All-TIME 100 TV Shows

Mystery Science Theater 3000

Everett

With so much TV, from reality shows to bad movies, the best entertainment is what happens in your living room. This basic-cable masterpiece raised talking back to the TV into an art form, as a human and his robot buddies were consigned to live on a satellite, watching lousy movies against their will. The team’s rapid-fire references ranged from the scatological to the Biblical (“Give us Barabbas!” they shout over a crowd scene in Attack of the Giant Leeches). With other meta-TV shows like E!’s Talk Soup, MST3K was an example of what culture critic Steven Johnson called “information filters,” or media about other media; it filled the snarky role of blogs before blogs existed. From the vantage of MST3K‘s lonely Satellite of Love, pop culture was hell, and heaven too.

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