MythBusters
MythBusters is a popular science program that airs on the Discovery Channel. The show follows five people who get paid to blow things up, surf, skydive, waterski, get drunk, fire guns, wreck cars, set things on fire, drop things from massive heights, travel the world, launch frozen chickens and blow more things up, "all in the name of science".
Who are the MythBusters?[edit]
Adam Savage A middle-aged infant who spends most of his time dressing up as a pirate, ninja, caveman, cowboy, astronaut, superhero, clown, mime or ballet dancer and putting on silly voices.
Jamie Hyneman 2.0 An advanced multi-functional robot built to look like a French walrus. As well as being a visual effects expert, he is also a scuba diver, a licensed boat captain, a linguist and a bear wrestler.
- Between them more than thirty years
of special effects experience.
Joining them ...
Grant Imahara Loves building robots. His creations include a punching robot, a sword-swinging robot, a chainsaw-juggling robot, and Jamie Hyneman 2.0.
Tory Belleci The expendable one. Does most of the dangerous stunts when testing myths, because if he dies he can be replaced. He also suffers frequent prejudice from the rest of the cast due to his mulatto origins and snakehandling beliefs.
Kari Byron A redheaded artist who mixes beauty with intelligence.
Buster The crash-test dummy. You'd think he would learn to not hang out with these people after the thirtieth time being dropped on his head or having the shit blown out of him.[1]
History[edit]
Fifteen years ago, the Discovery Channel was in trouble, its ratings were the lowest around. Apparently back then people weren't interested in learning about exciting, adrenaline-fueling subjects such as moss, igneous rocks and the mating rituals of elephants. They wanted to see dull, yawn-inducing explosions and learn a bunch of useless trivia like how to escape a sinking car or save someone who's about to be run over by train.
So Discovery decided to give viewers what they want and they devised a show in which special effects wizards would do just that. It was given the working title The Best Job in the World. The show's half-hour pilot episode was made up entirely of various clips of car crashes, explosions, helicopters spinning out of control, police shootouts, shark attacks, natural disasters, trains colliding head on, two girls making out, moonwalking birds, trees falling on people, cats in microwaves, fat people falling down the stairs, midgets being railed down with a Minigun, spontaneous explosions, and a brief examination of Kari Byron's butt undergoing vacuum induced flatulence, with "Yakety Sax" and the "1812 Overture" as background music. The show received viewing figures of 42, a record high for the Discovery Channel.
However, parents complained that the show had no educational value at all. All it did was make children want to attempt some of the dangerous stunts at home. One mother was shocked to find her eight-year-old son stuffing his baby sister into a microwave, while his older sister kissed a girl.[2] So Discovery had to think of a way to pass the show off as an educational program, while including lots of warnings against trying any of the experiments seen on the show, at home. Thus, MythBusters was born.
Show format[edit]
Each episode begins with the MythBusters receiving a phone call from a scared person whose house is being haunted by a myth. The narrator then shows the audience a piece of stock footage related to the myth. Afterwards, the team get in their "MythMobile" and drive off, then there's an advert break. After the adverts, more stock footage is shown and there's an unnecessary recap of the very little amount of stuff that happened in the previous part. The MythBusters then arrive at their clients house and begin to use a variety of scientific techniques to disprove or "bust" the myth. If the myth is successfully busted, they lock it up and the client is now myth free. Throughout the episode there are more advert breaks, unnecessary recaps and "don't try this at home" warnings, which in total take up at least a third of the length of the episode. If the team fails, and the myth is confirmed then it will continue to haunt the clients house with no way of stopping it. At this point the MythBusters have no other option but to destroy the clients house with a spectacular explosion.
Often viewers complain on the fansite that a busted myth was treated unfairly. This occasionally results in a lawsuit, demanding the myth be released. The released myths continue to haunt people until they are revisited in special episodes and the MythBusters attempt to shut the fans up and bust them once and for all.
Myths tested[edit]
“We should start out small scale. Where’s Grant?”
“If it’s good enough to do, it’s good enough to overdo.”
“When in doubt, C4.”
“Where’s my pirate costume?!”
| Myth Statement | Method | Status |
|---|---|---|
| A 33hz sound wave can give a woman an orgasm. | Kari sat on a beasty amp, while it played a 33hz sound wave at 160db. | Busted. She did not climax, much to the disappointment of the nerdy fan boys |
| You can be killed by a flying champagne cork. | Grant built a champagne-cork-launching robot and fired several shots at Tory's head. | Busted. Tory didn't die, although he was rendered completely blind in his left eye. Poor guy. |
| You can make an anti-gravity device using a cat and buttered toast. | They taped slices of toast, butter-side-up, to a number of cats and used a cat-throwing robot to launch them into the air. | Confirmed. The forces exerted by the butter and the cat's feet were in perfect equilibrium. |
| It's possible to make a fire extinguisher look sexy. | See picture. | Confirmed. |
| Frantic masturbation can make you go blind. | The less said about it, the better. | Busted. Like their balls. |
| If you flip a penny ten thousand times, because the heads side is heavier, it will land on tails significantly more times. | They built a massive coin-flipping robot to flip a hundred pennies a hundred times each and recorded the results. | Plausible. They got bored about halfway through and just decided to put ten thousand pennies in a pile and blow them up with C4. |
| Chuck Norris's tears can cure cancer. | Jamie's MythTerns tried a variety of methods to get Chuck Norris to cry. | Inconclusive. All efforts failed, including synchronised roundhouse kicks. |
| The World Trade Center was actually brought down using Diet Coke and Mentos. | A 100th-scale model of the World Trade Center was built and filled with powdered Mentos and Diet Coke. | Plausible. The scale models were successfully destroyed.[3] |
| Crossing the streams is bad. | Using plans submitted on the fansite, Adam and Jamie built their own proton packs and crossed the streams. | Confirmed. A total protonic reversal occurred, causing all the molecules in their bodies to explode at the speed of light. |
| Burning your tongue with a lighter makes you crave fruitcake. | Adam and Jamie burnt their tongues with a lighter. | Busted. Or rather, impossible to find out, because Adam has always craved fruitcake. Poor guy. |
| The Moon is made out of cheese. | Adam and Jamie blasted into space with a bag of Cheese Doodles. They each ate a Moon rock, then a Cheese Doodle and compared flavors. | Confirmed. But mostly because they have no tastebuds. |
| Toxic waste will give you superpowers. | Adam and Jamie threw toxic waste at a passerby. | Busted. The person in question died a horribly painful death and Adam was sent to jail for 25 days on manslaughter charges. Jamie 1.0 exploded. |
| A bomb is significantly less powerful if swallowed. | The newly built Jamie 1.1 ate a twenty-pound bomb with his meat and apple cucumber pie. | Uncertain. Unknown to Adam, Jamie 1.1 already had a two-ton nuclear device in his beret which exploded simultaneously with the other bomb. The blast destroyed the MythBusters headquarters, rendering the test unrepeatable. |
| Does masturbation cause hairy palms and blindness? | Jamie 6.9 and Adam 00.7 stayed in a dark room together for eighty hours with nothing but the Adult Channel and access to Google. | Premature Inconclusive Evidence. Jamie and Adam put the old theories to a test. They were each given several popular magazines, a selection of fine lubricants and the world's most realistic-feeling rubber vagina.[4] |