We got an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 from Netflix today, and it lampooned the jewel of a movie that was “Merlin’s Shop of Mystical Wonders” (made in 1996 and “starring” Ernest Borgnine). You can imagine how bad the movie is to have earned a spot on MST3K, but what really got me was the male antagonist of the first part of the movie, Jonathan Cooper III, a “respected columnist” who apparently has the power to crush mom-and-pop curios shops in crappy strip malls. It’s just hilarious to see this guy so drunk on his own power, and it made me yearn for the good ol’ days when I, as a sports journalist, held the fate of countless rec league teams in the palm of my hand. Of course, movies almost always cast journalists in an unrealistic and bad light, but this one was just so over the top, it’s worth a look:

Start at the nine-minute mark of the first clip, when our all-important (and all-impotent) strip-mall critic enters and then continues being an obnoxious jerk through the entire second clip. Then again, it’s hard not to become corrupted when you hold such immense powers in your hands. Oh, and by the way, the guy who played God, I mean, Cooper — John Terrence — never appeared in anything after this (I guess after what must have been the role of a lifetime, nothing else could spur his interest).