Pardon us as we indulge in a moment of self-congratulation, for as The A.V. Club predicted during the last round of Mystery Science Theater 3000 casting news, Patton Oswalt has joined the recently rebooted version of MST3K as the henchman to Felicia Day’s Mad. Oswalt’s character will be known as TV’s Son of TV’s Frank, so called (appropriately enough) because he is the son of original Forrester henchman TV’s Frank.
Oswalt has known MST3K creator Joel Hodgson for years—he’s even moderated MST3K panels—but his participation wasn’t finalized until after the Kickstarter campaign for the new season had already launched, explaining his absence from early promotional materials. In the update announcing Oswalt’s casting, Hodgson says he originally approached Oswalt, who reportedly came up with his character’s name himself, to write riffs for the show before envisioning him on camera, but then: “The idea of Patton wearing black lab assistant’s garb, with a big mound of silver hair and a spit curl…? It was just really funny to me, in a visual/cross-referential/meta kind of way,” Hodgson says. He even lifts the proverbial curtain to show how the whole thing went down:
And that’s how show business works, kids. With the cast for the new season of MST3K now in place, all that’s left to do now is raise the $5.5 million required for a full 12-episode season of the show. As of this writing, $3,208,276 has been raised with 11 days left, so keep circulating that URL, MSTies.