"Um... yeah, I'm sick of sex, anyway."
A "Screen Classic"? We'll decide if it’s a "Screen Classic", alright?
"This is like a stag film produced by the League of Women Voters."
—Tom Servo
"Ya'know, Peaches has a fresh, natural stupidness that isn't forced or contrived..."
—Crow T. Robot
Film watched: Racket Girls with the educational short film Are You Ready For Marriage?.
Like last season's Is This Love?, Are You Ready for Marriage? focuses on a couple of young lovers who just can't wait to get married. Unlike the protagonists in the former short, the lovebirds here actually discover that they don't have as much in common with one another as they thought, and they still have extenuating circumstances in their personal lives standing in their way. To this end, they discuss their troubles with the marriage counselor at the local church, and take steps so they can get better acquainted and work their future wedding around their personal lives.
The episode is available in the Gizmoplex here
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The Segments:
Prologue
- Mike and the 'Bots prepare to enjoy a performance by special musical guest Lisa Loeb! It turns out to be a lot more annoying than they thought, especially since Crow seems to have her confused with someone else.
Segment 1
- Tired of Lisa Loeb, Mike boards up the Hexfield to shut her up, then turns his attention to the Mads, who are having their own issues with security in the form of a rubber-necking family of tourists. As he tests out the doorbell, Frank can't resist the urge to troll Dr. Forrester, nor can Mike and the Bots when the doc tries to contact them via intercom. This forces him to give them the title of their short via semaphore signals.
Segment 2
- Inspired by the short, Crow desires to ask for Servo's hand in marriage. Mike tries to see if they're compatible enough with the help of a quiz in this month's issue of Cosmo. As Dr. Forrester prepares the feature presentation, Mike uses Dr. Hall's "rubber band" trick to mess with the Mads.
Segment 3
- Crow is throwing a bachelor party before his big day, and he invites Mike to check out the "entertainment": Jan in the Pan doing a "striptease". Mike is suitably disgusted.
Segment 4
- It's time for Crow and Servo's wedding, and Dr. Forrester is wrangled into officiating the ceremony. Chaos breaks out when Forrester picks a fight with the tourists who have been hanging around Deep 13 all day.
Segment 5
- Mike and the 'Bots create their own wrestling alter egos (Crow as "Professor Hertz", Servo as "Sir Slams-a-lot", and Mike as "Count Deal-a-pain"), and read some fan mail, including fan art from David Scherer, age 5. Dr. Forrester finally gets rid of the tourists, only to be stuck with Lisa Loeb.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Are You Ready for Marriage? contains these tropes:
- Faux Horrific: The snapping of a rubber band. It even manages to freak out the Mads after the short.Larry: It's gone!
Sue: Where'd it go?!
Crow: We're gonna DIE! - Flashback Stares: Spoofed when, during a close-up shot of Sue blankly staring at the camera, Mike and the 'Bots make it appear as if she's having a Vietnam War flashback, complete with gunfire noises.Mike: [after a cutaway from close-up] Sorry, back in Da Nang there...
- HA HA HA—No: A Running Gag during the short has the crew imitating Professor Hill, saying "Ha ha ha, No, you're not" when the young couple insist they're really in love.
- The Stinger: Another episode where it comes from here rather than the movie.
The Mystery Science Theater 3000 presentation of Racket Girls contains these tropes:
- Berserk Board Barricade: When we get back from the first commercial, Mike is nailing up boards over the Hexfield because Lisa Loeb won't go away.
- Buxom Beauty Standard: As Peaches does jumping jacks — without a bra — Crow marvels at her.Crow: (as Bob Hope) I hope she's not on a fault line! Yow!
- Call-Back:
- Santa telling Lupita not to stop believing in him from Santa Claus:Crow: [as Santa] No, Lupita!
- To The Dead Talk Back, as blurry, generic cops troop by the camera:Mike: [as Dr. Krasker] Have you been noticing any odd occurrences lately...? Oh, it's true!
- As Scalli winces in pain after being shot:Mike: [as Sophisticated as Hell hoodlum Ron from Kitten with a Whip] I'm dyin' in a rush.
- Santa telling Lupita not to stop believing in him from Santa Claus:
- Continuity Nod: Jan in the Pan appears as a stripper at Crow's bachelor party. Mike calls it Sick and Wrong.Crow: Woo hoo! Show that neck! Hotsy! Hotsy!
- Cowboy BeBop at His Computer: Crow thinks Lisa Loeb is "Courtney Hole". Mike corrects him, saying she sings for "Pearl Hole."
- Damned by Faint Praise: Mike tells Crow his bachelor party is the most depressing event he's ever experienced. Crow drunkenly sobs happily— that coming from Mike is something special.
- Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?: The host segment following "Are You Ready for Marriage?" ends by Mike freaking out the Mads by stealing a move from it: snapping a rubber band.
- Don't Explain the Joke: Mike sings, "Lady wrestler, my love for you..." then under his breath explains it's a reference to Lou Rawls' "Lady Love" — one of the few times a riff has ever been explained.
- Ed Wood: Invoked twice, including a declaration that the film's director "has out-wooded Ed Wood!"
- Fairytale Wedding Dress: Tom puts on a fancy, frilly dress for the wedding.
- Father, I Want to Marry My Brother: The short prompts Crow to ask Mike for Servo's hand in marriage. Subverted in that they both admit they don't want to marry each other, but dammit, they're not getting any younger!
- Fetish: Mike and the 'Bots veer wildly between this and
Fetish Retardant, simultaneously being turned on and turned off at the same time, even in consecutive riffs.Crow: I'm being turned on by a woman long dead. [audible sigh/shudder] - Irony: Defied and lampshaded by Crow on the Racket Girls climax:Crow: Ironically... well, there is no irony.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Mike uses a cheesy analogy from the short to utterly terrify Forrester and Frank:Dr. F: "Marriage" — hah! What would you know about marriage?
Mike: [yanking on a rubber band] Well, I know that if a marriage is stretched too much... it can snap!
Frank: IT'S GONE! Where did it go?!
Dr. F: Be careful! I've gotta send send you your feature presentation, Racket Girls! It —
Mike: [playing with yet another band] Well, I know that if the movie is too long... it can snap!
Dr. F: WHERE DID IT GO?!
Frank: HE'S A SORCERER!!! - "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Dr. Forrester seems to get into this when he starts the marriage ceremony.Dr. F: The coming together of two to make one. Two people — two separate, perfectly happy people who haven't been held down by life until now, but no, some lamebrain gets it in his head that he can't make it alone. [mockingly] I'm too weak, I need a hand to hold... Suddenly, the idiot gets married, then all hell breaks loose. "But we're in love!" Ah!
- Running Gag:
- In the final wrestling match, Rita Martinez suddenly screams. For the next few minutes, Mike and the 'Bots insert random screams in-between their usual riffs, though another interpretation is that they were imitating the screaming fans. They barely did it in the first two matches, but really got into it during the main event.
- The print of this movie is horrible, with jumps and skips everywhere. This leads to a lot of dialogue being interrupted and sentences not being finished. Mike and the 'Bots don't hesitate to call attention to this whenever it occurs.
- Joe's Italian accent gets several references to Chico Marx.
- Monk the bookkeeper relating a bit of gossip about Jackie's living arrangements to Mr. Big, then repeating it almost word-for-word to Scalli, gets interpreted as him being genuinely jealous and obsessing over her "swank apartment".
- Sick and Wrong: Mike complains that Crow having Jan in the Pan stripping is wrong. Crow agrees for a far different reason, because he should be thinking of Servo, not strippers.
- Silver Fox: Mike and the 'Bots' reaction to Ruby.Mike: I never saw my Grandma naked, but this'll do.
- Soundtrack Dissonance: There is no music for the entire film, until the chase scene climax.Crow: Music?! Why HERE?! Why NOW?! Why us?
- Special Guest: Bridget Jones as Lisa Loeb appears on the Hexfield Viewscreen as a "special treat".
- Stock Footage: Lampshaded.Servo: "Police cars, not dissimilar to these, were called to the scene. This is a narrative approximation of something that may or may not have happened."
- Take That!: One-Hit Wonder-to-be Lisa Loeb stops by the Satellite to sing her then-ubiquitous hit "Stay". Mike is enthusiastic at first, only to resort to boarding up the viewscreen when they can't get her to stop, and the episode's revised lyrics make her out to be a high school-age Talkative Loon rambling on about Passing Notes in Class. She finds her way down to Deep 13 at the end of the episode.
- The fan letter reading has one fan send, of all things, a Noam Chomsky piece to the SOL. This is treated as a baffling oddity and they refuse to read it.
- The Thing That Would Not Leave: A tourist family finds their way into Deep 13 and spend the episode standing around watching the Mads' antics, including Tom and Crow's wedding. Dr. Forrester finally chases them off at the end of the episode, only to find Lisa Loeb has snuck in in the meantime.
- This Is Unforgivable!: Frank is tolerant of Lisa Loeb 'til Forrester informs him that she's dating Ethan Hawke. Frank's reaction?"Tramp! Harlot! Jezebel! Begone with you! BEGONE!"
- Waxing Lyrical: Dr. Forrester in the last host segment, performing the wedding of Servo and Crow:
- Wild Mass Guessing: Invoked. Mike begins to wonder if the film has meaning "in some deep, hoary netherworld".
- With Lyrics: The gang supply lyrics for the music they dub the Ukrainian national anthem.Ukrainia, my bitter homeland! \ Your strip mines, your big reactors...!
- Wrestler in All of Us: The wedding of Crow and Tom Servo in the second-to-last sketch is stopped by a sudden wrestling match. Mike and the 'Bots create wrestling personas after the film.
