I had put this post on the old boards, but it’s a new board, so I’m doing it again!
Anywhoo, I was wondering what the dopers think of this televised Straight Dope homage?
I kind of like the show. Sometimes I get really annoyed by the elaborate experiments they come up with to make the myth actually happen (like the exploding cell phone near a gas pump), and I am sometimes rather impatient, wondering why they just didn’t check snopes or Straight Dope before they go to all the trouble. But I guess the masses like to see the myth busted, instead of reading about it. And it’s pretty entertaining, I have to admit.
“This week on Mythbusters, Adam and Jamie go to the library!”
“Will mixing Pop Rocks and soda lead to fatal results? We don’t know, but Prof. Jan Harold Brunvand probably does.”
“This and more on Mythbusters! Followed by Trading Spaces On Paper, where two sets of families draw pictures of how they would renevate the other person’s house.”
I wish I got paid money to blow crap up the way they do. The only episode I didn’t like was the dead body in the Corvette; that was a little too gross for my taste…
I just wonder how much more poor Buster will have to go through until they retire him and get a new dummy.
I agree that the dead-body-in-the-Corvette episode almost made me turn it off, but I admire them for going through it all for our entertainment and enlightenment.
Its a fun show, I enjoy it. Not enough to set the VCR or catch it regularly, but if I’m doing nothing and I catch it on, I’ll watch it.
Love the show! Will stay up late to watch it.
Sometimes I wonder about the science. Like on the suspension bridge episode. Building a mini Golden Gate bridge might be more that just making it 1/6th the size(or whatever scale they used). Was the material used also the same scale? The model wasn’t anchored in any way, unlike the real bridge. Were the load stresses on the model duplicated in scale?
The toothbrush in the bathroom segment grossed me out.
A good freind has been on the show twice as an EMT.
I think it is a great show. I often watch it more for to see what Jamie & Adam will build each week rather than what myths they are going to bust. Plus, being a SF Bay Area resident, I always like to keep a sharp eye out for places I’ve been myself. And the 11pm Sunday night airing is a perfect way to cap off a weekend.
Too much of a “guy-show” for me. The whole gestalt is too Boys-and-Their-Toys.
And the problem with that is…? 
I prefer to think of it as, “they know who their target audience is and what they like.” It can be educational, though, to know just how hard it is to blow up a gasoline fume-filled room.
It does irritate me when they have some “expert” come in and tell them their setup will never work; there could be serious things they’ve overlooked, etc. Of course, they ignore him and things work anyway. Take that, so-called “expert”!
They dispell ignorance, and they blow stuff up. What’s not to love?
h.sapiens, did they do anything with Buster after dismembering him by dropping him from the crane?
And Eve, Mythbusters is a unanimous favorite at my sister’s house. But then again, my sister is very much a power tools kind of girl.
Sometimes I have issues with their rigourousness. Trying to prove or disprove something requires higher standards than they have.
OTOH, it’s one of my favorite shows on TV. They blow stuff up good.
Actually, Chronos, come to think of it, I don’t know if Buster has been resurrected since his plunge into the Bay. The shows I saw were mostly during a marathon, and might have been out of chronological order.
By the way, one of the reasons I think I like the show is because Adam reminds me of my younger brother.
I’m female, and think it’s a fun show. Plus, Jamie and Adam are sexy! Funny, I didn’t think so at first…smart and funny always gets to me.
I’m female, and think it’s a fun show. Plus, Jamie and Adam are sexy! Oddly, I didn’t think so at first…smart and funny always gets to me.
I like the show as well, the first one I watched was the "Does a Duck’s Quack Echo - hoping they would disprove the master…I was pleasently surprised when they corroborated unca cecils findings… Yes, the quack echos:)
What I like about Myth Busters is that they actually show you how the experiment was done, and thus even if they “Busted” a myth, you can see exactly how they reached that conclusions. This is as opposed to Snopes where you have to take everything they say at face value (I’m not saying I don’t believe what they state, etc), but I’d much rather see the proof than read the “proof”.
Check Snopes again. At the bottom of her articles, Barbara very nearly always (meaning that I can’t think of one outside of the repository for lost legends where she doesn’t do this) lists the articles, books, clips, and/or any other source she used in forming her opinion. If it’s possible to link to the site, she provides the links. You can go back and check her work.
I watched Mythbusters for the first time yesterday. And while I liked the toothbrushes and the waterskiing (though, wouldn’t it have been a better idea to get someone who could waterski already?) demonstrations, I was wholly unsatisfied with the bridge experiment. Not that I believe that it’s possible for soldiers to hit the harmonics of a bridge and therefore break it - but I don’t think they did a good job of proving anything.
Fun seeing stuff blowing up, dubious science. Count me in with the I watch if I come across it viewers.
I enjoy seeing them put no-no stuff in the microwave, like aluminum foil and CDs, more than I should at my age . I was glad to see them give a clear-headed explantion of why superheated water can explode after being in the microwave, about the closest to a scientific explantation as I’ve seen on the show.
But you can tell when they are bored or already know the outcome and half-ass what they are doing. Like with the urban legend about the bride cooking her internal organs with marathon tanning bed sessions. Sticking raw chickens (Did they leave the gibblet sack inside?) in a tanning bed for a mere 48 min?
My son likes this show.
My thought with the tanned chickens was : Who’s going to want to tan there knowing they had raw fould laying there?
Liked the peeing on the third rail one, though.