"Hey, it's Whistler's Mother!"
"I am Whistler's Mother."
"I am Whistler's Mother."
"Oh, 'Professor in Family Life', that's an easy major."
Music by the Edgar Allen Poe marching band.
Films watched: Posture Pals (short), Appreciating Our Parents (short) and The Unearthly
One of three episodes in the series to feature two completely different short films played back-to-back.
In Posture Pals, a quartet of elementary school kids work in class and at home to improve their posture so they can be crowned King, Queen, Prince, and Princess of Posture.
Appreciating Our Parents focuses on a young boy named Tommy, who learns how hard his mother and father work to provide him with a decent living, so he decides to contribute to his "family team" as well.
The episode is available in the Gizmoplex here
, and on Shout! Factory here.
The Segments:
Prologue- The 'Bots are filming a funny home video in the hopes of a big cash prize. It involves Crow wearing a wig, a blowtorch, and a stack of highly-flammable pajamas.
Segment 1/Invention Exchange
- Crow is a smoldering wreck, but the crew finds the video hilarious. Based on an old expression, Dr. Forrester's invention is a series of literal hard pills to swallow, like vitamins with fish hooks inside them and life-size Flintstones chewables. Joel shows off a set of non-conventional celebrity-endorsed home appliances, like the "Emilio Esta-Pez" and "Jackie Mason Jar".
Segment 2
- The 'Bots parody the Appreciating Our Parents short, with Crow as the clueless main character and Servo as the narrator telling him to appreciate Gypsy's hard work in keeping the SOL clean and functional.
Segment 3
- The 'Bots use a Video Toaster to put on a presentation celebrating the "incredibly-varied" and "highly-expressive" career of Tor Johnson.
Segment 4
- The 'Bots take various parts from board games aboard the SOL and turn them into a new board game based on The Unearthly. It's exhausting and confusing just for Joel to read the rulebook.
Segment 5
- The crew read letters in the style of the Dead End Kids. Dr. Forrester and Frank join in, too.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Posture Pals has examples of:
- *Crack!* "Oh, My Back!": When Mary corrects her clown doll Bombo's posture, Joel starts screaming, "Oh, no! My spiiine! AAAAAAAAAGH!" Tom supplies the cracking sound effects as well.
- Hawaiian-Shirted Tourist: Invoked, as Jimmy is shown dressed in this manner while working on a model plane with his dad.Narrator: Jimmy's father reminds Jimmy when he stands off-balance. An airplane shouldn't stand crooked, so Jimmy remembers: a boy shouldn't, either.Tom: Nor should he wear tacky Hawaiian shirts.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Appreciating Our Parents has examples of:
- Primal Scene: Implied to be happening when Tommy peeks in on his parents after he goes to bed. Thankfully, they're just doing the dishes.Tom: Mom? Dad? OH MY GOD THAT'S DISGUSTING!...Oh.
- Something We Forgot: A cooked chicken in the short allows for Crow to remember to clean himself up after getting burnt.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of The Unearthly has examples of:
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Dr. Forrester to Joel: "Look, you bombastic biscuit boy..."
- Body Horror: As a result of the home video incident, Crow becomes a charred mess, with his mouth practically shorn off, eyes being reduced to resting on a stick, and being left with only one (sling-covered) arm.
- Call-Back: Joel starts to say the classic Sea Hunt line "By this time, my lungs were aching for air", then stops himself when he remembers that he forbade that riff.
- Calvinball: Crow and Tom cobble together various leftover board game parts into a board game version of The Unearthly. Joel spends so long explaining the rules, which mostly have to do with how players can lose a turn, they don't actually get to play the game before Commercial Sign comes on.
- Continuity Nod: A snapshot of the junk-cluttered SOL bridge includes past Invention Exchange items, including the Big Head, the Cellulite Phone and standup of Judge Wapner.
- Department of Redundancy Department: "Players who lose one turn, lose one turn."
- Mythology Gag: Dr. Forrester briefly taps into Dr. Erhardt when telling Joel and the bots "Enjoy!" after announcing the experiment.
- Orphaned Punchline: Crow follows Carradine's request to 'retire' with "Why? Are you falling apart?" before excusing himself for using the wrong punchline.
- Running Gag: Tor Johnson's delivery of "Time for go to bed!" became a staple for the MST3K crew, even appearing in RiffTrax's commentary for Plan 9 from Outer Space.
- Shout-Out:
- "Either he's dead, or my watch has stopped."
- Another Marx Bros. reference with "Anything further, Father?"
- "Manuel! Polly!"
- "Take a look at these hands!"
- Totally Radical: After a bizarrely fast-paced dialogue scene, Joel and the Bots start talking like old movie gangsters. Eventually, it spreads to the Mads as well, with Frank imploring Dr. Forrester to "do your Leo Gorcey".
- Hurricane of Euphemisms: The latter bit ends in Dr. F rattling off a bunch of old slang terms for murder.
