There is talk of “outrage” all over the internet, and no doubt over coming weeks we will hear more about the whys and wherefores.
For my part, I’m not at all upset. The show had become tired and at least to me, Kari, Tory and Grant had become a cliche. Their segments were increasingly lightweight, and seemed to comprise far (far) too much "Wooh!"ing and "Yeaaah!"ing and not nearly enough substance.
My opinion (which I heard others express also) is that the best shows were those in the early days with just Adam and Jamie tackling an interesting technical myth. I doubt the sort of rustic and basic charm the show had back then can ever be recaptured given how successful it has become, but if this change heralds a change back in that direction (and for all I know it won’t) then I for one am all in favour.
I stopped watching it a few years back because they stopped testing myths. I think the “You Can’t Polish a Turd” episode may have been the final straw.
You have to figure there’s something going on. Are they being spun off on to another show? That seems the likeliest explanation but why wouldn’t they make the announcement for the new show instead of just announcing their departure from Mythbusters?
The other explanation is that their contracts ran out and they couldn’t reach an agreement on new ones. If this was the case, I think the producers made a bad decision. The show depends on the personalities of the people on it. I like Adam and Jamie but the show is better with five people then it will be with just two.
I’ve always enjoyed the full cast, and I hope they enjoy a lot of success in whatever they do next. I guess we’ll find out more about why this is happening - Adam and Jamie made the announcement, which suggests maybe it was their idea - but since I like everyone involved I’m not all that interested in the details.
Adam and Jamie are hired help. The show is run by its (Australian) producers. I’m not saying Adam and Jamie would have had no input into the decision, but I would strongly suspect its a production decision not an idea emanating from the “talent”.
I haven’t seen the show in about 8-9 years (I used to watch it a lot and had huge DVD sets). I’m mildly surprised it’s even still on- not because I would think it would have low ratings or suck or anything, just that even successful shows rarely last that long.
I agree with this, but would have preferred that they keep the team together and focus on single myths per episode, with more involved planning, more footage of the build, and more of the behind-the-scenes funning.
Perhaps we’ll find out what the cause was, in time. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was simply that one of them wanted to have more free time - like Kari to raise her kid or Tori to leave bachelordom - and then the other two decided that after a decade of doing this, maybe it made more sense to try something different than try to break in a new third partner.
That’s the plan, I think. Adam has mentioned that exact thing a couple of times recently. But, it seems, just with Adam and Jamie.
That makes sense. Kari has worked throughout her daughter’s first five years, so it would make sense if she wanted to take a break, she may even have another child planned; and Grant has been doing other nerdy things like his Star Trek Continues role.
I really doubt this because I think that if the producers thought the formula was still working, they would have just got other people involved. It’s not as if there would be any lack of willing candidates. They could have just brought them in gradually.
I hope that you are right and that the producers have realised that filling in the time with fluff involving the build team assuring us about how *very very excited! *they are is no way to keep people’s interest in the long term, and that they need to go back to having some depth.
I completely agree. The show, minus commercials and opening theme music, is barely 40 minutes long. So we were getting 20 minutes of Adam and Jamie and 20 minutes of Kari, Grant, and Tory. The result was rushed, abbreviated accounts of their experiments, compressed with editing tricks like speeded-up motion and montages. I would much prefer to see more of Adam and Jamie figuring out how to test something, rethinking their plans when something doesn’t work as expected, etc.
I had also grown tired of the show’s constant glorification of firearms, the emphasis on “movie myths,” and the viral-video debunkings. I watch every episode but often my attention wanders, and I don’t bother to hit “pause” if I go to the kitchen for a snack.
Of course people on the Internet are outraged about this. They’re they same people who are outraged that Zuckerberg changed something on Facebook, outraged because Ben Affleck is playing Batman, outraged because someone who left a dog locked in a car isn’t getting the death penalty, etc.
Obviously, they have decided that the formula could stand switching up, but that doesn’t mean that they were ready or willing to have to make such a decision.
And remember that it took something like 3 years for them to assemble the build team. To make it work, you need people who can build stuff, have a good work ethic, look presentable enough for TV, and are willing to go on TV and suffer the life of fame. And in order for the team to be able to function independently, you need at least one genuinely gifted person. Adam and Jamie weren’t able to split off the build team from their supervision until they convinced Grant to join. Before that, Adam and Jamie still had to direct and manage them. Remember that Kari is basically an artist and Tori was a model-maker. Neither of them was an engineer, electrician, nor otherwise gifted at making things that do things. They were just the best-looking people that happened to work for Jamie, when the show started.
Possibly, history will repeat itself and A&J will determine that they need some worker minions that do the piddly stuff, and that will eventually grow into a new build team, but I suspect that by the time we get to the point where that could happen again, the guys will have decided that it’s time to start a new gig or retire.
But seriously, I like the three of them and it was great to have them for a (long) bit, but the show has definitely become tired and I think this could be a good change, if they use it well.
I watched the video of Adam and Jamie’s talk at Comic Con, and they mentioned that the show would be going in a new direction without saying that Kari, Grant ant Tory would be leaving. Adam said they wanted to emphasize the building aspects, and they showed a teaser montage of him explaining how to make a bullwhip (possibly for an Indiana Jones-themed episode). That makes sense, because making is one of his real passions, and I’m sure he’ll welcome the chance to be an evangelist for it on a big forum.
I’m all in favour; I like watching Adam and Jamie build stuff. K, G and T can be amusing, but their C4 show gets a bit childish and repetitive after a while.
eta: it would actually make good sense if they spun off K, G and T into their own “let’s blow stuff up” show.
Kari and Tori showed up on The Soup Live! this week for a walk on joke. They didn’t specifically plug any new project but these kind of cameos on the Soup are usually done by people looking for exposure to plug new projects.
I fell out of the habit of watching the show. I liked it best in the early seasons when it had more of a homemade, shade-tree mechanic vibe. It got a little too polished and a little too big.
When it first came on, I thought Adam and Jamie were a bickering gay couple, they had this weird chemistry.