Hey look, everyone: dean of TV journalists (and therefore not us, but who's counting) Tom Shales thinks that the Joel years were way better than the Mike years on MST3K! So much so that he reviewed something called "Web TV" (not to be confused) to promote Cinematic Titanic, the Joel's brand new reboot of the whole "people talking over movies" thing.
There was nothing on TV like it, and it was wonderful. Al Gore was one of the show's fans -- and admitted it. In its day, it received the prestigious Peabody Award, and much more recently, it popped up on Time magazine's list of the 100 best television shows ever.
In "Cinematic Titanic," the robots, sadly, are gone, but the basic format and the show's essence remain -- an indoor sport that Hodgson calls "riffing on movies" and thus turning such sow's ears as "The Wasp Woman" or "Earth vs. the Spider" into hilarious silk purses. He is joined by four colleagues from the original cast and writing crew. In stark silhouette against the movie screen, they watch the nearly unwatchable and poke fun aplenty.
But what's really interesting about this piece is how, when pressed, Joel Hodgson kinda comes clean about his leaving MST3K in a way that we hadn't quite seen before. Not just how he left -- basically getting crowded out by an unnamed Jim Mallon -- but the aftermath, which sounds pretty dire.
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