I wrote an answer about that on Quora, and it was pretty much just what you said. I thought the writing was excellent overall, but the delivery was distracting at best.

Part of it might also be that everyone in the cast was new and a significant number of changes were made. I believe a couple of old cast members helped write the jokes, but part of the charm was these no-name schlubs were making a low budget riff show. The revival had actual stars instead, and while it tried to…

“Stop being a disingenuous prick.”

This is what I get for almost deleting my comment but then thinking “No, the people here aren’t complete morons, at least two people will understand that this is literally the most obvious joke response possible, and I’ll even add in some over the top anger so even the dumb, dumb,…

Thank you.

“This is obviously not the same show as thirty years ago.”

It seems as if that might have been the joke... 

I think their strategy is to focus on adding new content over keeping older content going so that they can say they have more content. So instead of adding another season of a show, they’d prefer to make a new show. I think that’s why they always shut down things after a few seasons unless they’re huge hits.

This was my reaction as well, especially to the earlier episodes of the new run. It seemed to me like the cast was settling into a more comfortable groove though, so it is disappointing that apparently they’re not going to get a chance to click into that sweet spot.

I find that most shows really hit their stride around season 45.

“This show needed more time to grow and find its sweet spot.”

The show is THIRTY FUCKING YEARS OLD, genius. How much more fucking time does it need?

I loved MST3K back in the day. One of my fondest Thanksgiving memories was just having that Turkey Day marathon on all day.

I just felt like something was off about the delivery of the jokes. Classic MST3K had this slacker vibe to it, and the jokes were delivered in a mostly casual, offhand manner, dry and effortless-seeming.

I agree with what others are saying about the show’s cast not being quite as good, the riffing not as on point, but it also two a good two or three seasons for the original incarnation to find its footing, and you’d be hardpressed to find many fans who will single out any episodes from the KTMA era, or the first…

It got better but the first season is a real slog.  

It’s just not the same without Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy’s writing.

I agree completely. They were stumbling over themselves and the jokes were almost never funny. I only made it three episodes in and I was done. I highly recommend Incognito Cinema Warriors XP or its video game riffing spinoff Robot Co-Op. They have the low budget charm the revival didn’t, Mike Nelson officially…

Yeah the first new season in particular felt so manic that it was off putting . The couple movies I caught in the last season were better and they were very slowly finding their groove, but the best lines still didn’t have enough room to breathe.

It just didn't work, I feel like everyone kept talking over each other or just kept talking.  There was rarely ever a pause and that hurt the comedy.

I keep going back and forth from “it was fun but it just wasn’t the same” to “well hell, any MST is better than nothing.” It doesn’t help that the best episode was probably Mac and Me, and something about those things’ faces produces such a visceral reaction in me that I could barely stand to look at the screen.

Do they want me to run over that kid in the middle of the road, because I had to type that extra k.

‘K’ is easier to type when driving though.