I like how Hackette graciously let the experienced boat builder lead or, as he put it, “He can be in charge of the design and I’ll handle the construction. The physical putting together-- that’ll be me.”
Donger Adam also continues to annoy. I bet you they’ll be the winners.
Also, the race aspect is ridiculous. Mythbuster’s was never about how fast a thing can be done. As they often stated, we only see the fun parts of a build. Sometimes it took them months and months to get a thing together.
So, semi related:
Today my mom asked me if I remembered an acquaintance of ours, which I did because we’ve known her for so long. She said “Her son does the recruiting on mythbusters.” I asked “Um, recruiting like, he worked behind the scenes on the old show or he got the contestants for the current show-” and before I could finish she said "I don’t know, she just said he does the recruiting and we went back and forth a few more times as I was trying to figure out what the hell ‘recruiting’ meant and she said “his name is “Kyle Hill””. Well, how about that.
Some quick checking confirmed we were all on the same page. He went to college in Milwaukee (were I am). The person that we know, does, indeed, have plenty of pictures on her FB page with Kyle, as well as being friends with Kyle and some other Hills.
Caught this week’s and it’s still a build show. No one was ever in doubt that given the contents of a scrapyard and a well-equipped build lab that it would be possible to build some kind of projectile weapon. Jamie and Adam claimed to have put their similar contraption together in an hour (which I’m pretty sure was bullpuckey) and their device was rapid-fire – something that neither team attempted this week.
I am thinking that I’m not seeing the sort of presence from any of the contestants that says “Mythbuster” to me. They all seem reasonably bright and they’re talented builders, but they don’t have much in terms of personality. And I don’t see any sort of interpersonal chemistry that might make a Mythbusting team.
The girl that was kicked off last week, I thought would make it to the end, was kicked off specifically because it was shown that she had no build skills at all. She spent the whole beginning of the show doing basically nothing at all. Granted, most people with no build skills could ‘fake it til the make it’, but they were mostly welding. I’m sure she can figure out how to swing a hammer or anyone can bolt struts together, but you can’t get someone up to speed with a TIG welder in an afternoon when the clock is ticking. She could have done herself a world of good taking a few afternoon welding classes and getting the basics down. I’m pretty sure every Mythbuster welded on a regular basis.
Also, did the backwards bike Myth change from beginning to end. I’d swear at the beginning it was “It’s impossible to ride a backwards bike” and at the end when no one made except the circus guy (which should have busted the myth) he said “It’s confirmed, it’s impossible to ride a backwards bike, without a lot of practice”.
BTW, here’s a really good youtube thing on the backwards bike
Figure the thread is dying as most aren’t into the show. This weekend will be the finale and I’m kind of bummed…I really want all the remaining guys to make it (hell, I wanted the guy they tossed off last week to make it too). My guess is it will come down to Brian and Martin, if they want to ensure it’s a mixed cast similar to the young Mythbusters in the original show. Not saying that Tamara and Jonathan are just token contestants…both are among my favorites. I wish they would actually keep everyone at this point…they are pretty good personalities and they are the ones who actually work together. Heck, bring back Allen as well and have 5 new Mythbusters…they are definitely the best and all are good personalities.
I HOPE that once this stupid search thing is over that they will get back to testing myths that are interesting. I’d like to see them do some real tough myths…Kennedy Assassination, 9/11 myths. Stuff like that.
I see they are carrying on that ol’ Mythbusters tradition.
Thanks to this thread, I know I’m not missing anything by not watching.
I reiterate – if they just called this show what it was, a Mythbuster-themed build show, I’d be mostly OK with it. But it is in no way a Mythbuster audition show. If you look at any Mythbuster show, it consists almost 75% of Jamie or (mostly) Adam explaining what they’re doing and why they’re doing it. The builds are in service to the science (or, if you’re a purist, the experiment). In almost every Mythbusters, they tried an experiment, failed, went back to the lab, fixed the problem, and ran the experiment again. This is just another “kick someone off the island” show with a douchy host making snide comments in the background.
Does the narrator still make really lame puns? 'Cause if they couldn’t even retain that…
The last myth of the show: Can a prison inmate strap himself to a water heater and rocket to freedom? Um, no, no he can’t. There, saved you all some time.
In the real show, they’d at least have put some accelerometer patches on the dummy. Fortunately, its head got ripped off, so the results were not ambiguous.
Selection of winners was done at a “live” (e.g. probably taped) event. It was done with all the grace and humanity you’d expect from having watched this show. The douchey host named one winner, named the next winner, and then fade to black without a word of consolation or congratulations to the two losers who sat there looking like they’d been dumped by their dates in the middle of the junior prom.
Don’t really agree with the picks, either.
The final picks were, to me, as arbitrary as all of them. I mean, don’t get me wrong…I like both Brian and Jonathan. But think about the individual test…only Brian and Martin actually were able to build the floats and stand up on them and even try and walk. It was a fail for both Tamara and Jonathan. So…they picked Jonathan? It wasn’t due to failures on the group build either…Martin’s portion of that build was as impressive as all of them (they all did, IMHO, a great job throughout, as well as on this final build).
As for your point about testing the myth, I don’t think that’s what this show was really about. It was to pick the new Mythbusters, and to demonstrate project and build skills, not to prove or disprove myths. Presumably, that’s what the actual new show will be about. I was totally fine with that…I just hate the survivor-esque aspects. Also…why only 2 mythbusters? Because it started with Jamie and Adam? Even in the early shows (and barring the final flop of a season) they had others helping them out. Seriously, they would have been better off, IMHO, with 5…or, with 4 (the final 4) and the host if he’s going to continue with the show.
Not sure I’m going to really follow the new show, despite really liking Brian and Jonathan…not sure I can get past how this thing was run or how selections were made. If I was one of the people dropped I’d have some serious resentment (especially Martin…he was clearly one of the best and was dropped for no good reason I could see. Tamara as well, though she did fail in her last individual build I guess). Might watch one or two just to see, but if they aren’t that good I’ll probably drop the show from my watch list.
Do we know when Mythbusters 2.0 begins?
So I just saw a ad that this is coming in November. I’m not really optimistic, the search show lost me halfway through the second episode, but I’ll give it a chance. Partly because I will be desperate for anything DVRable and free to watch during a winter of Treadmilling the gut off.
Adam Savage’s “Tested” series on Youtube is pretty good and will certainly get you you’re fill of Adam. IIRC, he’s not in every episode and while it’s not Mythbusters, it’s still Adam (or not) and another guy Norm(?) challenging themselves to build something and we watch as they troubleshoot their way through it.
I’ve only seen a handful of them so I may be off on the format, but they can still be interesting.
I am hating that promo. It’s a 3D still photo of the new guys in an explosion in their shop. So it looks like Science Channel’s not understanding the fundamental premise of Mythbusters continues past the unbearable search contest. As if the whole point of the show was having Jaime and Adam fuck things up and accidentally blow up shit in the shop. As if Jaime would stand for that.
I was interested in how a channel could so misunderstand their own show when I found out that Discovery/Science didn’t originate the show. It was from the mind of an Australian and originally produced by an Australian production company.
P.S., love Tested, especially Adam’s One Day Builds. He really lets his geek flag fly high on his YouTube channel.
Tested used to be Norm Chan and Will Smith’s website, then Adam and Jamie both came on board, though Jamie did very little. Now Will has left, Adam is the primary controlling producer, but Norm is in most cases his equal.
Their team also includes Jeremy Williams, an electronics geek who likes pinball and arcade games; Sean Charlesworth, a 3D printer and modeller; Kishore Hari, a science nerd; Simone Giertz, a slipshod robotics builder from Sweden; and Frank Ippolito, a special effects and make-up expert who actively works in movies.
They used to do reviews of phones and PCs, then dipped their toes into RC Drones, and now it’s primarily VR Goggles. But that’s only a small part of what they do - there’s cosplay and props, make-up and prosthetics, 3D printing and painting, and a lot of Lego builds that double as podcast-type interviews. It’s got a lot of the Mythbusters workshopping feel, but no myths to bust.
They do two video podcasts each week, one called Still Untitled, based around Adam’s recent shenanigans, and the other called This Is Only A Test, a weekly wrap-up of nerd news in tech and pop culture, which involves other members of their growing team. Frank also has an audio podcast he does with Len Peralta about prosthetic make up, called Creature Geek.
Even though I’m not a maker myself, I’ve been a fan of Tested for many years now, and it absolutely fills the hole left by Mythbusters for me.
The real gold (at least for me as a maker) for Tested is Adam’s *One Day Build *videos. The Totoro costume one is my favourite. Warning - if you’re any kind of crafter or maker, the vids will give you serious workspace envy…