when you need him?
My take on this was that it was Kingaâs ridiculous obsession to turn MST3k into a media behemoth. Thatâs why it was so over the top.
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Re-watching The Gauntlet of late, the episodes have grown on me. Mac and Me (1988) and Lords of the Deep (1989) creep into classic territory and The Day Time Ended (1980) improves whenever I see it. Killer Fish (1979) and Ator, The Fighting Eagle (1982) are becoming solid on return passes and Atlantic Rim (2013) amusing though it is feels off and is the least of the bunch.
The streamlining of Joelâs Original Recipe is hit or miss. I dig how quickly an episode passes yet I miss the time spent with past experiments. It is a unique chapter in MST history either way. The frequent mentioning of Netflix, binging, and The Gauntlet taste of product placement and interference from outside parties imposing themselves on the process. Yes The Gauntlet is about The Gauntlet but it smacks of a zealousness and obsession hoisted on the production and then embraced and forced to work by Joel and Company.
I appreciate the redesign of the formula but as someone weaned on the 90 minute design it felt less to this viewer. As Joel commented, MST is a variety show showcasing one bad movie each week. Exploring it like a Haunted House as he explains in a Foreword to Neymanâs Manos book years ago, MST walks down each passageway and goes into every room and makes a show out of it. Season 12 avoided going everywhere and that loss (even if only 10 minutes) is detected by those of us who grew up with it. Compounded by nonstop Gauntlet talk rather than focusing on the movie or the world of MST.
Iâve grown to savor The Gauntlet beyond my first exposure and it varies in a manner leaving it unique in the annals of MST3K while to these eyes I return more to Season 11 than Season 12 owing to The Return retaining more of what I associate as MST in every episode. The Gauntlet borderlines on Diet MST and this is why the long time lovers who drank Pepsi from the beginning miss the original taste.
The Gauntlet is only slightly different. Arguably better sketches and further refined timing of riffs in movies albeit the overall impact seems less robust as the entire bingable season takes precedence in design over individual episodes and this is my problem.
I respond as a MSTie greater to one episode than a season arc and The Gauntlet hands me increasing filler as it sets ups episodes I may not be watching directly after. The Gauntlet succeeds hugely although I gravitate to perfecting one 90 minute block to advertising and looming arc chiseling into the mix and shrinking the package down simultaneously to reach the rest faster. This altered my enjoyment and still does.
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Thatâs on my lottery list. 
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Nah I loved The Gauntlet. I donât care about the basic Netflix-pushed concept, but the episodes were consistently great and I didnât mind a bit of streamlining. The only real bad part about it was the fact that it was only six episodes long.
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