15 Differences Between the New and Old “Mystery Science Theater 3000”

Screen shot credit Netflix

There are no commercial breaks

The lack of commercial breaks is kind of a weird concept at first. But in standard MST3K fashion, they kept in the fantastic bumpers that break up every episode.

And they’ve been tweaked. No longer is it just the MST3K logo and a riff of the “Love Theme.” A spotlight comes on the logo and the camera pans out to show a television screen and a skeleton band. TV’s Son of TV’s Frank provides voiceover commentary, either about the shenanigans in the current movie or whatever Kinga’s up to in the episode.

The bumper inclusion is still helpful, especially if you only want to watch part of an episode. “Oh, I’ll just watch until the next commercial break,” you can say. You don’t need to try to find a good place in the movie or comments to stop.

It still takes me back to those nights in the ’90s when my brothers would edit out the commercials on our taped episodes (because we were cool enough to have two VCRs and had the ability to record on one while the other played the episode and pause the recording while we fast-forwarded through commercials). Remember the commercial break after the Fan Club Info that didn’t have the bumper before it? We had a lot of problems with that one on our copies.