Research from various sites conclude that this episode deals with two "crime" myths. Jamie and Adam test the myth of antacid gas causing a jail break, the "Build Team"/"Junior Mythbusters" test driving in the dark (I guess inspired by when criminals, etc. do it in the movies to evade capture.)
I love how -in an atempt to be Politicaly Correct- whenever they test "border myths" (like the Border Slingshot) they use Canadians. Because there's so many Canadians trying to smuggle maple syrup over the broders and generating this myth.
Antacid jailbreak: The premise has all sorts of logistical problems they touched on but didn't solve, such as hiding the tablets, getting the plastic put up, getting the water to the tablets, not suffocating, etc. I'm wondering how the inmate could survive the crushing pressure. Ah, and it turns out he couldn't. On top of which, as is so often the case in myths like these, the pressure just escaped out the first point of rupture rather than actually breaking the whole thing apart. The bottom of the door blew out, but the lock remained intact. Even if the inmate had been superhumanly durable and survived the pressure and lack of oxygen, he wouldn't have gotten out. But it is pretty impressive how much force the gas pressure can exert, and quite interesting about the distributed load. The key, of course, is that pressure is force per square inch, so the more sq. in. you add, the bigger the force gets for the same pressure. Driving in pitch darkness: A totally unsurprising result, and there's not much to say about it. This is a very dangerous thing to do. Still, I wouldn't put it past smugglers to try it, since criminals are not exactly play-it-safe types, or particularly smart. (I hear they're also a superstitious, cowardly lot.) I'm finding Jessi to be merely adequate. She's okay, but kind of generic. She doesn't quite project the same kind of distinctive personality and wit that make Kari so much fun. I don't know, hopefully once she gets more used to being part of the team, she'll find her voice. The show's popular with kids. It's shown in classrooms. Naturally they're not going to talk about drug smuggling.
Well, they simply could've said illegal immigrants trying to avoid INS/Border Patrol. The Antiacid Jail Break, I'm not all-that surprised didn't work without having to go beyond the "circumstances" and even the "circumstances" were impractical for a prison setting. Still a nifty myth and Adam and Jamie did pretty good testing it. Would've been interesting to see them remove the obvious "fail point" of the door and simply have closed the doorway off with filled cinderblocks (though they obviously wouldn't have been able to tie it into the structure of the building. The "Junior Mythbusters" myth was a bit more interesting, esp. in how they tested it. Night vision is pretty great thing to have, but it's not stellar and it was neat of them to test the lights of an on-coming car. I'm still not great on Jessi she still just strikes me as "too eager."
But this myth isn't about immigrant-smugglers. According to what I read on the Discovery message board, it actually is about smuggling contraband across the Canadian border, and it's a real practice dating back to Prohibition days. The only substitution was the "maple syrup" for things like liquor, cigarettes, drugs, etc.
One thing I dislike about Mythbusters is that they always ignore the most vital piece of a myth: Human determination. Followed closely by the second most vital: Learning through trial and error. If Thomas Edison was a Mythbuster, we'd still be without a light bulb as the theory would have been "busted" after the third or fourth feeble and uninspired attempt. Regarding the myths themselves, I don't get why anyone would be stupid enough to try and smuggle crap that way. The Canadian border, in particular, is largely unprotected. It's not like there's a wall of impenetrable 50-mile-high steel extending from the Atlantic to the Pacific. But instead of going through any of the countless paths available, they try to run by a police check point in the dark? The jail break bit is another one, though more on Adam and Jamie's side. They completely neglected the fact that the guy had a decade to plan his escape and the logistics thereof. They neglected to consider all of the other tools he had available to him, like a bed, with which to build a relatively safe spot in a corner where the pressure would be minimal (we saw that in the scale model they built). They didn't even stop to wonder that if the guy was smart enough to come up with the plan and see it through to its conclusion that he was probably smart enough to consider all the things that could go wrong and plan for ways around it. etc. But hey, a couple of hours of thought and a day or two of building an experiment that had little to nothing to do with the actual myth (did they even research where it occurred if at all?) is easily enough to account for all of those things.
Average. The antacid explosion was kind of cool but not very impressive in the grand scheme of things. The tertiary myth was largely an excuse for them to drive go-carts in the dark, and was kind of cool. I think their methodology was rather suspect however. If a criminal were really going to do this (and I'm quite sure they probably have) he would pick a road he was familiar with, that didn't have a lot of curves in it, and would not be likely to be full of wildlife and logs or whatever. The assumption that the criminal would pick a random curvy road and drive down it with his lights off is really absurd if think about. Plus those little go-carts handle nothing like a real car. P.S. when they were putting the plastic up in the jail cell I had a Dexter flashback.
Voted "Average", though I would have voted one lower if there had been an option between Average and Bad. Kept looking away and doing something else. Bored. Driving at night is possible, despite this. They were in a building. At night, if someone was trying to smuggle, they'd wait for a full moon. Gets so bright during a full moon, night driving is 100% possible, and on coming headlights wouldn't be a problem.
^But the myth wasn't about driving on just any night. They specifically stated that the smugglers would do this on really dark nights, with no moonlight. After all, the goal is to go unseen by the border guards or highway patrol. If there's a full moon out, it's going to be easy for the lawmen to spot the smugglers even without headlights.