by Shane O'Hare Wednesday 5th January 2011

Geekscape’s Random Rants: Mythbusters, What’s Happened To You?

I know I’m going to be opening up myself for some vicious attacks from people, but dammit my message needs to be told! The Mythbusters are no longer scientists. They are just a group of money grubbing shills! Okay, I feel a tad dirty writing that, but let me guide you through my thought process.
 

Essentially what the show has become.

January 23rd 2003. 190 Episodes back the Mythbusters debuted on TV. The first episode had some genuine science and actual “myths” that needed busting. The urban legend that is Pop-Rocks and Cola and another lesser known one of rockets on a Chevy. My eyes were wide as was my mind! WHAT A GREAT SHOW! Not only was this actual Popular Science Magazine level nerd stuff but it was entertaining as watching hemophiliac mice covered in nitroglycerin play rugby! Their show was a huge hit, and for a time things were good, but the death of the Mythbusters was soon sealed…or walrused.

Eventually, all the normal wives tales and such that most people know they tackled. Tips for passing the breathalyzer and soda rotting your stomach were all covered. What next? Well damn, lets just start turning idioms into myths. Shining shit. Shit hit the fan. ETC. ETC. I digress.

First known for their great scientific minds and methods, they stopped really trying to figure things out. A recent episode had them trying to replicate Hellboys car punch. Where he, well, punched a car and it flipped over. Various models and tests were done, and they realized that they would need to test it full scale and with some sort of lever on the hood of the car as to provide maximum rotation. They built their rig, did some maths and setup a run where the car would get hit right on the paddle just in front of and above the hood with a big-ass rock. I sat there, drinking my haterade as I often do, and watched as the experiment failed. The rock didn’t land where it needed to, the only place they said it would work. The place they said would only provide the proper results and legitimate data. For the last 35 minutes they kept bitching and moaning about getting true results and it must be FLAWLESS victory. A blind quadriplegic could see that it didn’t work right and they would need to re-run the test to get an actual proper result. Did they re-run it? NOPE! The Mythbusters B team sat around the studio talking about how they did all they could do and it was absolutely perfect blah blah blah. THIS ISNT HOW SCIENCE WORKS!

I finished my haterade and got a cup of angertea.

This also just so happened to by the Obama special. He TASKED THEM to re-visit the ancient death ray mirror “myth”. Basically it was just a cheap test they could do because they already had all the stuff. Discovery just put Obama in there for propaganda and advertising bucks. The Obama scenes were edited together poorly, leading me to believe most of it was done either with Discovery not there and just some fancy cuts, or it wasn’t the real Obama! (tinfoil hat)

As I was then getting an “anger-martini” the pure peak of their failure came on. The Green Hornet special. Whole thing was a constant ad for the movie, with special commercials leading in and out of the break. I was disgusted that the ‘busters would do this. Gah.

Besides being network money bags, they’ve just stopped trying to be objective scientists. The great Internet debate of “Will a plane takeoff on a treadmill” episode was a perfect example. Lets not get into this really on here, but as a kid who grew up around planes, having flown small aircraft and has a flight instructor for a father I know this. The damn thing WONT take off.


                            

Well if you haven’t seen the episode they did a crappy full sized experiment with a pilot who is crazier than the pilot from the movie “Never Cry Wolf”. Nothing was double checked, it was ran only once and they just called it there.

I’m taking shots of hostility and chasing it with shots of Jack Daniels at this point. A show that took the scientific method mainstream, let the millennium geeks watch something that was akin to Bill Nye, provided an unbiased look at answers to questions we didn’t know gives me that sinking depressed feeling I used to get when Linda Ellerbee came on Nickelodeon.

Whats so hard about being purely objective? Whats so hard about finishing experiments properly? Do you guys need to just churn out a certain number of episodes and level of content so fast to make your cash that you cant be bothered?

I’m passed out drunk with rage-anger. Hell, at least Smash Lab is off the air.