For the past few weeks, I have been in a life-and-death struggle with TB 152371 on Netflix. Let me explain. I had given up writing “reviews” on Netflix, because I found the voting unfair. No one seemed to actually read the reviews; they just clicked “helpful” or “not helpful” if they agreed with your rating. For example, “3 out of 29 members found [the following] review [of Idiocracy] helpful”:

Add to this, the fact that the top three vote-getters are always listed first and you can see that your review rating is based almost entirely on when you wrote it and how closely your opinion comports with other viewers. I can accept the former problem, but not the latter because my reviews are usually pretty clear in helping people decide if they will like a given film, regardless of how I feel. Take, for example, my review of The Gin Game—a movie that most people don’t like very much, but which I gave five stars:

So I feel that I have often been wronged by the Netflix community (and Netflix itself, which has created the rules and continues to monkey with their user interface, making it worse each time); they have not shown themselves to be worthy of my keen insights. Just the same, I am an attention hog and when I find a movie that few have reviewed, I can’t help myself. This leads us to a fateful date: 20 December 2010. This is the date when Netflix made four episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000 available via Instant Watch only: Devil Doll, Devil Fish, Robot Monster, and Ed Wood’s Bride of the Monster (all four are available as Mystery Science Theater 3000: Vol. XIX [Limited Edition]). Thus, there were no reviews on four episodes of a show that I’m a big fan of (Crow T. Robot is one of my heroes). I immediately watched the episodes and wrote reviews. I think I was the first person to review all of them except for Devil Doll.

And that’s when I met her—TB 152371. As soon as my reviews showed up (it takes Netflix a couple of days, not only to process a review, but to even process a “helpful/not helpful” rating), similar reviews of the same episodes written by TB 152371 also showed up. It was scary. First, she is actually beating me in votes for our Devil Doll reviews and she’s nipping at my heals on Devil Fish (thankfully, I have a substantial lead on the other two). Second, her reviews are so much like mine. She says, for example, “The movie ‘Devil Doll’ is pretty fun and we get to see Tom Servo as a toaster strudel, so that’s awesome.” Of Devil Fish, she says, “The riffing provided some real laugh out loud moments and the host segments were also pretty funny, including the Pearl/Bobo/Brain Guy storyline which I normally can do without.” And she even takes special note of the Hired! light opera, “The ‘Hired’ musical during the host segments is one of my favorite songs[1] of the whole 10 year MST3K series, so its a definite highlight of the episode.” Who is TB 152371?!

So I did a little research on her. She lives in Burlingame, California—where my older sister lives. She has been a Netflix member for over seven and a half years. And here’s the kicker: she has reviewed 34 films—all of them Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes! I was immediately smitten. (Of course, I don’t have crushes like other people; when I find a woman—or man—who is interesting, I don’t want to date them; I want to interview them! So if TB 152371 finds out about this article: please contact me; I really want to do an interview. Really.)

Since TB 152371 had agreed with me thus far (not just on our four matching reviews, but on episodes I’ve seen that she alone has reviewed), I decided to trust her. She gave Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders [available as The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 5 (Boggy Creek II / Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders / Time Chasers / The Touch of Satan)] five stars, so I got it. It was great. Then, I got Parts: The Clonus Horror [available as The Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection, Vol. 12 (The Rebel Set / Secret Agent Super Dragon / The Starfighters / Parts: The Clonus Horror)]. Again: she was right! But… It got me thinking. Maybe all was not as I had been thinking. Maybe TB 152371 was my clone. No, you say? She can’t be because I’m a man and she’s a woman? Well, I don’t know that TB 152371 is a woman. Sure, the TB 152371 account uses a picture of a woman, but so could the Frankly Curious account (the name of my Netflix account). So I think it entirely possible.

This all came to mind because of the movie itself, Parts: The Clonus Horror. It is about clones that are being created to serve as organ donors for the rich and powerful. I know what you’re thinking: isn’t that what that awful movie The Island is about? Indeed it is, and that is why the producers of Parts sued the makers of The Island, pointing out 103 similarities between the films. The Island was a clone of Parts, why couldn’t TB 152371 be a clone of me? The evidence, it turned out, was in the review itself. First, let’s look at TB 152371’s Parts review (you may not be able to see this if you aren’t a Netflix member):

I would never have written such a review, and I would certainly be highly disappointed if any clone of mine had written it. Although I agree about not generally finding the antics of Pearl & Co. funny, I disagree that this episode is an exception. In fact, I find them more annoying than usual. What’s more, TB 152371 attacks the base film, calling it a “disaster” when it is actually a rather good movie. She falls into the common trap of judging a $200,000 movie (Parts) by the standards of a $100 million movie (The Island). But no one’s perfect; I still think she is an excellent judge of MST3K episodes. However, she cannot be my clone.

But is she anyone’s clone? Not if we are to believe her generally very believable reviews. She claims to have a mother, which we all know clones do not have. But the question still remains, as TV’s Frank would put it, howling despondently, “Who is TB 152371?!”

Update

There is an excellent interview with Trace Beaulieu over at A Site Called Fred. It is well worth reading.

Update

I just noticed another Netflix member: Flak Magnet. He has reviewed 820 films. I started looking through them and I noticed that he was often the top rated review. But I noticed something else: his “Helpful” scored tended to be right around 18. So if the film he reviewed hadn’t been reviewed much, he was at the top. If it had, he would be buried—with roughly 18 “Helpful” votes. What’s more, his vote totals have gotten significantly lower since the Netflix “Friends” feature was removed. This got me thinking: Flak had about 18 friends on Netflix; when he reviewed a movie, he told his friends and they all voted it helpful. Once you get a head-start like this on Netflix, it is almost impossible to lose your lead. So maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea for Netflix to get rid of its “Friends” feature.

On the positive side, Flak Magnet has reasonably similar taste in movies to me (that is: good) and his reviews are, on the whole, pretty informative—far better than usual for Netflix. He’s put together his own blog called The Movie Distillery that seems to just contain his short reviews. It ain’t Frankly Curious, but it isn’t without merit.

[1] It just so happens, I have my own favorite MST3K song. It is Tom Servo’s Super Agent Super Dragon—I wish I had the single. And look at the duds Crow’s wearing!