Mystery Science Theater 3000/Recap/S04/E22 The Day the Earth Froze

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Films watched: Here Comes the Circus (short) and The Day the Earth Froze

The short Here Comes the Circus is about the Clyde Beatty and features legendary clown Emmet Kelly

Host Segments

Teaser

It's family photo time on the SOL! Crow and Servo behave badly, Gypsy worries about her hair, and the picture comes out badly.

Invention Exchange

Joel presents Snaction (includes wax knuckles, a Pixie Staff, the Five Lady Fingers of Death, the Everlasting Octa-gob-stomper, and ninja throwing cookies), while the Mads show off their Unhappy Meals. Frank wants his money back.

Segment 2

The SOL crew thinks up new ideas for clown acts. It gets increasingly dark.

Segment 3

What the heck is a Sampo, anyway?

Segment 4

The SOL presents "Gypsy Rose Me!", a new one-woman show starring Gypsy.

Segment 5

Servo and Crow wrap themselves in trash bags and pretend to be scents. Joel reads a letter from a bomb expert in Germany who sends a picture of their very own Crow -- a bomb disposal robot. Clayton cuts Frank (who still wants his money) free.

This episode has examples of:

Tom: Well, there's somethin' you don't see every day, Chauncey.
Joel: What's that, Edgar?
Tom: Kids are goin' bass fishin'.

TV's Frank: You took all my money, you son of a - !
Dr. Forrester: Watch it, Frank!

    • And later,

Dr. Forrester: Oh, blow it out your - experiment today...

Crow: HE'S got delusions of grandeur!

Crow: I'm not a pheasant plucker; I'm a pheasant plucker's son, and I'm only plucking pheasants 'til the pheasant plucker comes.

Joel: See? Emmett changed managment soon after this.

  • Hypocritical Humor: During the short Here Comes the Circus, Joel criticizes the bots several times for their dark humor during the piece, then falls into the habit himself.

Joel: [During a trapeze act] "Pass the word; Ed's been hitting the bottle today!"
[Tom and Crow audibly gasp]
Tom: Oh, like that's a big improvement over what we've been doing.

    • Later...

Joel: An elephant snaps its tether and kills a coolie!
Tom: Now who's getting dark?...I like it!

Joel: Annikki in the UK?

Crow: (Minnesota accent) It was so ding-dang cold the stuff in my nose just freeze up!

Crow: Hey, that's the wrong sister!

  • Shout-Out: The crew makes five references to Monty Python's Flying Circus, with two of them referring to the "It's..." man (unsurprising, given the amount of beards in Finland)
    • Many comparisons between Finland and the Wisconsin Dells
  • Take That: A massive zing against A Prairie Home Companion as Louhi's troops are played music to death
  • Throw It In: At the end of the "Snack-tion" invention exchange where Crow and Tom are duking it out in the background as ninjas, Tom's head falls off. Again. Since the sketch was pretty much done anyway it was kept in, and it fits in well with its content along with Trace's adlib immediately afterward.

Crow: Uh-oh. I broke him.

He's a failure, la la la
He's a loser, la la la

"What’s going to become of us now?!"

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