Thursday, May 31, 2012

MST3K: Play MST for Me 2

I'm watching all of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes in order. More about that here and here.

Video: Play MST For Me 2

First released: VHS, Best Brains, 1994
Availability: Best Brains VHS (out of print), Best Brains DVD (Play MSTie For Me Triple Decker)

My favorite selection from this collection.
This is not an episode of MST3K.

It's a video.

Yeah, I know, I said I'm watching all the episoded of MST3K. I didn't say anything about the videos.

Well, how do you think I got to see all the episodes? Taped them myself? Only a crazy person would do that.

The only thing crazier than that would be somebody who paid money or other good and valuable considerations for a copy of the videos that the crazy person recorded off the television. And guess what? I'm not the person that recorded the shows. I'm... just never you mind.

Crow loves Kim.
Anyway, this video was released during the run of the show. It came out in the Spring of 1994, between Season Five and Season Six. At least, that's what the information I've been able to find about the video says. I didn't get my VHS copy in 1994 -- I have it on VHS, I just didn't get it in 1994 -- so I can't say that's when it came out. The copyright date on the video says 1994, so I suspect it was released before the end of Season Six (which ran into March 1995).

Why does this matter? Well, three of the 13 songs on the video are from Season Six. Which means that, if this was released in the Spring of 1994, then those that got the tape right when it came out got an advance look at some Host Segments from the upcoming season.

Play MST for Me contained songs from Seasons Two and Three. Play MSTie For Me 2 contains songs from Seasons Four, Five, and Six:
Here they go a-caroling.
While that list covers much of those three years, there were some that, for some reason, didn't make the cut. These songs from Seasons Four, Five & Six were omitted:
I started to wait on this video until after Season Six, then decided to go ahead. Then I changed my mind and decided to wait. Then I decided to go ahead.

They sing goodbye to Frank when he didn't leave.
That whole back-and-forth happened a lot. In just a few minutes (as I write this), I'm going to schedule it to appear. I may change my mind again before it publishes. If I do, you'll never know, because I'll rewrite these couple of paragraphs. But, if I decide to go ahead and publish them, then you'll get to read all about how torn I was inside about writing this now.

The things I agonize over. Of course, most things are pretty straight-forward. I just don't have 100% certainty that this video came out between Season Five and Season Six. If I find out it came out later, I'll ... well, I don't know what I'll do.

It's so nice when I know everything about what happened. That's most things. At least, being a know-it-all, I like to think that. This project, though, has shown me just how much I don't know about MST3K. I'm working on correcting that.

Up soon... Season Six!



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