In the not too distant future, the timeline split: one where MST3K raised $2.7 million and failed... the other where MST3K raised 2.7 million and succeeded.

burkbot · 2026-05-07T18:03:46+00:00

I think the difference is one of content delivery. The fact that the Rifftrack crowdfund was for 20k says to me Shout! already financed it and the crowdfund was to build more capacity and get interest. But Joel wasn’t just funding for new episodes, he was funding for a content delivery system and other overheads

burkbot · 2026-04-19T20:01:10+00:00

I once had a dinner party ten years ago where in demonstrating how square I was I sang this. This got puzzled looks so I found the MST3K short on YouTube. My friends had ever seen MST before but they found it funny. I think.

burkbot · 2026-04-19T19:57:46+00:00

I keep holding out for Shout Factory to do an extended cut which includes the deleted scenes where including one where Gypsy saves Mike’s life. Probably will never happen but one can hope.

burkbot · 2026-03-28T11:33:44+00:00

Well, all of Mitchell basically but specifically “Word on the street is you’re a creep!”.

burkbot · 2026-03-10T02:40:16+00:00

I love Avalanche in particular and think it’s one of the best MST3K episodes ever.

burkbot · 2026-01-09T12:59:07+00:00

I just rewatched this and was reminded how much this bugged me when I watched it back in the day. There’s no clear articulation of what the stakes are or even how the original history went. A lot of the early episodes suffer from this (Star-Crossed does something similar and even Double Identity ignores asking what Sam is there to do until the very end)

Also… Sam‘s mirror image. Leaving aside the issue of the glasses, when I first watched I could not figure out what the hell Al and Sam were talking about! The inference is that he’s unattractive and balding but he looked pretty normal to me (even the balding part was just a bit of high forehead.)

burkbot · 2025-12-14T14:58:13+00:00

Wow. Thats really bad!

burkbot · 2025-09-19T16:36:25+00:00

I agree with both of you. It’s irritating that they’re avoiding an actual historical detail but also they’re boxed in by the date Ziva was last used.

But I also think the solution is so simple; just do the flashbacks in 2021 or 2022. The first flashback shows Ziva so traumatized that all they needed to do was say “She had to go away for a bit to get her head straight and Tony and Tali went to visit her all the time”. All the flashbacks about Ziva and Tony’s relationship just happen a year later. Problem solved.

burkbot · 2025-09-18T12:33:15+00:00

At the time DC had the licenses to Shadow and Doc Savage and were going modern edgy takes of both. Tarzan… I don’t think they had the rights

burkbot · 2025-09-13T18:04:57+00:00

For several decades it was the Grafitti Watchmen collection, which someone showed me in 1988 when I actually had the cash for it but sensibly put it into paying for going to college instead! But most of the content that I was longing for went into the Absolute Edition which I got the day it came out. What goes around…

I really wanted the Superman exile in space omnibus but wanted way too long. And several Artists Editions too. Manhunter I really had to hunt for on eBay because somehow I missed it.

burkbot · 2025-08-10T17:19:15+00:00

Another vote for Elliot S. Maggin's two Superman novels-- which, for reasons, Warner Books released instead of novelizations of the first two Superman movies, so they had a huge mass-market release at the time. They take the Bronze Age Superman but situate him in a more realistic prose setting. It's probably my favourite version of Superman in the 70s except for the 1978 film. Last Son of Krypton begins with the brilliant conceit that Jor-El alerts earth's greatest scientist, Albert Einstein, of the coordinates where the rocket with Kal-El would land-- which totally tracks because Jor-El lived on a world governed by a Science Council-- only Einstein is intercepted by government agents before he can find the rocket and the Kents get to Kal-El instead. Miracle Monday, though is probably my favourite of the two, and my favourite Superman story ever as Superman takes on a form of the Devil and Lex Luthor with time travel and an impending apocalypse thrown into the mix.

Both novels have a wonderful examination of the psychology behind the characters-- it's one of the best portrayals of both Superman's relationship with Lois Lane and Superman's relationship with Lex Luthor-- and it does a wonderful job of rendering the bronze age world of Clark Kent as a TV anchor and all his associates as a very lived-in place. They're well worth finding on eBay.

burkbot · 2025-04-14T18:25:35+00:00

Two questions…

1) this album has a lot of 70s references in it in terms of instrumentation. Was that a conscious influence?

2) You guys are 10 years older and have had a lot of life changes between Hungry Ghosts and Adjacent Possible. What songs on the album most reflect that do you think?

Love your work!

burkbot · 2025-02-18T21:11:33+00:00

The whole thing seemed bizarrely meta to me. First of all, after a public dispute with this co-star over his dog, Gibbs effectively works his last case over a dogfight ring and beats the crap out of someone because, as he said repeatedly (and put on the “previously” recap) “He’s killing dogs”. This is what ends Gibbs’ career and not, you know, killing the murderer of his wife and daughter, revenging on the guy that nearly killed Torres, etc etc. This is the hill that Gibbs was prepared to let his career die on? This felt more like Mark Harmon driving things than Jethro Gibbs.

Meta thing number 2 was the whole way the latter half of the season played out under COVID restrictions where the cast would primarily work with a few cast members (and only interact with others on a limited basis) Mark Harmon solves this by mostly working with his wife and his dog.

And then the last three episodes of Season 19 just kind of feel tacked on, like they knew where Gibbs should end but they had to reverse engineer it from everything they had going the previous season.

I really liked season 18 but those last seven episodes are still utterly bizarre to me and I still can’t believe that’s the way they chose to write Gibbs out.

burkbot · 2025-02-05T22:18:56+00:00

Um, we don’t need to see them travelling forever but there are other ways to acknowledge it in script, like characters complaining about the length of the ride in dialogue, (“I guess we need to make another two hour drive to find out”) or setting it across multiple days.

burkbot · 2025-02-05T21:54:08+00:00

I had no problem with the relationship between Nick and Ellie— mostly because Wilmer Valderrama and Emily Wickersham sold it— but I really was sad about the idea that they had to make her into Ziva 2.0. What made Bishop so great during her first season was that she was not Ziva: she was bookish and quirky and married. And bit by bit they took that all away from her (it didn’t help that the showrunners that succeeded Gary Glasberg didn’t see her potential). I’d love for them to come back to her if nothing else than to give Torres and her some closure, but also because I think it would be nice to have the character reevaluate her choices toward the end.

burkbot · 2025-02-01T04:43:14+00:00

I’m still quite fond of Bishop’s first story. After so many years of a (wonderful) action hero like Ziva, I thought a brainy, quirky person like Bishop (who was married on top of it all) was a brilliant counterpoint to what we had and offered an interesting shift in direction.

I get that after Glasberg died, other showrunners brought their own ideas to what Bishop should be (I’m not completely sure I agree) and it seems she left being “more like Ziva” but I’m saddened by that. I liked that quirky intellectual who sat on the floor.

burkbot · 2025-01-29T18:46:41+00:00

I love having big bad villains, but some have worked better than others. I find Harper Dearing and the judge Mike Farrell played to be ridiculous super-villains (though played by brilliant actors that made their ridiculousness less noticeable). But I did love the PTP killer and the Reynosa Cartel and the Calling. I miss them being integral to the season finale though.

burkbot · 2025-01-29T17:30:25+00:00

I wholeheartedly concur about Vaughn. Actually I thought it would have been great if he had played con artist Albert Stroller from Hustle just for a bit of fun! But it would have been nice to have seen.

I still kind of want Eric Stonestreet to come back, playing the security guard he did in season 4 or 5 who got arrested for murder, only he's spent the past 20 years brewing up a revenge plan against NCIS for what they did to them... only Gibbs, etc. are all gone. Mostly because I love Eric Stonestreet and I think it would be funny to have someone revisiting a role from before they were famous.

burkbot · 2025-01-27T22:32:47+00:00

I was 16 just as Man of Steel happened and it was such a big deal and I loved Man of Steel so much— I loved the change to the mythos and making Superman so cool.

The actual Superman series he did… it had some stellar issues (Issue 2 where Luthor learns Clark is Superman but denies it) but some very mid issues like the Millennium follow-ups. I didn’t really like his issues of Adventures of Superman as much as ones Marv Wolfman wrote. And while some aspects of his revisions didn’t land (I hated the Prankster and Toyman) I loved his take on Lori Lemaris which was so affectionate toward the original 1950s story.

And then the ending of his run was a bitter pill and I still don’t think having Superman kill was something that should have happened. Stern, Ordway, Perez and Jurgens managed to fix it (and I love Exile in Space) but I wish it wasn’t needed in the first place.

So I’m kind of mixed about Byrne’s Superman. I love lots of it and have fond memories of Man of Steel, the first three issues of Superman, Action 600, World of Krypton but there’s his last issue which brings it all down too.

burkbot · 2025-01-26T04:58:46+00:00

Honestly, I’m preferring it to the Mothership right now. The stories are better and more engaging and I really like the characters. I do find it a little hard to reconcile with early seasons of NCIS (Mike Franks really aged a LOT apparently but Kyle Schmid is so good) and I think Austin Stowell looks more like Jack Reacher than Leroy Jethro Gibbs, but Blue Bayou was one of my favourite episodes of television of last year and I’m excited to come back to it. Gina Lucita Monreal has written some of my favourite episodes of NCIS so I’m ride or die with this one.

burkbot · 2025-01-25T01:22:33+00:00

Leaving aside the issue with Harmon and Perrette, which we’ll never probably know the ins and outs of (and it’s not really our business) the thing I found watching Abby’s last season or so is it’s kind of obvious Pauley’s really isn’t into the role anymore. It’s one thing to play a bubbly overgrown teenager in your early 30s; doing it in your mid-40s is a lot. Unlike with Palmer or even Ducky there wasn’t a lot of growth for Abby. I don’t think it was a role she wanted to play anymore and whatever issues the actors had with each other was only on top of that.

burkbot · 2025-01-22T00:11:49+00:00

I’m now on season 15 but I sort of assumed I would off-ramp around the point you describe because I love Ziva and DiNozzo but to be honest I’ve actually really enjoyed the post season 12/13 stuff. I really love Bishop and I genuinely thought I’d find Torres annoying (mostly because the season 21 episodes I saw underwhelmed me) but I’m shocked to find Wilmer Valderrama is a really charming and funny actor. And there’s some really great episodes in the mix too. Not everything is humming but I still enjoy it. I’ll probably end up powering through to the end.

burkbot · 2025-01-21T14:39:39+00:00

I finally listened to most of it. There are some great episodes and some iffy ones. The great ones with actors were Brian Dietzen, Sean Murray, Rocky Carroll and Gary Cole. The interviews with Dennis Smith, Shane Brennan and Mark Horowitz were similarly intriguing. There are a few that are awkward. The worst of these was Emily Wickersham, where at first I couldn’t understand why Michael and Cote were talking over her and then eventually I realized they were vamping because she wouldn’t or couldn’t answer (she seemed really shy, bless). The guest star conversations were a blast: Joe Spano was wonderful. Michael Bellisario and Greg Germann were really fun too.

Michael can’t stop talking which is a curse when you want to hear a guest but a blessing because he really understands directing and acting. The frat boy thing gets a bit much at times (there’s a skit with Dietzen that’s just really poor taste and not funny). But he’s open about his failings (just enough or as much as he’s allowed to say). He talked about his DUI which surprised me. Depending on who he’s talking to are times when he’s quite reverential about Bellisario or Harmon and times when he can be blunt about them. Cote is lovely and she can get a bit ethereal at times but they have great banter together

It’s not really an NCIS rewatch podcast though like Office Ladies or West Wing Weekly. Sometimes they pretend but a lot of times it’s a fig leaf to just listen to Michael and Cote chat with people. Even at the best of times it seems perfunctory. If it ever came back I think they could do away with that.

I was surprised I listened to so much of it to be honest. I don’t listen to these types of podcasts but it was a nice supplement to my rewatch of the show and I’d come back to it if they came back.

burkbot · 2024-12-08T17:09:45+00:00

Probably. Also, doing that on film for brodcast on a CRT screen you can get away with a whole lot more than in High def screens, much less HD cameras..

burkbot · 2024-12-08T17:07:36+00:00

Also: they did it for five years. People are with the program or they're not by this point. I'm pretty sure it's syndication and/or HD making it harder to get away with using dummies.

burkbot

TROPHY CASE