'Mystery Science Theater 3000' Announces 'Potluck Of The Stars' Turkey Day Marathon
The cult classic riffing series is ready to fill your Thanksgiving with classic episodes picked by the likes of Matthew Lillard, Mark Hamill, and Mike Flanagan
It’s been a rather dormant 2024 for cult classic riffing series Mystery Science Theater 3000, following last year’s unsuccessful crowdfunding campaign for a potential 14th season. However their YouTube streaming footprint did grow with multiple simultaneous always-on streams, including a straightforward one with every episode they have the rights to. Still, the craving for something new was still always going to be there, and with Thanksgiving coming up, fans started to wonder what kind of Turkey Day we’d be getting. Wednesday revealed just how much of a feast we’d be getting with the “Potluck of the Stars”. It all starts when the stars are still out for probably much of the country: Thursday, November 28 at 5 am ET on Shout! TV and wherever MST3K streams legally.
Last year, it seemed like the SAG-AFTRA strike ended too late to get any sort of talent participation to make new segments for last year’s Turkey Day, taking place in the final hours of the campaign, so everything was hosted and pleaded by writer, producer, and aftershow host Matt McGinnis. This time? It’s hosted by Jonah Ray, who has played Jonah Heston for all three revival seasons thus far, an involvement that goes back nine years now, since the original 2015 Kickstarter. Who’s joining him? We have our regular cast members like creator Joel Hodgson, who plays Joel Robinson and Ardy, Felicia Day who plays Kinga Forrester, daughter of original Mad Clayton Forrester, triple-loyalty Mary Jo Pehl who plays Pearl Forrester, Kinga’s grandmother and the second of the Mad Forresters, and Emily Marsh who plays newest subject Emily Connor. This year we’ve got celebrity MSTies joining Jonah as well, including one of those very guest stars from a very celebrity-heavy season 11: Mark Hamill! The legendary Luke Skywalker and voice of the Joker himself is back to chat and gush after playing carnival showman P.T. Mindslap in the “Carnival Magic” episode. There’s also The Suicide Squad and Late Night with the Devil star David Dastmalchian, Doctor Sleep director and creator of Netflix’s The Haunting, Midnight Mass, and The Fall of the House of Usher (which also starred Hamill) Mike Flanagan, Hannibal and Pushing Daisies creator, Star Trek: Discovery co-creator and Deep Space Nine and Voyager writer Bryan Fuller, Scream, Scooby-Doo, and Five Nights at Freddy’s legend Matthew Lillard and Jonah’s The Meltdown co-host, Eternals and Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire star Kumail Nanjiani. They’re all picking this year’s episodes for the marathon.
Or at least most of them. This year will mark the reacquired licensed rights of the ninth season episode riffing The Final Sacrifice, which is considered one of the best episodes of the entire series and probably best known as the episode that memeified the Zap Rowsdower character played by Bruce J. Mitchell. It finished fourth in a poll of backers of the original Kickstarter, which qualified it to be one of six episodes shown on the 2016 Turkey Day marathon, but within the next year, the rights presumably lapsed forcing the DVD that originally had it to go out of print.
Hey would you look at that, we already have the schedule! It kicks off at 5:00 AM with Emily’s pick, 1959’s The Killer Shrews from season 4. Kumail follows at 7:00 AM with 1983’s Overdrawn at the Memory Bank, the eighth season finale. Bryan Fuller is at 9:00 AM with season 9’s Werewolf (Warwhaff), from 1996, with Lillard following at 11:00 AM with 1969’s The Castle of Fu-Manchu from season 3. At 1:00 PM Mary Jo will introduce an episode from her era, season 8’s Space Mutiny from 1988. At 3:00 PM Mike Flanagan presents Hobgoblins, also from 1988 the ninth season episode that got me into MST3K because I was entranced by Daran Norris’s early role as the MC at Club Scum. David Dastmalchian at 5:00 PM presents 1962’s Samson vs The Vampire Women from season 6. Mark Hamill’s turn at 7:00 PM has him bring some modernity with season 13’s riff of 1968’s Gamera vs Jiger. Of course it would be Joel who heralds the return of The Final Sacrifice at 9:00 PM, and Felicia at
11:00 PM presents one of the show’s most famous episodes, riffing Manos: The Hands of Fate in the fourth season finale. It all wraps up with Jonah bringing fans back to the show’s only Halloween episode, 1961’s The Mask, an episode that Heston was the subject for, at 1:00 AM.
Hopefully, the appearances by these guest stars can be more substantial than when Hamill (and a whole bunch of celebrities) individually did a “Friends of the Kids in the Hall” skit that was clearly COVID-cuffed in the sketch comedy series’s own 2022 revival season. As for what “wherever MST3K streams legally” entails, that includes YouTube, Twitch, Tubi, Prime Video, Pluto TV, Plex, Roku, Fubo, LG, Sling, Vizio WatchFree, and The CW app. Watch the trailer below, and get ready for turkey time and movie sign.
Sources: Shout! Studios, Paste Magazine