Zombie Feynman? Either I missed that one, or I forgot it.
I always get a kick when they name the build team…Kari, Grant and Tory. Get ii?..Cary Grant…Judy, Judy, Judy (I know, he never said it).
And BTW, Kari obviously where’s tight t-shirts because loose clothing would e a hazard around the workshop.
Get rid of Tits McGee? Never! You can have my Tits when you pry them — uh, I mean her — from my cold, dead… you know, I should’ve thought about that sentence a bit harder.
I like the hosts as they are now. They may not have acting chops, and they may not be physicists, but what they don’t have in those areas they make up for with participation and enthusiasm. When they’re talking about pounds of force, shockwaves, chemical reactions, gas density, or whatever, you get the idea that they’re not just reciting something off of a cue card. They’re not simply presenting an experiment that some guy behind the camera set up — or if they are, it doesn’t come across that way.
Could you do a slicker version of the show? Sure. Use guys like Jamie and Adam to build the models and the rigs, and put some airbrushed windswept eye candy in front of the camera with a nice faux-laboratory backdrop. Get the eye-candy host to smile charmingly while he (or she) reads a carefully prepared script with the complicated science words spelled out phoenetically.
The show would lose most or all of its charm. M5 is presented as exactly what it is: a warehouse full of shit. You get to see Jamie constructing a moon model, Adam with his hands filthy, Kari with Band-Aids on her fingers and hair completely trashed standing out in the rain. I don’t think you could stick some too-precious can’t-get-dirty eye-candy supermodel in there and get the same appeal.
There’s already too many shows with slick, attractive hosts. Like that one guy who pretends he’s an archaeologist. Wears an Indiana Jones jacket. I have no idea who he is, or what his credentials are, but I see him and go “Yeah, right. He’s just the host. All the real knowledge comes when he interviews some non-photogenic local expert.”
I thought the name was a backpedal from “The B Team”. Jamie and Adam build stuff, too.
Kari doesn’t do much actual mythbusting anymore, have you noticed? She just stands around being perky.
Kari gets props from me for putting up with that water-torture-in-restraints thing for as long as she did. When she finally freaked a little and wanted the hell out, I completely understood. Maybe it’s in her show/work contract that she gets to sit back for quite a while after going through that.
To be fair, Kari looks pretty hawt when she’s dressed like a supermodel. Like when she dresses up in a gown to go bustin’ some James Bond myths.
What are the episodes in which she does this? I just watched the “Water Stun Gun” episode from 2008, and she was walking on coals and blowing up fire extinguishers right along with the other two.
Yeah — but her appeal (to me) is that she isn’t perfectly coiffured and wearing designer clothing, it’s that she gets so animated and eager when she’s talking about blowing up shit. You can’t get that in the average supermodel. 
Something that annoyed me to no end about Mythbusters:
During the title intro, the most predominate equation they flash on the screen is A=pi*r^2
The area of a freaking circle? What the hell does that have to do with anything? It’s like they figured that the highest grade math/physics anyone would recognize is junior-high level, so they deliberately put that in there to make their audience feel like they’re not morons. “Hey, I recognize that forumula! I can be a Mythbuster!”
Sheesh, at least give me F=ma, or KE=0.5mv^2, or PE=mg*h, or something. At these those are usually applicable to the content of the show.
It’s in there because of that one show they did proving that pi was irrational. Actually they just wanted to see how many numbers after the decimal point they could push it before pi exploded.
But, performing the experiments is the entire point of the show. What you say here is kind of like going to see a stand-up comedian, and then saying that it’s completely unnecessary that he tells all those jokes . . .
Word. Give me a girl who can get revved up any day.
They used to be called Junior Mythbusters, then before that the Mythterns. I don’t think they need to be considered the B Team, in any lesser sense, though they do hang out at M7, rather than at M5.
A lot of the time, they waste time like this because they’re deliberately acting as proxies for the less-thoughtful and less-experienced audience. Your average jamoke would, indeed, just stick a couple of rockets on the thing, and let fly. They do this because (a) it fills TV time and pads the episode, (b) replicates the average viewer’s thought process, demonstrating why it’s necessary to be more precise about this stuff (not to mention allowing the smarter ones to feel superior, predicting failure), and (c) is usually fun (especially when Adam or Tory is injured by the failure, or at least has to flinch away in momentary panic). If it were too careful, too controlled, and too accurate from square one, it wouldn’t be appealing.
Sure, Mythbusters has lots of flaws. I don’t think that’s one of them; I think it’s by choice, in the design of the show.
On the other hand, there was the time they moved from 4 rockets to 2 for the swing 360 myth, after they had proof they couldn’t get them to fire in unison. They could probably have skipped that step.
Still the screwups are what make the show entertaining. Especially, as you say, when Adam and Tory screw up spectacularly and hurt themselves in some hilarious mishap.
I’ll defend Mythbusters with my last dying breath. All five of them.
1.) They get mad props for doing the show while being full-time workers in Jamie’s M5.
2.) Like Zombie Feynman says: they’re trying experiments, at least. Yeah, I notice how I’d design the experiments better. This is the first science show I’ve ever heard of that’s got kids talking about science. They do more experiments per year than I do, and I’m a science teacher. (I know how my labs are going to work out.)
3.) Yup: they’re not models. They’re regular schmucks like us who are excited about trying to to test wacky ideas and prove pseudo-science wrong. (Ok, Adam goes overboard with the accents. I’ll grant that they’re funny for the first few seconds then get old, but you can’t deny that he’s got personality.)
4.) How many new Discovery shows are based on something they’ve done? Time Warp? Slow-motion cameras during experiments. Design Squad? Prototype This? Shows about people building things.
Oh, and, yeah, I’m one of Kari’s fanboys. I think that Scottie’s probably the more technically proficient one, but Kari’s just bubbly enough to be more fun to watch. As for why she was sitting around in a few episodes, she had a leg brace on for a while, and I thought there was reference to surgery. So I’m inclined to give her a pass on those shows. Otherwise, I think she’s been just as willing as Tori and Grant to take part. (And for some reason, I thought she was way better looking in the bikini for shark week than in the FMH pics.)
Personally, I find Kari hottest when she’s working. Those pseudo-lab lingerie shots just seemed even more fake than they usually do. Nobody sane wears a lab coat with a half-open shirt. It doesn’t make sense.
Don’t ruin my dreams.
Actually, for me, Grant is ok looking, but Tory drives me WILD. “Beardlet” and all. That man is sexy as hell. 
Hi, everybody. Sorry I’m late to the game with the obligatory link to my favorite picture.
I spent a couple hours with Adam, Kari, and Skeptic magazine publisher Michael Shermer a few years ago. Adam, Kari and Jamie are not acting on the show. They are exactly as you see them. Adam in particular is a hoot to hang around with. (I’ve never met Grant or Tory.)
I love the show, and wouldn’t change a thing. (Well, maybe I’d put Kari in a bikini a little more often.)