AUSTIN, Texas -- For years, Mystery Science Theater 3000 has made an art of mocking bad movies. Following a long hiatus, the show returned in 2017 with comedian and writer Jonah Ray as host and Netflix as home.

To promote the upcoming season, Ray and original host and show creator Joel Hodgson have hit the road, bringing a live riffing experience to devoted fans and new ones as well.

We caught up with Ray a few hours before his first show at the Paramount Theatre in Austin.

Ray, no stranger to Austin, has a few traditions when he visits the Texas capital. 

“I love Austin. It’s a great comedy town, and it’s one of my favorite cities to come to,” Ray said. “I gotta get breakfast tacos from Torchy's. I have to get Heavy (Death) Metal Pizza from Hoeks.”

Mystery Science Theater 3000 ended its initial run on the Sci-Fi Channel in 1999. It was never completely out of the public consciousness, however, and the campaign to bring it back for an 11^th season was largely crowd-funded. It’s something Ray sees reflected at the live shows.

“There are a lot of people that were into it – you know, they go up to Joel Hodgson and say, ‘I’ve been watching since college. I’ve been watching since the ‘80s.’ So you have that age range of people, and then there’s people my age, in their mid-30s, and they’re bringing their kids, and their kids are fans of the Netflix show.”

There’s no shortage of bad movies to choose from, and Ray and his co-writers are pretty methodical about the films they select. The selection process is a little different than it was during the show’s original run.

“It’s a lot of what you grew up with. My knee-jerk reaction to what I like to riff – I want to do Maximum Overdrive or the original Dawn of the Dead. And these are movies I like, but I understand the era of them,” Ray said. “One of my favorite movies to riff on last season, season 11 of Mystery Science Theater, was Cry Wilderness, because that was one of those clichéd, ‘80s ‘a boy and a thing’ kind of stories – E.T, Explorers – there was always a boy and a thing.”

Ray and his co-writers are well aware of how people consume their favorite TV shows and that Netflix is the vehicle for it. Season 12 was created with binge-viewing in mind.  

“It’s six episodes and a thing we’re calling The Gauntlet. It’s the idea that binge culture is how people watch things now, so the idea of the season is that we binge-made it, and that the Mads basically just rushed into making the entire season all at once. So we’re being forced to watch these movies in real time," Ray said. 

Season 12 of Mystery Science Theater 3000 debuts on Netflix on Thanksgiving Day. You can catch the MST3K Live 30^th Anniversary Tour Sunday, November 11 at the Paramount Theatre. Ray, Hodgson and their robot companions will riff The Brain at 3 p.m. and Deathstalker II at 7 p.m.