I’ve read stories that speculated that the two of them strongly dislike each other, but I’m not sure I entirely buy that their relationship is quite that bad.
Certainly, the two of them are polar opposites in personality and work style, and I would be surprised if they’re particularly chummy, but I’m not convinced that they hate one another.
But, hey, it may also be that they put on a good face for the public.
Everything I’ve read about them says that they get along fine at work, but they’re just not friends. Which seems to have warped over time into “they hate each other.”
Yes, exactly. I don’t want to watch people toil away for four days, try something once, and then throw up their hands. I don’t care about “winners” and “losers”; I care about “stuff that works” and “stuff that doesn’t”, and I want to see the former.
It’s not that I want to see every myth confirmed, but I want the test apparatus to at least have a chance to bust or confirm the myth.
I didn’t mind it. I’m assuming this elimination thing is to find new hosts, not how the show will actually proceed after this season. I didn’t mind the host at all. The things I didn’t like were the people (or maybe it was just one person) blatantly trying to act like Adam, right up to recycling his old quotes. Sorry, that’s not clever, we all know those lines. They’re in the commercials, they’re on t-shirts, we get it, you like the show, it’s not going to get you anywhere.
The other thing that bugged me was that the format was nearly identical to Ink Master. Now, I don’t watch much in the way of reality competition shows, but Ink Master starts off with ‘and your time begins now’ and ends with ‘time’s up, machines down, no more ink’, they also kick a player off with 'sorry, you do not have what it takes to be Ink Master". IIRC, very similar phrases were used in this show.
In fairness, both those things really were in true mythbusters style. “Look, we tested this thing one time, one way and it didn’t work, there’s no way this could have just been a fluke when it happened the first time…busted”
To this day, I still don’t understand why Grant and Kari(?) traveled all that way and spent all that time trying to get those bullets to spin on the ice. Granted, they got it, I’m just surprised at the amount of effort they put into it. I have to wonder if they knew it would work.
Week 2 – weak, too. They tried the paint by explosion myth again. Super tough myth that Jamie and Adam had lots of trouble with – so they gave each team one go at it. No ability to calibrate for amount of explosives or anything like that. So – results were predictable. Not much stuff got painted, and some stuff got blowed up.
Secondary myth was equally dumb. They “tested” whether people were more creative when drunk. Basically, an excuse to get the team drunk and see who was most amusing, I would guess. Guest judge looked at the “before” and “after” from each person to see which was most creative. Even by Mythbusters standards, I’m not seeing the scientific rigor here.
In an unrelated observation, the Science channel has terrible commercials, and they run them over and over. I think they have a commercial break every three minutes or so. Half of them are pimping their own shows. Which would be unnecessary, if they were any good.
Yeah, I hope these guys realize they’re not looking to replace the mythbusters 1:1, just get a new show going. Like I said above, we get it, you liked the show, copying Adam doesn’t impress anyone.
Also, I hope the get rid of Hackett, even if they have to manipulate him off. I don’t think I’ll be the only one not to watch the new show if he’s on it. He seems like an ass and he’s clearly not a team player. If he wins it’ll end up being ‘Hackett bossing the other mythbuster around’ or ‘An hour of another mythbuster trying to convince Hacket that their idea is viable (and probably better) as well’. If he wins, I could see the other person riding out their contract and leaving the show.
OTOH, they gave him that giant wrench at the end, so they must like him.
Youtube is full of people doing essntially this kind of stuff. Testing myths, building big contraptions, etc. Some of them are really talented, some are real scientists, some are master builders. A new show could easily poach some of these people to do something very intersting each week,
For example:
Ben Krasnow is a hardware genius. Have a look at this youtube channel, Applied Science. Here is a video of his Homemade CT scanner. He’s even got a bit of that Jamie Hyneman ‘not quite on the spectrum’ way about him.
I haven’t seen the new show, but I did look at the bios of the contestants on the web site. Some of them seem to have some pretty impressive building chops.
And yet they picked someone that’s already had a show which puts him (I assume) on, the short list. IOW, he wasn’t very random. It wouldn’t surprise me if he was invited/offered the job. Of course, from the few few seconds I’ve seen of that show (from when Biggirl mentioned it), I’m guessing they didn’t realize that he’s kind of a dick when interacting with others.
Hackett, since we know you have a Google Alert for your name: What I totally meant is, you should, like, get an (un)ironic shirt that says ‘doesn’t play well with others’. Of course, since Mythbusters, the show, isn’t a competition, but actually requires loads of groupthink and comprise, it just doesn’t seem like it’s up his alley and if how he’s acted in the first two episodes is any indication of his behavior should he win, it really doesn’t seem like the show will be all that enjoyable.
Just imagine if Jamie spent the first seasons telling Adam to go do something else since it’s ‘my shop, my rules and you’re idea isn’t going to work anyways’ (or even vice versa). It would get very old, very quick.
Having said that, during the show, they run commercials for some other show which appears to be a one man ‘blow stuff up’ type show, so we really don’t need a second one.
Probably Street Science. I’s actually rather low key. The premise is this guy goes into random places (obviously set-up but not obnoxious) and uses whatever chemicals are there to demonstrate a bit of science while explaining how it works.
The guy, while he looks like straight out of Duck Dynasty, is actually a science presenter at a museum in his home town and is quite good.
That rather explains why all the demos looked like up-scaled chemistry class demos. I was not particularly surprised that putting explody bottles in barrels of ping pong balls would cause the ping pong balls to go everywhere. Although it was mildly spectacular. On the other hand, if I owned a candy store, I’d be really, really upset if someone did the “pour sulfuric acid on sugar” experiment in my display room. 'Cause that has to stink and the local health department is probably not red hot on chemistry experiments in food-serving establishments.
I don’t know if this has been brought up, but has anyone else noticed that they totally spoil who is going to be kicked off the island with their endless commercials about the next episode? I never watched shows like Survivor so not sure if this is the norm, but you totally know who will be kicked off by the end of the show by just watching the commercials for the next episode and seeing who isn’t shown.
Also, did anyone else think that the granting of the golden wrench of immunity to Hackett this week was bullshit? His design was not only crazy and dangerous but was against the spirit of the myth (i.e. painting with explosives as opposed to use explosives to power a spray pump to spray paint the walls).
Not sure why I keep subjecting myself to this. As an episode of Junkyard Wars, I guess it would have been acceptable. But the contestants aren’t being given a chance to discuss their alternate designs (except through the rather snotty narration of the host). And this week’s challenge wasn’t much of a myth – can you build a boat out of cardboard? Well, can cardboard be a structural material if you pile it high enough? Yep. Can it be waterproof if you slather it with varnish or some other water resistant substance? Yep. That’s pretty much the philosophy they use to make kayaks out of 1/4 inch cedar strips or plywood.
Doing it as a competition really doesn’t have much Mythbusting potential. Both boats floated just fine. Did the team with the experienced boat builder construct the better vessel with less contention and false starts? Quel surprise. That would be useful in weeding out the wheat from the chaff if the show were called “boat busters”.
The gun challenge was equally stupid, because once again they tested a myth about experts using neophytes. Could a trained marksman hit a target by just the sound? We may never know. People who have never held a gun before sure can’t. But we didn’t even get a control as to whether they could hit it without blindfolds. And then they put a plexiglass barrier in front of the shooters so that the sound would be both muffled and redirected. But what really miffed me was when the douchebag host (it may be possible to be the host of a competition like this and NOT be a douchebag, but this guy isn’t hitting that note) subtracted points from two of the competitors because they showed poor gun form after, one assumes, about five minutes of safety instruction and actual gun-handling experience. While blindfolded.
i’d say the only good thing about this show is that there is no reality show backbiting and the rejected contestants have taken it with good grace and seem to have had a pretty good time at what is effectively Maker’s summer camp.
I also can’t wait for the competition reality show genre to die (my wife watches Chopped and all the phony contestant shows on the Food Network. I run from the room at top speed before I barf).