Mythbusters, random episodes

[oyceter]

So thanks to reruns on Discovery and Netflix Instant, I have watched a truly embarrassing number of Mythbusters episodes in the past few days.

Mythbusters is a show that's been running on Discovery since 2003 or so, about a team of people who work in the special effects industry attempting to bust myths. Myths vary from things like "Can you outrun a crocodile by zig-zagging?" or "Is yawning contagious?" to "Can a villain really make a ring of gasoline flame up by dropping a cigarette in it?" or "Can you really use cosmetic powder to make laser lines in a security system visible?" The most fun myths to bust, of course, are the ones that involve things like crocodiles, flaming Christmas trees, bullets, and (at least for me) duct tape.

I, uh, actually started watching a while back because of this not-Mythbusters Shousetsu Bang*Bang fic and got curious about the thinly veiled references. The first few episodes in Collection 1 (Wiki tells me the collections are not organized by season) bored me, so I stopped until I caught a marathon on Discovery a few days after my sister left. Luckily, the episodes in Collection 1 improve fairly quickly. The problem in the beginning is that it's just Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage hosting. While Adam is hilarious and tries to put on weird hats, Jamie is more the straight man to his jokiness, which I feel works better when there's a higher than 1:1 ratio of jokes:seriousness. When they add the Build Team (Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, Tory Bellici), I got much more interested. In fact, the episode that got me hooked was the one in which the Build Team attempts to test the phrase "slap sense into someone" by making a gelatin hand, building a machine to administer slaps (force of all three of their slaps averaged), and then filming the slapping of each of them in slow motion.

Basically, each episode consists of Jamie&Adam and the Build Team each working on separate myths. The myth gets explained, the team figures out how to test parts of it (relatively) safely, then they work up to testing the whole myth. Usually if the myth is busted in a boring, non-dramatic fashion, or if they just want to, they conclude by blowing something up.

I love it because it combines bits of Maker Faire and kludging things together, along with explosions, questions I actually want to know the answer to, and some really funny people. Also, you get scenes like testing how to open a car door underwater by actually sticking the hosts in a car underwater, Tory actually attempting to slide down a pirate sail with only a knife slowing him down a la Douglas Fairbanks, Adam accidentally burning off his eyebrow and some hair right before a date, or Grant falling off his chair because it looks like an anti-gravity device is flying right at him.

Sadly, the cast is mostly white and male (and I'm guessing het and cis and abled and middle class), with Kari as the token woman and Grant as the token Asian (which also plays into the geekery as a white guy with the occasional Asian thing), but mostly I enjoy it for the geek hijinks. And it's set in the Bay Area, which makes it sort of homey. Also, I have seen nearly every episode of Good Eats at least three times, and I need something else to fill that niche because new episodes don't come out that often!

... also, I may have wee geek!crushes on all of the Build Team, especially Grant.

Anyway, not deep, but really fun entertainment, and I enjoy anything that has me going, "OMG I can't believe you're trying to do that!!" And this refrigerator sign is made of win.

Transcription of sign:
HUMAN FOOD ONLY
- No Ballistics Gel
- (underlined) No Experiments
- No Infectious Materials, Pathogens, Cytotoxins
- No Broken Glass
- (handwritten) No Rancid Pig Tongues
- (handwritten) No Human Body Parts Filled With Noodles

Comments

[trinker]

I love your writeup of Mythbusters.

[oyceter]

They crack me up so much!

[trinker]

Valorizing smart thinking and scientific process! AND funny. *swooooooon*

[coraa]

Awesomely, I was (am) watching Mythbusters as I read this!

Grant is totally crushworthy. I also find Kari absolutely adorable when she's being genuinely enthused about something.

[oyceter]

I am watching it right now!

"The chickens will be launched at a solid steel plate..."

[torachan]

One of the earlier seasons doesn't have Grant, but it has Tory, Kari, and another woman named Scottie. I wish she hadn't left, because I really liked that it wasn't just one token woman (a few other women were there as interns as well). I love Grant, though, so I wish they had both Scottie and Grant.

I definitely love the show with more than just Adam and Jamie, though. I like Adam and Jamie, but I love Tory, Kari, and Grant, and tend to prefer the segments with them.

[trinker]

Sometimes I want to shake Adam and yell, "GROW UP ALREADY!!!" but it wouldn't be the same show if he did.

[oyceter]

I vaguely remember seeing Scottie in a few episodes! And some of the MythTerns. Yeah, I really wish there were more women and POC, and Grant is kind of adorable. And the Tory/Kari/Grant interactions make me crack up all the time.

[heavenscalyx]

Oh, Scottie. *siiiiiigh* I LOVED Scottie. I loved the fact that she was their machinist! their welder! their metalworker! I loved her tattoos and her snark and the fact that she was just a bit older (or seemed a bit older) than Kari and Tory and that she gave Kari someone to team up with against goofball Tory. And again I come back to the fact that she was the metals expert, the heavy-build person, not Tory. I wiiiish she hadn't left, as much as I adore Grant. I kinda sorta wish Tory had left and gotten replaced with Grant, and then the whole Build Team would be women and POC and that would be awesome.

[torachan]

Yes! I loved that about Scottie, too.

[oyceter]

I do love Tory, especially his willingness to do just as many stupid things as Adam, but it would be nice to have more women and POC on the show =(.

[eruthros]

I miss Scottie too! I imagine a Kari, Grant, and Scottie build team sometimes, and then I sigh wistfully.

[torachan]

I do love Tory, too, though! I wish they could have kept Scottie and added Grant and then had the four of them.

[futuransky]

I've only seen one episode of Mythbusters, but this AU fic by toft is about Jamie and Adam as misfit kids growing up on a spaceship and I love it to pieces.

[jinian]

So adorable! I could read books of that.

[oyceter]

OMG that is the cutest thing ever!

[arboretum]

ahh yeah, mythbusters is great, silly, entertaining fun :)

[oyceter]

It makes me so geekily happy!

[littlebutfierce]

Hahaha, we totally caught up on Mythbusters while we were home, too. The "slap sense into someone" episode was a definite favorite! Those slow-motion slapping shots, BWAHAHAHA. And Grant's revenge!

[oyceter]

Hahahaha omg the slo-mo shots were so funny! As was the entire "Let us average the force of our slaps!" And the tests on Grant! And Grant getting to do it back to them!

[dichroic]

I love Mythbusters too, but my favorite memory related to it is watching my husband and his grandfather (now in his 90s) bonding over a shared fondness for the show.

[oyceter]

Awwwww!

[beachlass]

Oh Grant. *starry eyes* I have such a crush on him, it's not even funny. (Except to my kids, who are pretty endlessly entertained by it)

[oyceter]

He is so cute! I stopped myself from following him on Twitter b/c I still feel weird getting into the show via not-quite-RPF.

[kate_nepveu]

My favorite may be when they tested "gone over like a lead balloon," because: they _made a lead balloon_!

There is a run of fairly recent episodes where Kari was out on maternity leave which are AWFUL because her temporary replacement and the rest of the build team are trying way, way, way too hard to be cute and funny and spontaneous and it is actively painful to watch.

Also any episode where they test a movie myth is boring.

But yes, it's one of the few shows that I still bother to DVR (partly because it's mostly SteelyKid-safe, I admit, though I did skip the recent shit-hitting-the-fan episode with her in the room).

[oyceter]

they _made a lead balloon_
Awesome!

I haven't seen enough of the movie myth ones, although I have to admit that the Ocean's 11/try to bust into a safe/building made me crack up because Adam and Jamie had to try to climb into an air duct "surreptitiously" with magnet or vacuum handholds. They sounded like a herd of elephants!

I am now DVRing all the reruns to have for background noise/amusement!

[kate_nepveu]

Well, yeah, but any "is this special effect realistic?" episode--well, those aren't real myths. But I do like the caper ones.

[oyceter]

Yeah, so far (after watching another twelve eps or so omg I need to stop), seems like the Hollywood special effects ones are basically: "Hollywood lies. Let's go blow something up."

[oyceter]

Just watched the lead balloon one, which was awesome! (Also, super cool engineering re: how they built it.)

[kate_nepveu]

It's not one of the flashiest ones, but it delights me ridiculously.

Also, I mailed the things yesterday.

[oyceter]

Yay, thank you so much!

[heavenscalyx]

Last Xmas, our gift to ourselves was buying all the complete collections of Seasons 1-5 from the Discovery Store. And then MAINLINING MYTHBUSTERS FOR WEEKS AND WEEKS. (When Season 6 came out, we bought that, and we keep buying the episodes from Zune to play on our Xbox 360.)

There is so much rewatch value to the shows. And so much fun. Adam reminds me of a friend of mine from high school who could TOTALLY be a Mythbuster, and has the same sort of manic non-self-conscious entertainment value. I love the fact that they're ALL GEEKS. They're ALL my people. They speak my language.

I really only think that I could be friends with Adam and Grant, though I'd really WANT to be friends with Kari. Kari, who ONLY GETS HOTTER as the seasons go by. She's one of those women who managed to be wildly attractive while pregnant. Also, the producers have FINALLY gotten the point that PEOPLE LIKE IT WHEN SHE GETS TO DO BUTCH THINGS. I really want someone to vid Kari destroying things (particularly the car) to that Carrie Underwood song about destroying a guy's car.

ANYWAY. I will shut up now. But I will say that Grant and Adam are both fun to follow on Twitter (Grant is grantimahara, Adam is donttrythis).

[oyceter]

AWESOME!!!

I adore the geekiness of all of them! And omg, Kari is so hot and so cute! I saw her destroying the car for one of the duct tape episodes and was like, "Wow, you are awesome!" All of the mythbusters actually remind me of a class in my grad program, in which I scalded my hand with a hot glue gun and used duct tape and gorilla glue to fix everything.

Ahaha, I have been trying not to follow Grant on Twitter because I feel vaguely guilty for getting into the show via not-quite-RPF slash!

[telophase]

Grant Imahara is my fictional TV boyfriend. myrialux is OK with this. (He deeply misses Scottie and wishes she were back, but apparently she decided she didn't like being in front of the camera, so returned to her normal job on the crew behind the camera.)

And now that myrialux has gotten new glasses with heavy black rims and grown a goatee, I get flashes of Adam Savage every so often, which I am not complaining about.

[oyceter]

Ohhh, I did like what I saw of Scottie, but I'm glad she's still on crew and went off for her own reasons.

[fourthage]

Usually if the myth is busted in a boring, non-dramatic fashion, or if they just want to, they conclude by blowing something up.

I'm pretty sure this is the reason why all of my friends love the show so much.

[oyceter]

It is a big reason why I love it too! I watched the Build Team figure out if a frozen turkey could break your foot or kill a small pet if dropped (yes!!), and then just for fun, they microwaved it with explosives in it.

Although, really, I would still love it even without the explosions, because OMG SO GEEKY.

[fourthage]

One of my favorite episodes is when they're trying out homemade recipes for diamonds (just add peanut butter!) and then at the end they set up their (then) biggest explosion to date in the middle of the desert.

Have you seen the banana peel episode yet? That's another of my favorites.

[oyceter]

Bwahahaha! I haven't seen the banana peel episode yet, but it sounds awesome! (Also, if it involves slipping on a banana peel, I have always wanted to know.)

[fourthage]

That's exactly what it involves! In true Mythbuster fashion, the testing keeps getting bigger and more ridiculous until, well, I don't want to ruin it. Let's just say it is by far the funniest episode I've seen.

[eruthros]

Your Mythbusters write-up cracked me up! And made me want to share my favorite episodes, but there are too many: the Banana Slip one, Phone Book Friction, the jailbreak ones, the duct tape ones, anything involving hilarious attempts to break into buildings. And there are too many great explosions, too.

There's actually a tiny fandom for the show -- there's a dw comm over at myth_confirmed where people post links/news stories/fic/icons/whatever.

[oyceter]

I have been stalking them and bemoaning the relative lack of Grant!