I just love Mary Jo Pehl. She was one of the writers on Mystery Science Theater 3000 and also played the role of Pearl Forrester (as well as several one-shot roles throughout the series). Even though she’s a fat actress, I haven’t seen her weight being played for jokes (maybe in good part because she was one of the writers on the show and therefore had control over that).
Of course, most hardcore fans of the show kinda dismiss her, mostly because she replaced Dr. Forrester over the show’s last two seasons, but I find her to be a worthy replacement.
Here’s a bit from MST3K where Mike Nelson thanks Pearl for not killing him.
Dancing with my mirror 
Bountiful Luv Muffin said,
August 11, 2008 at 5:53 pm
LOVE THE MST3K! I have old VHS tapes with the shows!
Mary-Jo Pehl ROCKS!
Love Brain Guy and Bo-Bo, too!
blablover5 said,
August 11, 2008 at 6:44 pm
Mary Jo rocks! But then again some fans still love the Mike vs Joel debate. I will admit Mary Jo got a lot more flak than Bill did for replacing Trace as crow.
(That sentence just proves how big of a nerd I am).
I think Mary Jo’s been doing some RiffTrax with the rest of the guys and she’s been up to something else too.
wellroundedmama said,
August 11, 2008 at 7:58 pm
Long time fan of MST3K here too!!
Hotchka said,
August 11, 2008 at 10:40 pm
I’m a hardcore MST3k fan and have been for many years. I was lucky enough to meet Mary Jo Pehl at an MST3k convention in 1996. She was incredibly nice and just an all-around cool person.
Godless Heathen said,
August 12, 2008 at 1:32 am
Mary Jo is involved with Cinematic Titanic now, and she still roxs my sox off. She also does a few Rifftrax with Mike Nelson from time to time. She comes off as a lot more dry now than she was in MST3K, but I think it works for her really well. If you get a chance, you have to see Cinematic Titanic: The Doomsday Machine, it was teh awesome. (You can get it at http://www.eztakes.com for $10 as a direct download, you’ll need about 5 free gigs of hard disk I think.)
I don’t compare her to Trace. I think the show actually got sharper and funnier in the later seasons because everyone who was working on it really had their act down well. The only cast member I felt was a huge step up for the show was Kevin Murphy, though the most die hard of die hard might argue that Josh was still the better Servo. (They’re off their gumball, IMHO.)
I still watch it when I get the chance, there’s a streaming Shoutcast feed online you can watch with VCL or Winamp. ( http://mst3k.nofadz.com Limited slots open for non-subscribers, so stream may be full when you try. Live experiments every Saturday near 11pm eastern.)
blablover5 said,
September 9, 2008 at 8:27 pm
I was so ecstatic to find that Cinematic Titanic Live! was going down while we were gonna be in the Twin Cities on our honeymoon.
Now I’m really looking forward to the wedding so I can go see all the old cast riff on a movie.