Recap / Mystery Science Theater 3000 S12 E04 The Day Time Ended

"The Morris Day Story!"

"I hope you like long silences and unmotivated stop-motion monsters! Or don't like it, I don't care."

—Kinga Forrester

Film watched: The Day Time Ended (1979)

The Segments:

Prologue

• Jonah continues his work on Kinga's movie vault while Tom and Crow are busy snatching up various odds and ends. Max's suspicions that Jonah may be planning something are quickly dissuaded.

Segment 1

• As the second half of The Gauntlet begins, Jonah grabs some coffee and brings out the Fortune Meal, expanding on fortune cookies with full-course meals that tell your future. Kinga shows off Spray-On Mustard Gas, which despite the name really doesn't go well with hot dogs.

Segment 2

• Just like Grandpa Grant, Jonah and the Bots are enjoying some steak-grilling and idle chatter about how they want to die, and then bikers show up to wreck the fun.

Segment 3

• Script-doctor Harold Servo helps Jonah and Crow write The Day Time Ended by introducing them to Concepts! Who needs a coherent plot or logical characters when you have Concepts?

Segment 4

• Kinga and Max are visited by the last person anybody ever expected to see again... Dr. Forrester's original assistant Dr. Erhardt. He's been traveling the cosmos on a long journey of self-discovery and he's only just come back to honor his old boss's last request. To that end, he needs Kinga to help out a bit.

The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of The Day Time Ended provides examples of:

• Artistic License – History: Kinga's Spray-On Mustard Gas is stated to be "real surplus World War I era mustard gas" but is also implied to be real mustard too. Mustard gas, also called sulfur mustard, was a sulfur-based blistering agent, named for its yellow-brown color and vaguely mustard-garlic odor. It was not actually mustard. It also wasn't really a gas, but we digress.
• Black Comedy: Kinga spraying Max with mustard gas.
• The Bus Came Back: Dr. Erhardt, last seen in The Black Scorpion, pronounced missing in Rocketship X-M, and not mentioned since Earth Vs. The Spider, returns after 28 years. (Although J. Elvis Weinstein himself ruined the surprise on Twitter the very day the season was released.)
• Call-Back:
  • "Knew your father, I did!" when the tiny elf alien alights on Jenny's bedpost in the middle of the night.
  • "Pretty niiiiiice!"
  • As Jenny: "Oh man. I don't pity this potty, 'cuz I'm here to bring the thunder! Buh-boom!"
  • "Eegahhh."
  • Jenny's habit of running around completely unsupervised in dangerous situations is compared to Paul.
  • "Oh no, it's sending us into the movie Avalanche!"
• Character Development: Dr. Erhardt, entirely offscreen.
  Max: Wow. I mean, you seem different than I remember. Less shrill.
  Dr. Erhardt: [shrugs] I'm less mad. That part of me dried up and blew away thanks to my journey of self-discovery. It's worked out real nice.
• Composite Character: Joked about by the crew, who call Grant "Leslie Nielsen in Death Wish." He really does kind of look like a mix between Neilsen and Charles Bronson.
• Cosmic Horror Story: It isn't, really, but Jonah and the bots get a lot of mileage out of pretending it is, mostly via little Jenny!
  Crow: [as Jenny] Man's time is done. All hail the new flesh!
• Department of Redundancy Department: Kinga's Spray On Mustard is "The only mustard delivery system that evenly spreads mustard in a fine mustard mist, of mustard."
• Dull Surprise: The standard response of many characters (especially Steve, the teenage son) to whatever stop-motion menace is currently attacking.
• Evil Sounds Deep: Inverted. Dr. Erhardt is two or three octaves less shrill than when we last saw him, which he chalks up to being less mad.
• Eye Catch: "Space Obelisk will be right back."
• Free-Range Children: Jenny's off in her own little world through most of the movie (literally after the obelisk whisks her away).
  Tom: [as Jenny] Mommy, can I go play on the missile test range?
• Friendless Background: Inverted — Jonah's Fortune Meal predicts many a lonely future night spent watching, ironically, Friends:
  Jonah: Hey, they were there for me, okay?
  Crow: Yeah, we won't be.
• Go Mad from the Revelation: Jenny's pony, after getting beamed to who knows where by the pyramid:
  Jonah: [as the pony] You don't know the horrors I've seen, Jenny! That green yurt broke my mind!
• Good Ol' Boy: Grandpa Grant is a textbook case of the wealthy boardroom type who still thinks of himself as this. Jonah and the bots morph into "rugged men of a certain age that still have that virile look in their eyes" and grill up a Flintstones-sized steak in the second host segment. Subverted in that they keep slipping in hints of vulnerability.
  Crow: Love it.
  Tom: Feels right.
  Crow: I wear bronzer.
• HA HA HA—No:
  Kinga: What are you looking so fuzzy-hearted about?
  Max: Oh, nothing. I just feel like, you know, Jonah and I have become really good friends.
  Kinga: Aww. [chuckles, nods — then straight-arm punches him in the head, cut to opening credits]
• Infomercial: The Invention Exchange, as usual. The Mads' invention: Spray-On Mustard Gas.
  Max: Has this happened to you? I want to add condiments to my TV's Son of TV's Frankfurter, but this bottle applies the mustard unevenly to my TUBEMEAT!!
• Journey to Find Oneself: Dr. Erhardt apparently went on one offscreen, meeting aliens, topping empires, finding and losing love...
  Dr. Erhardt: All part of my ongoing journey of self-discovery, that's worked out real nice.
  Max: ...Yeah, you know, you said that already.
• Lame Last Words: The Fortune Watermelon contains a four-volume book elaborating on Jonah's entire future life. Jonah skips to the end, to see what his last words will be. Allegedly, he'll tag the person next to him and say "You're it," just before he goes.
• Last Request: Before his death, Dr. Forrester had asked that his ashes (and by extension TV's Frank's, whose ashes got mixed in with his) be scattered through space to the song "Idiot Control Now" from Pod People. Erhardt has the ashes, which he liberated from a drawer in Gizmonic Institute two episodes ago, but he needs Kinga to provide the song as she has all of Dr. F's old experiments stored away.
• Meaningful Name: Mearth, the planet between Mars and Earth (pronounced "mirth").
• Mix-and-Match Critters: "A pretty pair of claymated monsters," as Jonah says during "Concepts!"
  Jonah: One looks like a ninja turtle
  Made of lava
  With a quintuple-decker mess of mammaries,
  And the other is a big mean kitty-cat doggy
  Who for no reason
  Bites on the other one!
• Mellow Fellow: The new-and-improved Dr. Erhardt.
• Missing Mom: Kinga's mother is revealed by Erhardt to be Kim Cattrall. She is pleasantly surprised by this revelation.
  Kinga: No wonder I'm such a Samantha.
• Multiboobage: One of the monster aliens appears to have five pairs of breasts, which Jonah and the bots comment on multiple times.
• Nobody Poops: One of the reasons this trope exists is brought up.
  Crow: Look, I appreciate the cinéma vérité approach, but do we really have to wait here while she goes tinkle? What's the point? Why?
• Overly Long Gag:
  • During the lengthy, entirely mundane car trip to the airport, Crow gives Grant a rambling diatribe where he coordinates his various appendages by talking them through it like they're separate people.
    Crow: [as Grant] Foot don't fail me now! ...No, right foot. No, that's my hands! Oh, now we're exiting — hands, put on the signal... Left hand! Put on the — guys, we gotta start working together here!
  • "Door's open. *bwoong* Door's open. *bwoong* Door's open. *bwoong* Door's open. *bwoong*."
    Jonah: [as Grant] Will somebody shut that GLORY-LOVIN' DOOR!!
• Patter Song: Tom Servo's "Concepts!" song. Of course, it's to the tune of "Ya Got Trouble", from The Music Man, one of the most well-known American patter songs.
• Random Events Plot: In the third host segment, Tom explains (in a Patter Song) how the movie is just a bunch of random ideas thrown together with no rhyme or reason, which never lead to any kind of point. This comes right after the appearance of the monster aliens finally makes Jonah and the bots snap in the theater.
  Servo: Did you say "coherent"?
• Rule of Three:
  Dr. Erhardt: I said I was on an ongoing journey of self-discovery that's worked out real nice.
  Max: Okay, wow. He just paid that off a third time.
• Running Gag:
  • Elderly main character Grant becomes a frequent target, with Jonah and the bots citing his love for steak (and later, "steak milk") and his tendency to blame "bikers" for everything that goes wrong.
  • "Hand commands!"
  • Every time the younger husband tries to call emergency services, Jonah and the bots have him accidentally call Sal's Pizzeria instead. And then the character becomes obsessed with getting a pizza.
  • On various long shots on the house, which looks vaguely like a Nativity stable from a distance:
    Jonah: Wise men still seek Him.
  • Stock riffs:
    • The immortal "You look at it. I'm bitter."
    • Over a futuristic Derelict Graveyard: "I love this bold new direction in Thomas Kinkade's work!" after the season's many digs at the self-declared "Painter of Light"'s schmaltzy, sentimental landscapes.
• Sanity Slippage: After the credits roll, Tom Servo and Crow hallucinate a beautiful vision of the domed city from the final scenes of the movie.
  Jonah: Guys, come on, don't Brazil out on me...
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Grant talking to himself, debating whether he's more like Woody (because he's a cowboy) or Buzz (because he's so cool) from Toy Story.
  Tom: Well, I guess I don't have to decide today.
• Shout-Out:
  • When producer Charles Band's name appears: "Hey now, prepare yourselves for the Charles Band... Maaan!" sung to the tune of the Detroit Spinners' "Rubber Band Man", used for Avengers: Infinity War's introduction of the Guardians of the Galaxy.
  • "This whole movie is like the cold opening of a Columbo episode."
  • When Jenny finds a tiny glowing green pyramid in the yard, Crow is shocked: "Good Lord Snoopy! What did you eat?!"
  • When the small alien appears in Grant and Ana's room, Jonah says, "Well, howdy-ho!"
  • In the first host segment, Jonah brews up some coffee using Tom Servo’s head as a coffee pot. The ensuing caffeine rush gives Servo a Motor Mouth, ending with him yelling “I’m so excited! I’m so excited! I’m so... scared!”
  • As the dad drives the car down the road at night:
    Jonah: [as KITT] Michael, why am I a Subaru now?
  • "I'm just looking for an honest man," Lampshaded (Pun intended) as "a Diogenes reference I'm dropping" by Crow when a gas station attendant walks out holding a lantern in the middle of the night. Greek philosopher Diogenes the Cynic used to say the same thing while carrying a lantern throughout Athens by daylight (he always said he never found one).
    • Servo made the same reference (un-Lampshaded) in Night of the Blood Beast.
  • "Are you steaming hams down here again?"
  • Tom has Steve name one of the horses Applejack. Also fitting, since Shout! Factory also owns Friendship is Magic's distribution rights.
    • Mild Actor Allusion as Felicia Day voiced Applejack's mother; also Patton Oswalt did two episodes.
  • In a separate riff Crow has Grant call a horse Bojack, "because of that Netflix series. Heh, it's a hoot!"
  • "Professor Harold Servo" name-drops Syd Field and Robert McKee, two (not directly connected) screenwriters/script doctors, best known for teaching seminars on storytelling, and in particular for propagating the idea of the Three-Act Structure across Hollywood and beyond.
  • "There's a monster at the end of this scene, and it's me."
  • "Don't watch that! Watch this! One Step Beyond!"
  • The teleportation effect looks like, variously, a Fourth of July parade (the guys hum a cacophonous rendition of "Stars and Stripes"), the infamous boat scene from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory, and the opening of Love, American Style.
  • "So this is where Boston album covers go to die. Huh."
  • Jenny again: "I'll show you the life of the mind!"
  • One more for Jenny: "All hail the New Flesh!"
  • "I am Groot."
  • "Leslie Nielsen in Death Wish."
  • The Cavity Creeps: "WE. MAKE. HOLES IN TEETH!"
  • "I'm caught in Myst, the 1993 graphic adventure puzzle video game published by Brøderbund!"
  • "Few times I been around that track \ But it just ain't gonna happen like that \ 'Cause I ain't no hollaback girl, ain't no hollaback girl..."
  • As usual, giving the horses Mister Ed voices.
    • "...Ain't no hollaback horrrse, ain't no hollaback horrse..."
  • Thanks to the subject matter, probably the most Star Wars references in one episode in a season full of them.
    • Humming "Binary Sunset" and riffing on how the son looks like Luke Skywalker/"bargain-bin Mark Hamill".
    • "I'll try." "Do or do not. There is no try."
    • "Uncle Owen: A Star Wars Story" as Grandpa Grant wanders around the Derelict Graveyard.
  • The inside of Martin Short is so spacious.
  • "SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOT!"
• Talking Animal: Ardy's new dog Bonesy, the Dog with the Gift of Speech!
• Technology Marches On: Joked about In-Universe. The idea of a house that works automatically and cars that operate by voice command aren't nearly as much in the realm of crazy scifi as they were when the movie was made, as the crew point out.
  Crow (as Jenny): (smugly, after Jenny commands the family's truck to shut off) Thanks, Siri! Any other little jobs you need done around here?
• Trademark Favorite Food: Grant and his steak-milk, according to Jonah and the bots.
• Visible Odor: Kinga's Spray-On Mustard Gas leaves a lingering, sickly yellow cloud.
  Max: AAAAHHHH! MY EYES! IT BURNS! IT BURNS! IT'S TOO ZESTY! AAAAHHHH!
• "Well Done, Son" Guy: Dr. Erhardt baits Kinga and Max thusly:
  Dr. Erhardt: Unless you don't want to do right by your absent, yet yearned-for fathers?

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A tiny green imp materializes in front of Jenny, who smiles in delight.

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