Heads up! MYTHBUSTERS season premiere tonight at 9 Eastern!

Discussion in 'TV & Media' started by Christopher, Mar 25, 2012.

  1. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Ohhhh. You're no fun. We're all -mostly- adults here. I think we can handle talking about pee in a show where Jamie and Adam have handled dead animals and feces and Tory has even sewn together various bits of dead animals together to make a human analog. Is pee really that much worse than a great deal many other things they've done in this show?
     
  2. UssGlenn

    UssGlenn Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    I was thinking more along the lines of a couple wings angled to create downforce.
     
  3. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    That would give you traction, but it wouldn't do much for thrust. Water is much denser than air, so you'd need an extra source of thrust to compensate, some sort of paddles or propellers.

    Hmm, maybe the "wings" could be attached to the rear axle and some kind of gear system could make them flex up and down like a whale's tailfin.
     
  4. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    Having the shy bladder, I'm impressed that the guys could pee with everyone standing around outside the TARDI- er, porta-potty.

    And they actually aired Tory implying that dancing with Kari gave him a boner! :lol:
     
  5. Redfern

    Redfern Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    You think the producers might have pushed the "pee" myth just so we'd have footage of Kari clutching her "region of wonders" in a comical fashion?

    Sincerely,

    Bill
     
  6. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    I didn't get that impression at all. He just said it would be awkward, i.e. embarrassing, if he lost bladder control while he was right next to her.


    No, I don't think they'd be so immature and sexist. If they were prone to that kind of exploitative thinking, we would've seen evidence by now. If anything, the trend has been in the opposite direction, since the closest focus on her anatomy came in her very first appearance in the show (when she modelled for an artificial posterior), and the episode where she appeared in a bikini was many seasons ago.
     
  7. Savage Dragon

    Savage Dragon Not really all that savage Moderator

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    Yeah, I agree with Christopher. I think Tori was definitely referring to losing bladder control.

    I must have missed the episode with Kari in a bikini. I know she posed for either Stuff magazine or Maxim years ago but that's the only time I can remember seeing her in a bikini.
     
    Last edited: Nov 5, 2012
  8. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    It was one of their shark myth episodes where they were out on a boat.
     
  9. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    I need to wash my mind out with soap. :D
     
  10. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Mattress dive: I was skeptical of this one the moment I heard it. I'm surprised Adam thought it was counterintuitive that it didn't work. Why would landing on a mattress in a pool be safer than landing in the pool? The mattress is more solid. It's not going to give way as much as the water would.

    Anyway, the SynDaver was pretty cool. It is a really effective human analog for measuring injuries and such. And it seemed to behave more naturally on hitting the water than the more rigid Simulaid.

    Jamie having to give up on the diving test because of his back and letting the stuntman do it made me realize that this show's been around a long time now, and if it goes on for years longer, the guys may have to depend more on surrogates to do the big stunts for them. Oh, well.


    Stone cannonball: I'm pleased they went ahead with this experiment prefaced with an apology for the infamous mishap last December, rather than just burying the whole thing. Showing their test procedure and the safety precautions they took helped to demonstrate what a fluke it was that the shot went wrong. Although I would've liked to see a special episode that was built all around both the experiment itself and an examination of how the accident happened. I guess they thought that would be too exploitative, but as I argued at the time, I think it would've helped make something positive out of the accident if it could've been used as a learning opportunity. Plus it was a classic Mythbusters situation, an incredible fluke event that shouldn't be possible but somehow happened.

    Anyway, the actual cannon myth was pretty straightforward aside from all that, although I was surprised at how porous the limestone cannonball was. But what bugged me was Grant saying this was probably the first time in 400 years anyone had fired a stone cannonball -- when Adam and Jamie fired a granite cannonball years ago in their tree cannon episode! You'd think the show's writers and researchers would've caught that.
     
  11. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    Jamie's a year older than me (56)!! Hell, I hurt myself just getting out of my recliner! :lol:
     
  12. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Nearly a year for a turn-around time from producing the myth to when it makes to air seems like a terribly long time. In fact, I'm fairly sure it's a lot shorter than that given other evidence we've seen of them doing production of a myth and when we see the episode. I guess for the cannonball myth they waited longer for things to settle down a bit given the mishap to make it a bit more in the "forgotten past." It was nice they addressed the issue up front and in the episode itself, though as Christopher said it also would have been nice for them to address how much of an absolute fluke this was.

    Myths tested were all pretty interesting overall. I do wonder how the "SimDaver" would have survived the initial myth tests rather than the more rigid dummy. I also wonder why they didn't test the dummy in different falling positions. I can see all of the pelvis and spine damage coming from the fact that it was landing directly on those parts as opposed to trying to "land flat" to disperse the damage more, a "cannonball" type landing or something else. Landing directly on your ass, sure, makes sense you're going to mess up your pelvis and thus lumbar spine.
     
  13. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Yeah I was really surprised they showed that myth, especially with how definite Adam sounded at the time of the incident that they never would, and how generally uncomfortable the hosts all acted anytime the subject was brought up.

    Makes me think the network might have pressured them to show it for ratings or something. Or maybe they just needed a second myth for the episode and that was the only one available.

    In any case, it was kind of impressive that Tory's little homemade cannon was capable of such a powerful blast. It looked like the cannonball shot through the concrete wall like it wasn't even there!
     
  14. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Kari said as much in the episode. After the misfire and the accident, they suspended testing on the myth, then spent months engaged in community outreach and reassessing their safety procedures, and only when they were confident that they could proceed safely, they resumed testing in a more remote location and using a more reliable cannon.


    It's SynDaver, short for "synthetic cadaver." A representative of SynDaver Labs has been posting here under their company name for a few weeks.


    I think the idea was to land relatively flat to distribute the weight, but from the way the stunt diver did it, I don't think that would be the right way to go. The stuntman had Jamie go in feet-first, minimizing the contact with the water surface, and then flattening out once he was under to maximize his deceleration. That suggests that landing flat on one's back in the water would create too much resistance and impart too much deceleration to the body all at once.



    I'm willing to take what the hosts said at face value -- that once they'd rebuilt their relationship with the community and tempers had cooled, it was deemed all right to proceed. Wikipedia says:
    I assume that sentence is supposed to say "poking fun at" the incident. Apparently the community is being good-humored about it in retrospect, and presumably gave the show the okay to proceed with the experiment.

    I think showing the experiment and making a public apology was a better, more responsible approach than trying to pretend it had never happened.


    The official report said the cannonball missed the water barrels, went through the cinderblock wall, and skipped off the hillside that was supposed to stop it. I'm a bit surprised the bed liner didn't stop it. From what I've seen, that's pretty amazing stuff.
     
  15. Forbin

    Forbin Admiral Admiral

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    'Twas humorous how the gang tried to blend their new blueprint-room discussion with the ones apparently shot at the time of the cannonball mishap. Kari even wore the same outfit, but she was missing the earrings. And Tory kept alternating from clean-shaven to bearded! :lol:
     
  16. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    ^I thought they didn't shoot the blueprint segments until after the myth was completed. They pretend they haven't started yet and are discussing what they're going to do, but that's just a figurative way of introducing the segment, and the opening and closing blueprint segments are shot together after the fact. So since this was a myth that was aborted halfway through and that for a while they didn't expect to air, I'm not sure they would've gotten around to recording any blueprint intros at the time.

    As for Tori, he was only bearded in the actual (later) experiment portions, wasn't he?
     
  17. davejames

    davejames Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It was interesting in the "Aftershow" how Grant said he thought the whole thing was some kind of prank at first, because he knew people had seen the tweets sent out earlier that day from the test site.

    I remember those (somewhat racy) tweets being deleted immediately afterwards, so it was kind of nice seeing them acknowledged.
     
  18. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    It seems Discovery has... "redesigned" their website. It took me some exploring to find the new aftershow segments as they're not at the link I had. It also seems that they no longer have discussion forums (for good or bad, I guess.) I used to know of another really good (un-affiliated) discussion forum for Mythbusters but can't seem to find it. Anyone know of it?
     
  19. Christopher

    Christopher Writer Admiral

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    Could you provide the new link to the aftershow?
     
  20. Trekker4747

    Trekker4747 Boldly going... Premium Member

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    Unfortuantely near as I can tell right now there's no good "one link" going to just the Aftershows with them ordered properly like they were before. Because that made too much sense.

    Going to the Mythbusters/Videos page and clicking around on the "link folders" below will reveal them but I'm not sure how (or even if) they're organized. I hope this is a WIP since the old way was much more straight forward.

    Here's a link for the Episode-Specific Videos which includes the two Aftershows for the two teams (Kari, Tory and Grant spend a good deal of their segment explaining more BTS stuff on what happened) as well as some more high-speed shots, some stuff on the SynDaver and other angles on some of the tests.