On the Edge of Winter

Last night I watched the second episode of Fringe, "The Same Old Story", which aired September 16, 2008. I got some strong X Files vibes off this one, though not at all in a bad way. It was fun watching the trio investigate a serial killer who impregnates prostitutes with rapidly aging foetuses.

Anna Torv and Joshua Jackson give TV sizes performances while John Noble is definitely cinema as Walter Bishop. He's entertainingly brusque and the gags about his faulty memory are cheap but still funny. Anna Torv's Olivia is a little bland but I like how they gave her some impressive Sherlock Holmes moments.

I'm watching Fringe on Max (formerly HBOMax) which I realised I could get a 2.99 a month subscription to if I get the one with ads. They actually placed the commercials in the commercial break moments on the show which is kind of a nice thing for the pacing. It's been years since I've seen new commercials and I feel like it's a particular psychic link to pop culture I've been lacking. I've been having "broadcast editions" of MST3k playing while I cook dinner, episodes transferred from people's VHS collections including commercials from the early '90s. All those Mentos commercials and Big Red commercials and--damn--Sears commercials. I still have some shirts from Sears. I got to be careful with this nostalgia.

I heard Mystery Science Theatre 3000 didn't make its minimum donation goal during its Turkey Day marathon this year. I can't say I'm surprised. The new episodes are only streaming on the show's own dedicated streaming service, the Gizmoplex, which is slow and expensive, so I haven't been able to watch it and I imagine a lot of other fans can't. What I have seen from episodes shown on YouTube is a generally inferior product to all the episodes readily available on YouTube or Shout Factory on Amazon Prime. And, of course, RiffTrax. Joel Hodgeson, series creator and original star, may have a great creative mind but it seems clear now that Mike Nelson was really who held the show together. He was head writer from the second season, when the show first premiered on Comedy Central, and now apparently he's the only one with the business sense to make the format financially sustainable. It's always been a cheap looking show with a small fanbase but increasingly large budgets due to the need to pay for the rights to the movies being riffed--the minimum donation goal for the new season was over four million dollars. Oh, well. We'll always have the memories.

That Old Satellite

As a self-respecting cinephile, I don't divide my attention between movies and anything else. If I'm watching a movie, it's in a dark room, with headphones if I don't have a good sound system/environment. I certainly don't sew or text or play video games while a movie's on. The only exception I make to this rule is Mystery Science Theatre 3000. A show I started watching in junior high school, in the early 1990s, MST3k is a show about a man and two robots showing outright disrespect to bad movies. I don't usually sit down and give it a dedicated viewing anymore but I like to have it on as atmosphere when I'm cooking dinner. I've been doing that for years. Last year, I discovered something really marvellous. On YouTube, people have been uploading "Broadcast Versions" of the series. That is, people are uploading their old VHS recordings of episodes complete with commercials.

I haven't had a TV with channels since 2013, and even then, I hadn't watched regular television for years. Listening to these broadcast editions, I'm reminded of a time when they were a normal part of life. When stars could come out of commercials, like Rebecca Gayheart became a star after appearing in Noxzema commercials. They were such a normal part of the public consciousness.

There are so many '90s movies I've totally forgotten about that I see trailers for on these broadcast editions. A few days ago, I saw a trailer for a stupid comedy about a kid and a gorilla called Born to be Wild. I noticed Peter Boyle's name in the credits and I thought, "Wait, he's dead, isn't he?" before I remembered I was watching a commercial from 1995.

Maybe it's bad I'm indulging in such nostalgia. I guess it's pretty Japanese. People love nostalgia here. One of the most common words I hear people say is natsukashii, "How nostalgic!" It reinforces my feeling that I'm not exactly homesick but timesick. I don't want to go back to San Diego where gentrification is gutting parts of town I liked and other parts of town are getting boring, ultra-expensive restaurants. I guess you can never go back home again. But you can see it on YouTube.