MYTHBUSTERS: THE SEARCH coming in January

[Christopher]

I assume this will lead to a show about the new team tackling myths.

That's the theory, but I'm skeptical. "Reality" shows are mostly scams. They promise rewards and then don't deliver. Most of those stupid bachelor/bachelorette shows that supposedly end in engagements never actually lead to marriage. Who Wants to be a Superhero? promised that its winners would get their own comic book and Syfy movie appearance, but it turned out to be a one-shot comic and a short cameo in an unrelated monster B-movie, and I'm not sure the second-season winner ever got either prize.

 

[Push The Button]

Mythbusters, as a production, is over and should be allowed to rest in peace. There are almost 300 classic episodes with the beloved original cast that Science Channel can rerun for the next 20 years, most of which I have still never seen.

As an alternative, they could have at least hired Kari, Tory and Grant back and made them the new 'A' team for a new series, instead of this awful elimination round concept.

 

[Christopher]

Mythbusters, as a production, is over and should be allowed to rest in peace.

I think the idea of Mythbusters is something that needs to endure -- the idea of a show that teaches critical thinking and the use of science, study, and empiricism to test the validity of claims. That's a skill more people could stand to learn. But it's hard for such attitudes to prevail under the pressures of commercial television to go for lowest-common-denominator ratings grabs. I feel the original show got more and more sensationalized over time, focusing less on science and process and more on big booms and spectacle. This is just the next step in that process.

 

[shapeshifter]

I liked the premier. I was pleasantly surprised by how reminiscent of MB it was. I'll continue watching this and l am looking forward to the eventual continuation it (hopefully) someday spawns.

I hope Hackett is one of the final winners. I used to be one of the 2 people that watched his short lived show, Stuck With Hackett.

http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/stuck-with-hackett/

 

[Christopher]

Still torn about this show. I'm interested in the builds, but I still dislike the "reality show" format. The various designs for revisiting the "Painting With Explosives" myth were interesting to see. I really thought the one with the styrofoam and the diffuser mesh was going to work, since it did so well in small scale, but in full scale they relied too much on gravity for the lower part of the room (they should've done the math and realized the paint would travel too fast for gravity to affect its path much over such a short distance). I think it was a little unfair that they deducted points for blowing the walls off the "rooms," since those rooms looked very shoddily built and not up to code as the proper Mythbusters would've done it.

The myth about drinking making you more creative was shoddily handled, too. For one thing, it wasn't a blind test; the participants knew what they were being tested for, to see if being "buzzed" loosened their creative inhibitions, so that expectation could've been a self-fulfilling prophecy. Plus, just the fact that they did it a second time could've made them more comfortable and confident with their creativity, so there's no way to ensure whether it's the alcohol or something else. Anyway, they interpreted the result wrong. Just 4 "hits" out of 7 is as close as you can get in the circumstances to 50/50, so that result is no better than random chance, and thus it should've given a Busted result instead of "Plausible, but barely." The whole thing was just worthless, except as part of what seems to be their desire to check off all the classic categories of myth that the original show covered.

I was expecting that Hackett guy to be eliminated, since so much was made of how difficult he was to work with and how spectacularly his idea failed. But on the other hand, these shows like to keep their designated villains around to create tension, so I guess that's why they made a trumped-up excuse to give him immunity for the week and instead got rid of the guy who made no impression whatsoever, not even bothering to offer a good excuse for why he was let go. If anything, I thought the other logical candidate for elimination was his team leader Martin, since he was the one who just ignored the small-scale failure and assumed a bigger explosion would somehow fix it.

 

[publiusr]

Hackett had his own series
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuck_with_Hackett

 

[shapeshifter]

ECHO! ECHO ECHO!
http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/mythbusters-the-search-coming-in-january.284988/page-2#post-11882838

 

[drychlick]

this week show was ok! green team won but because the "house" did not come apart like blue and red team did! the Myth is really. really busted LOL !

 

[Owain Taggart]

That's the theory, but I'm skeptical. "Reality" shows are mostly scams. They promise rewards and then don't deliver.

I think the most honest and truthful reality show is Dragon's Den/Shark Tank, where pitched products that are invested in actually end up on store shelves. But yeah, for the most part, reality shows are dead-ends. Even the singing competitions have limited success with actual product. At least in Canada, when they were still doing Canadian Idol, none of the actual winners ended up really doing anything amounting from their wins, and in fact it was mostly the runner ups that ended up being more successful. I think it could be argued that those that are really committed would find their way with or without a show; that the exposure just makes it happen quicker.

 

[Christopher]

Probably my favorite "reality" show was Who Wants to Be a Superhero? The whole premise was so fanciful and absurd and obviously unreal that it came off as a spoof of "reality" shows, or at least as being more honest about its artifice than most (even if it did promise more than it delivered where the main prize was concerned). Plus, since the contestants were trying to prove their heroism, it rewarded good behavior and teamwork and penalized the kind of selfish or venal behavior that a lot of "reality" shows wallow in and encourage, which is one of the main things I despise about the genre as a whole.

 

[Redfern]

There's one "reality show" I've not only tolerated but actually enjoyed... SyFy's "Face Off", a movie makeup competition series. Admittedly, I was not impressed by the first season as it depicted "alliances" and "back stabbing" during the "off hours" when the artists were at their bungalow.

But with the second season onward, the makers shifted the attention to "issues" encountered at the shop, those usually of a technical nature, not the "scheming" of certain contestants.

In fact, they usually presented the opposite, the artists actually helping each other. One of the most impressive examples involved one young man who suffered an injury that could have taken him out of the running, maybe even resulting in his elimination. But this fellow was the type who would run back and forth whenever he found a few spare minutes, helping his fellow artists. The poor guy dropped a 300 pound mold upon his hand, crushing at least two fingers. He was rushed to the ER. Now, given the artists are allotted just 3 days to create their designs, he "lost" the rest of that day. But his competitors, when they had a few spare minutes here and there, separated his mold and extracted the clay, cleaning the cavity so the latex could be poured. The next day he returned and not only was he able to finish, casting the rubber, applying it to the performer and paint it, he wound up being one of the top three that week. Had the others not opened and cleaned his mold, there would have no way he could have finished or even presented a product. That would have likely sent him packing.

Now, it's possible, maybe even likely the show-runners urged the remaining contestants to help him. But the fact remains we the viewers saw the artists helping one another rather than throwing each other under the bus. I don't know what shifted the focus, but I'm glad it was done.

 

[publiusr]

Face off is a favorite of mine. Been on hiatus too long.

 

[Christopher]

The cardboard-boat myth was pretty interesting. As usual, it was a variation on past Mythbusters stories, but they haven't done cardboard boats before, and there were some very clever solutions to making the cardboard strong and watertight using only the permitted materials. Although, as usual, the "individual" mini-myth involving shooting blindfolded was cursory and incidental.

On the "reality"-show front, I'm a bit surprised at how it went. I'd gotten the sense that Hackett had been cast in the designated-heavy role, the guy who went his own way and created tension by not being a team player, but this week, his team got along totally smoothly and it was the other team that was failing to cohere. As usual, it was pretty easy to predict who the sacrificial victim would be, both from his isolation on the team event and his bad gun handling (although, as always, it's hard to trust the reality and non-staged-ness of anything in this kind of show -- how do you hold a gun in a way that makes it jam, anyway?). There was probably just as much of a case for ditching Tracy, but no way are they gonna drop the sexiest woman this early in the show.

Playing along for the moment with the premise that these contestants might actually go on to be Mythbusters in a new series, I'd say Allen is a keeper. He's got the same kind of energy, wit, and sense of fun as Adam. Not sure who else I'd pick, though. I'm definitely inclined to favor Tracy because she's hot, and I think she's got a fun delivery and personality. Martin comes off as really competent but a bit vanilla. Hackett is a colorful presence, but I haven't warmed to him, though he was more likeable this week, when he wasn't presented as the troublemaker. Brian seems skilled and effective, but a bit too much of a Jamie clone in appearance. I have no preference either way regarding Jon and Tamara.

 

[Christopher]

The needle-in-a-haystack revisit was unnecessary from a Mythbusting standpoint, since the original team tested the myth satisfactorily and there was nothing that really required a revisit. But it did lead to some interesting design and building ideas. I was impressed by how efficient the combination of wind and fire was for the Red Team, though it seemed more so in small scale than full scale. The handcuff-and-hairpin myth was an interesting mini-myth, but I'm rather surprised at how explicit they were about showing the TV audience how to pick handcuffs. (Or is this an old style of handcuffs that law enforcement no longer uses?)

I'm really disappointed that Tracy was the one to be let go, because she's pretty damn sexy. I'm also surprised, because it seemed to me that she demonstrated this week that had good qualifications to be a TV host, showing a lot of personality and charisma and wit. And why hasn't this lack of building experience come up before? I had the impression she had contributed meaningfully to at least some of the earlier myths. And I really thought they were going to dump Hackett this week, what with the dangerous, failed leaf-blower scale-up he built and the talk about how he was a terrible team player whose ideas rarely worked. Is lack of building experience really more of a deal-breaker than ineffectual and dangerous building experience?

I mean, I dunno, I guess I should see it as a good sign that they didn't keep the sexiest contestant, because it suggests that maybe there are some genuine standards being applied to the selections rather than them just being an excuse for keeping the most interesting/appealing "characters" on the show. But it would've been nice if they had kept the sexiest contestant -- plus I thought she made a good host personality-wise.

 

[publiusr]

I wonder if it might have been better just to build a long table and sort everything by hand. Too many places for a needle to fall and get hit by fans--too many nooks and crannies to lose things in.
One of the finds was a needle sticking into hand flesh.

A bare foot always finds a nail.

 

[Christopher]

Not to mention that any rig that takes 6 hours to sift through the whole haystack is never going to bust the myth, since the myth is that "looking for a needle in a haystack" is an extremely difficult and time-consuming process. The only way to bust it would be if someone thought up a way to find the needle in, say, just a few minutes' searching. For instance, what if they'd tried using a metal detector?

 

[publiusr]

That wouldn't get the bone--I think the goal was to have as Rube Goldberg a contraption as possible.

Useful, in that production line technology is very involved

 

[Christopher]

A fairly entertaining episode, with the A-Team junkyard build having sort of a Junkyard Wars quality, and the backward bike was a cute little mini-myth. I thought it was a nice gesture of the Red Team to help the Blue Team catch up, but I do have to wonder how much it was staged or encouraged by the producers. I definitely feel that Hackett is probably playing up his quirky characterization for the cameras, like making noise about wanting a big dangerous high-pressure rig but then going along with the crossbow idea (although his alternate compound crossbow struck me as more of a sideways dual trebuchet).

And they played up the "no one is eliminated" outcome like it was some huge surprise, but think about it -- with 10 contestants and 8 episodes, the only way it could work out is if they narrowed it to only two finalists, and that doesn't seem like enough. I commented on that back in the first week. So I suspect it was always the plan to spring a "surprise" non-elimination in some episode, even if they hadn't necessarily decided which one.

 

[publiusr]

They did that on Face Off from time to time.

 

[Christopher]

Well, they finally got to the point where they could no longer make excuses for not getting rid of Hackett. Seriously, did the guy contribute anything that actually worked to any of these builds? As soon as the host talked about looking back through past episodes to decide who would go, it was obvious it would be Hackett, because he's the only one who's screwed up repeatedly and consistently. Which, of course, is probably a role he was set up for to begin with. It was obvious from the start that he was going to be the designated troublemaker that every "reality"-show cast needs to have, though fortunately it was in a less aggressive or mean-spirited way than on many of these shows.

The setup was weird. The "myth" is that you can quickly build a wall-climbing rig from a battery-powered vacuum cleaner? That's a bizarrely specific "myth." Is there some specific source for that idea, like some movie or TV show where it happened? It sounded less like a myth and more like just a building challenge.

As for the plane-landing revisit, it's interesting that it was apparently harder for a novice pilot to be talked down to a safe landing in a small plane than it was in a jet airliner for Adam and Jamie. It's not necessarily surprising, though, since modern airliners are designed with all sorts of computerized safeties and redundancies and so forth, and their larger size and mass probably means they're slower to swerve or tilt so it's easier to keep them in control.