Pod People

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Indoctrinationability: Excellent

Episode: If you put a gun to my head and told me I had to pick one episode as my all time absolute favorite, I would probably cry. And then I would tell you I pick Pod People. This is also the very first episode of MST 3K I ever saw. There is a sort of fun-loving feel to this one. We can make fun of the people in this movie but we also feel very close to them and their situation. It's like there's a party in my mountain and everyone's invited! The music was great, both in the movie (Well, for riffing purposes anyway) and in the host segments. This episode is easily the best thing to grace my Cathode Ray Tube. It makes up for all the garbage ever put on TV in one fell swoop. Please do not read on if you have not seen this episode, watch it first or you WILL kick yourself later!

Movie: The movie is kind of neat all on it's own. It starts off with three different seemingly unrelated scenes then brings them together nicely towards the middle of the show. We open with a meteor heading towards earth, with new age music playing in the background, then we cut to a scene with some poachers who are looking for nightingale's eggs in a forrest. Some kid wakes up because of lights in the sky, he looks through his telescope only to see “pretentious crap” then the meteor hits the ground and he runs over to his bed and hides under the covers. One of the poachers goes to check out the fallen Meteor and is killed by some unseen monster for breaking the eggs he found strewn about the crashsite. Then we cut to a recording studio where some very Industrial-training-film-like music is being played, then some Greg Brady looking guy starts singing, they stop the song because “It stinks”.

After recording a somewhat catchy tune with unintelligible lyrics, these guys head into the woods to get away from it all taking pringles and steak with them and two horny girls with no guy friends who seem to be willing to resort to beastiality rather than Lez out.

The kid (Tommy) we saw earlier wanders out to where the meteor hit, finds the broken eggs and manages to get one that wasn't broken and take it home (Crow: That must be for his alien mutant hell beast from space collection). He steps over the dead body of the poacher on his way out with little more than a gasp.

The two remaining poachers are convinced their missing friend ran out on them so they decide to spend the night in the forrest. The same forrest that our s(w)inging group is headed towards.

One of the horny chicks (Laura Stapleton) wants the lead singer (Ricky) and tells the Jealous Sharon (Ricky's current S.O.) about how she (Laura) kissed him (Ricky) when they were gathering wood in the Forrest. Sharon throws her coffee in Laura's face and Laura angrily takes off into the woods

Man, this is a long story. Well the poachers find Laura, she runs from them and breaks her neck, her friends(?) hear her screaming and go after her, they find her and make their way to civilization. They find Tommy's Uncle's house and try to use their phone to no avail. There's been a rock fall and there's no way back into town. So they decide to stay there till they can get going again. Meanwhile, Tommy's alien egg hatches and he feeds it frosted flakes and peanuts.

Invention Exchange: Joel invents a new guitar chord but it takes three hands to strum it, so he has crow help him. Then his guitar blows up. The mads go Karaoke Krazy when they inventa Public Domain Karaoke machine that plays only Public Domain songs like: The Impish Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, The languid and bittersweet Gregorian Chant #5, and many many more! Then they sing Joel & Co. into their experiment with Ave Maria.

Host Segments: Joel and the bots do a parody of the song in the movie, the lyrics sound just about the same so for all I know that IS the song.

With a pickled mind we kick the Nipple beer
Steady as a goat we're flying over trout
Get on down the highway at the speed of light
All I want to feel now is the wind in my eyes
Sack of monkeys in my pocket
My sister is ready to go

Hideous Control now
Hear the engines roll now
Hideous Control
Wheels on Fire
Burning rubber tires!

Joel teaches Crow to play the wall of keyboards so he too can make New Age music and get a contract from Windnam Hill for playing one chord for an hour. Servo plays announcer then gets stuck in Shatner mode.

The gang recreate the magical mayhem scene from the movie where Trumpy shows us that “He can do magic things!”

Conclusion: The show comes to a close, Joel “Wipes up the greaspaint, napkins up the blood and entrails” because it's time to move on. Then they sing “Clown in the sky” (Very touching actually) Servo starts crying, then Joel lets him take a verse... They finish off the song, Tom is sobbing and Joel turns to him and says "I love you, Tom Servo!" Tom sobs back "I love you, Joel" then Joel turns to Crow and says "I love you, Crow" to which Crow responds "You're not my real father!".

Book: According to Kevin Murphy, after their segment on Music from some Guys in Space they were contacted by the “Music from the Hearts of Space” guys who sent them some albums they could all “Drowse off to” Neat!

Favorite Lines:

Tommy: Trumpy! You can do magic things!
Crow: It's called `Evil', Kid.

Tommy is giving the furry little alien (Trumpy) his second bowl of milk...
Tommy: Trumpy, would you like some more, milk? You like that name, don't you Trumpy?
Crow (as Trumpy): I prefer “Milky Bear”

Favorite Observations:

There are many instances where the makers of this film went WAY overboard with the fog machine, I actually liked it but I laughed my butt off everytime they pointed it out.

A couple of guys pull up in a truck, immediately followed by a billowing white cloud of 'fog' from an overzealous fog machine operator...
Crow: Wow, they're really burning oil!

Wide angle shot of old guy coming up the road in his truck, there are clouds of white 'fog' coming from behind a van in the scene...
Tom (as the old guy): Put out the van!!

Note: There are SO many nuances to this episode it is almost impossible to list them all, this is truly one episode that has to be seen.