The first episode of the new season aired last night–January 10, 2015
Kari, Grant, and Tory, as you probably know, are no longer on the show. While I liked them (Kari and Grant more so than Tory), I think the show is a lot better with just Adam and Jamie. It feels less rushed, and there was more time to show some of the discussion, design, building, and pre-testing leading up to the bigger tests. Everything else seemed like pretty much business as usual. A few changes to the intro and on-screen graphics, but nothing jarring.
This first episode was Simpsons-themed:
Cherry Bombs in Toilets - This was a great myth to test. I’ve seen it in other shows and movies–I’m kind of surprised they haven’t tested it before. The small-scale test with the visible cross-section was well-done, and the full-scale test was not disappointing. I would have liked to have seen them do it with stainless steel toilets as well, though.
Homer vs the Wrecking Ball - This one was pretty silly, but worth it for the visuals! I’m not sure how much difference Homer actually made. Cosmetically, the second house didn’t look quite as bad, but it looked like it still took some severe damage on the first swing of the ball. I was disappointed that they didn’t really discuss any way to objectively measure the structural damage to the two houses. Also, it seemed like they hadn’t considered the limits of the wrecking ball-crane system they were using until the operator brought it up. May have worked out for the best, though, since a larger swing might just have leveled both houses. I loved Jamie’s hemisphere auger that he used to dig molds in the ground for his wrecking ball. Very cool.
All in all, I thought it was a promising start for what is supposed to be a “back to its roots” season.
I was surprised that they never brought up the fact that Homer would have been killed. Sure, there’s not a lot of cases where a person can rope himself to a wrecking ball, in real life, but there’s plenty of chances for people to try and use themselves as living bumper. In the boating world, I guess it’s reasonably common for people to lose limbs and life by trying to get between two boats or the boat and the dock, not realizing the amount of inertia that’s at play.
It seems like a lost opportunity for a warning message.
I liked it. I have always liked the Adam and Jamie segments better than the Kari, Tory, Grant segments. Spending more time on the planning, builds and explanations was good. I don’t think there was as much repetitive recapping by the narrator, either.
The family watches this together and we all agreed it was a good start to the new season.
I agree that I like the Jamie / Adam segments better than others. I like the other people, but they don’t seem to add anything that Jamie and Adam can’t do by themselves. But I may be terribly biased as I worked with Jamie a little bit way back when he was building “Blendo” for the Robot Wars and we all thought he was just the coolest.
Yes–that was always really annoying! Hopefully since they are no longer editing back and forth between two different teams, there will continue to be less recapping. Really, less of the narrator in general is a good thing.
I had two huge problems with the episode.
1)The cherry bomb part. In the small scale they showed three places were you could put the bomb. Way near the end with a lot of water between it and the toilets. A little ways down the pipe and just under the toilet. When they did the full scale, they did it both way at the end and just a little ways down the end. Both times it blew the toilets right off the mounts and they gave up. I don’t understand why they didn’t try it with the bomb just under the middle toilet. With very little water near the bomb it may not have blown the toilet up, or maybe only that one. Also, they could have tried using a smaller cherry bomb, on the assumption that Bart just had a fire cracker that looked like a cherry bomb. The go big or go home attitude isn’t always right*.
2)Regarding Homer saving the house. The needed to do more tests. When the ball with Homer hit and Jamie said that it was ‘a result’. It seemed more like a fluke to me. Either a fluke that Homer saved the house or a fluke that the ball did so little damage to the other house. By their testing standards, sending 5000# wrecking ball into your house also won’t do any damage to your windows. It seemed to me like this myth/experiment was more about watching Adam build Homer.
Based on what I saw, I think if they did more testing on more houses (and swung the ball even a few more feet) and replicated all of it with and without Homer, I think you’d find that Homer made very little difference. What I saw was that he spread out the impact. The masonry still cracked, it just didn’t topple over. Again, it seemed like a fluke and to call this confirmed on one experiment is…is what…poor use of time/money? Not showing kids how science works? I don’t know. Don’t get me wrong, I love the show, I just hate it when they bust or confirm thing and clearly didn’t gather even the obvious data.
*Years ago there was an episode about whether or not more people aboard ships were killed not by canon balls but rather by wooden splinters from the canon balls coming through the side of the ship. Each time the people on the ship didn’t die, they kept firing at faster and faster speeds. IMO, they should have been firing slower and slower. The faster they launched the balls the cleaner they were going to tear through the hull, a nice slow shot would make a lot of damage. With all their ballistics training, you’d think they’d know this. What does more damage, a bullet that goes in and back out really fast or one that’s slow enough to go in and break up?
I’d given up on the program a year or two ago, but was persuaded to give the new season a try. I was surprised how much more I liked this format. Less narration, and a relegation of the “Don’t try this at home” disclaimer to the visuals were the reasons I could come up with at the time. And for the rest of the crew, Grant was the only one I could tolerate.
Why did they go to this style? Only thing I read was that Kari wanted more children.
I really liked the Simpsons episode. It seems like they’ve successfully reformulated the show to make it interesting again. I had stopped watching a couple years ago because I was getting insanely bored with the show. Although I liked the secondary team, I’m gratified to see them focusing on the actual builds and going into more detail again. It reminds me of the original season when it was just Adam and Jamie and they were largely winging it.
I’m dubious. I actually liked the Build Team and their sibling-group dynamic a lot better than I like Jamie’s pomposity or Adam’s stupid accents. Couldn’t care less about “The Simpsons”, either, and if they’re reduced to checking out CARTOONS for material, shark jumping has either occurred or is imminent.
Agreed, mostly. I like watching Adam and Jaime, but I also like watching the build-team. I think they’re a lot more rigouros when it comes to the science. It’s still psuedo-sceince, but it’s less pseudo than what Adam and Jaime do sometimes. I like that they’ll take a ‘myth’ and spend less time building it and more time testing it, as opposed to Adam and Jaime who do the opposite. This weeks example was perfect. We spend that whole episode watching Adam build a perfect Homer, paint him, put clothes on him, send his face measurements out to have them perfectly replicated. In reality, he could have just mocked up the general shape and size and filled it with water (like he did at the end), that’s all that was necessary. As I said earlier, this seemed to be more an experiment about whether or not Adam could make a life size Homer than anything else.
If the build team was doing that, they would have just mocked it up with ballistics gel, wrapped it in something so it didn’t explode and strapped it to the wrecking ball.
Don’t get me wrong, I really like Adam and Jaime, but I think the show is going to lose what little science it did have and just become ‘what goofy thing can we do next?’. I’ll never stop watching it, I just don’t, typically, like hearing 'mythbusters said_____ therefore______".
On digesting it more, I feel like the show has the potential to be better this way, but didn’t quite hit it with the first episode.
I feel like Adam and Jamie basically split to become Team A and Team B, having to each take a myth each and do it with half the manpower as they used to have. The hope would have been that we simply saw them doing what they do, and the hell with trying to pack multiple myths into a single episode.
I’d rather see them doing a full mythbusting of one good myth, working together, over the course of three or four episodes, than trying to do a rough pass working independently, jamming a myth into ~20 minutes.
It is nice to see Jamie stepping up to host his own segment, though. Before, he has always had to leave it to Adam to do all the talking.
In the new credits they had a JATO-car flying off a ramp, so I’m guessing they must be re-re-re-visiting that myth this year. So there’s that to look forward too.
I watched it. The concept of showing more of the building like they used to do is interesting, and less narrator is good. I think they missed the boat a bit on the Homer/wrecking ball.
The issue with the cherry bomb, if they used a smaller bomb ( a firework), they wouldn’t get the big cascade of water that was the myth.
It was linked in a different thread, where Adam gave an interview. Basically, it comes down to money. This show is on season 10, when shows get famous, typically the stars get promotions/more money. The show doesn’t have the financial footing to support the kind of money to pay everyone. It was essentially salary negotiations with the build crew.
Removing them should cut expenses by removing the need for 2 shops and a second film crew, etc.
How do they know? They didn’t try it. All they know is that the big cherry bomb blew the toilets off the floor, therefore the myth is busted? Maybe smaller ones would push the water up without blowing up the toilets. Bigger isn’t always better.
Remember Home Improvement/Tool Time. Tim would always take the Binford tools would tweak them or swap out the motors and they would end up catching on fire or breaking things. Hell, I remember one episode where he even blew up some plumbing because he took a tool that was meant to slam some pressurized air into a plumbing system to clear a clog and over pressurized it. Al even told him not to do it.
I liked this week’s Indiana Jones episode more than the Simpsons one. The poison dart run was a fun build, though not exactly a “myth.” I realized immediately that a one second delay meant he would easily make it through unscathed, so I’m glad they did it again with no delay.
The whip maneuvers were the best part. Nice to see that it was plausible to whip someone’s hand/gun. I also liked that the expert said he’d go for the face! Measuring the tip of the whip on high speed was also cool. I was most interested in the “pit swing” segment and whether they could get the whip to grip the log.
Once again, I appreciated that they were able to show more of the design and building and troubleshooting.
