Episode EM105

"The Adventures of goblins, talk showhost, bugaloos,

          witchie-poos and golden flutes named freddy

          in the labrynth",  by Mark Ogilvie

with the short, "I want You Back", by FrickRokz

 MSTed by Brendan Herlihy and Steve "Dredgeboy" Weinberg

Take me to this MSTing NOW!

NOTE: This MSTing features a Special Guest Appearance by Dr. Michael Neylon.

H.R., Pufnstuf!  Can't do a little 'cuz he can't do enough!

Oh, after twenty pages of this Labyrinth/Bugaloo crossover, "The Adventures of goblins, talk showhost, bugaloos, witchie-poos and golden flutes named freddy in the labrynth",  you'll think Sid and Marty Krofft did quite enough already, thank you.  Jenifer Bass hosts a talk show, where she humiliates a "Goblinoligist" by having him hauled off to the booby hatch on national TV.  He gets even by giving her a pair of cursed bracelets, which cause "the goblins" to kidnap her.  Jareth the Goblin King wants her to become his maid.  When she refuses, he banishes her to the mercies of the Labyrinth.

Meanwhile, in the magical land of Living Island, Joy the Bugaloo and Freddie the Whining Plot Device- dah, I mean, Golden Flute- get captured by Witchie-Poo for about three seconds, before Joy escapes through a door in the witch's castle.   And darn it, the door leads directly to Jareth's Labyrinth!  What are the odds?

So Joy and Jenifer hook up (after what seems like forty hours of filler material, such as Jenifer fainting twice for no reason, and Joy falling into the goofiest deathtrap never seen on Nickelodeon), and defeat the witch, but Jareth captures Joy and is gonna eat her.  Jen gets all noble and agrees to be his maid if he’ll let her go.  The story ends.  Oh well.  Moral redemption is overrated anyway.

Then, for only the second time in MST history, a short follows the main story:  "I want You Back", starring teen scream senselessation, Britney Spears.  Britney is obsessed with her old boyfriend, Justin Timberlake from N'SYNC.  But Justin only has eyes for the empty, colorless Krysti.  So Britney hires a dark, mysterious figure to (cover your ears) rape her rival.  After a long, weepy hospital scene, Justin confronts Britney, and sort of stands there as Britney pulls a gun on him.  But the phone rings, and Britney answers to find it's N'SYNC member JC calling!  Dog-pated Britney forgets all about her captive, allowing Justin to overpower her easily.

HOST SEGMENTS

Opening: Gypsy asks if it's really a long, long way to Tipperary.  Scratch takes her ten feet off the bridge, where Tipperary has its Border Patrol set up.

Segment One: The border patrol guard gets drunk and weepy, to the consternation of Pearl.  ("Great.  We got stereotypes.  We'll have to spray.")  Mike, Bobo and the Bots review their situation down in the dungeon.  Their food supply is reduced to Chicken McNuggets and, for some reason, Crow.  Bobo starts gnawing Crow's arm.  Mike, trying to stop him, accidentally sends the SOL the Labyrinth crossover.

Segment Two: Pearl explains Living Island to the crew.  Gypsy asks when you cut a slice off a living ham, if the slice becomes it own person.  The discussion turns real creepy, real fast.

Segment Three: Tom and Crow, while trying to dismantle the dungeon door, help Jenifer Bass deal with her cursed bracelets.  They offer possibly offsetting accessories, such as earrings, a tasteful brooch, and a tongue stud.

Segment Four: Pearl finds out the Shay Caron got a plug for his MSTing by writing a sketch about Mike Neylon, so she tries to lead the SOL in a musical tribute to Web Site Number Nine.  It gets, shall we say, ugly.  "So what if he solicited male prostitutes that one time?/Community service, and a piddling fine!/Lay off!  Mike Neylon's done his time!"  Dr. Neylon tells Pearl to bite him.

Segment Five: Pearl disciplines her lizard.  Scratch helps Pearl deal with her anger by having Sid, demon in charge of bad fiction, send Mike and the Bots an innard-twisting short, "I want You Back".

Segment Six:  Gypsy saves Mike by tricking Pearl into proclaiming everything is going well, which prompts Best Brains to do an immediate reorg.  Four days later, Pearl and Evil Mike are analysts in an office reporting to Gypsy, Mike is the janitor cleaning up their spills, Tom is the Mr. Coffee, and Crow and Scratch are left arguing which one of them is the Chief Officer and which one is the other's "lap puppy" personal assistant.  They both want the lap puppy job.

Stinger:  The "fungus filled" teeth of Britney Spears.

REFLECTIONS: 

What did my partner Steve Weinberg think about the Labyrinth fanfic?

"I want to hurt this story.  I want to hurt Mark Ogilvie.

The more I think about this story the more I hate it.

When the Messiah comes, and the almighty looks at me in my grave, he will see the stain this story has left upon my soul, and leave me molding in the grave.

I want to kill Mark Ogilvie's goldfish, and leave its head in his bedpost.

I feel it's my duty to have Mark Ogilvie registered as a sexual predator.

As the aliens maneuver the asteroid into a collision course with the Earth, and the great minds, the great souls, of humanity cry out to them 'why?', the lead alien, the head of a loving and life affirming religion, will point to this story."

It is possible, upon reflection, that Steve was engaging in hyperbole.  But there's no way to be sure. 

That said, this episode was a big deal for us.  Besides ending the "Pearl's Grrls" story arc after five episodes, and writing six of our best sketches ever, there was the whole Neylon deal.

Mike was great, good-naturedly taking some truly brutal and unfair barbs (Dr. Neylon has never actually solicited male prostitutes, under the legal definition of solicited).   All he really asked in return was that his Internet server be portrayed as having a Pinky plush toy on it.  There's a word for a man who works so hard to provide us with an arena to vent our creativity, yet asks for so little in return: milquetoast.  But you won't hear me repeating it.  That he's a milquetoast, I mean.

Postscript: We learned from a fan that Jenifer Bass was actually a character on yet another television show- some syndicated drivel called "My Talk Show".  Needless to say we'd never heard of it, and assumed Bass was simply the screeching demon spawn of the author's evil, twisted, hateful mind.  So what does this change?  Nothing, except to make this fanfic a true trifecta of failure.

Take me to this MSTing NOW!

Home is the place where if you wanna go, I have to take you.