I think Goonies is less beloved as a movie and more as a suburban preteen wish fulfilment for something more; the idea that in the secret parts of your own boring neighborhood adventure awaits, full of discovery, action, riddles and traps.

With all the teleconferencing and synced watchalong platforms coming out, how has MST3K not developed a program in which you and your friends can customize human or robot silhouettes and riff together along the bottom of the screen?

I wanted to chime in on how the references to Candy Island kept reminding me of The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, but then the AV Club totally AV Club’d the coverage so ... I’ll still do it, but only really half-hearted and sad like.

On the other hand, he appeared and then disappeared very suddenly after a high profile event. Was there a police investigation? Was Biff a suspect?

Between this, OUATIH, Ryan Murphy’s Hollywood and the new Perry Mason, it’s really looking like Old Hollywood is The Thing right now. 

An interesting For Your Consideration or Inventory might be a look at how well or poorly long-running shows have navigated the shift to Always Online culture. Simpsons, L&O, SNL, South Park, X-Files, maybe Always Sunny, etc.

I tend to agree personally, but I wonder how classic the later seasons might seem if they had the benefit of endless after-school syndication and an audience with nothing else to do.

Precisely.

I don’t think it’s a mistake that The Simpson’s glory days were when the world was barely online, snark was more private, and episodes could build off the legacy of traditional family sitcoms and 20th century pop culture.

Downplaying the character is just fine by me too! But Chris Elliott was unarguably the third most well-known cast member (at first) and it’s weird to not include him, especially when the doc made a point of talking about casting all the characters.

For all the screen time they gave minor recurring characters, Elliott’s absence felt like purposeful exclusion or non-participation. I get that his character isn’t a fave, particularly heartwarming, or a tonal match for the love-fest the show became, but it’s like the doc tried to retroactively write him out of the…

Right? For all the screen time they gave minor recurring characters, Elliott’s absence felt like purposeful exclusion or non-participation. I get that his character isn’t a fave, particularly heartwarming, or a tonal match for the love-fest the show became, but it’s like the doc tried to retroactively write him out of…

It’s truly hackneyed, but in the universe of the show they justify it in a decent way.  It’s just that they also chose to use it as the name of the show.

My theory is that from season 3 the plots started stacking, so by the time 5 came around, the streets, the police and City Hall each had their own labyrinthine territorial disputes to give time to, leaving almost no air for the newspaper plot to breathe and do the character work that made the docks saga compelling.

They both use the Xerox-as-lie-detector gambit as well!

I had noticed. Not rallying for a paragraph on Homicide, but its omission from his bio info was notable

Not mentioned at all, shockingly, is his having written Homicide: A Life on the Killing Streets, upon which the similarly named classic cop show was based. It’s a cliche to call it The Wire 1.0, but a lot of the well-observed day-to-day challenges and institutional obstructionism are right there. Simon also joined the…

... and I want Ultimas 7 and 7.5 via Skyrim, but I think we’re both going to be disappointed.

If only you were British you could seeeeee!