When the MythBusters kick off their 2015 season next year, it will be with a very different show than fans have known since 2003. As we reported several months ago, co-stars Grant Imahara, Kari Byron, and Tory Belleci are no longer with the show having left amid contract disputes with Discovery. One of the two remaining ‘busters, Adam Savage, talked with Entertainment Weekly about the future of the show, upcoming myths that fans want to see busted, as well as his most regrettable myth that he’s done on the show.
It’s really no secret that Adam strongly disliked the myths about “pyramid power” that the team busted with ease back in 2005. This episode veered a little off course from MythBusters’ normally scientific-based myths, and all were more “oogie boogie” myths as Adam has frequently put it. He reiterated his dislike for this episode and the myths involved by telling EW, “With anything that falls into that realm, you’re trying to prove a negative because you can’t ever have a control against which you can measure anything. If you go out to look for Bigfoot and you don’t find him, you’ve only proven one half of the equation—that you don’t know how to find Bigfoot.” It’s worth noting that even after Adam’s strong dislike of the episode, the show eventually went on to bust myths about plants having feelings in 2006, but it was taken with a much more light-hearted and jokey tone.
As far as format changes go, the show will be much more heavily focused on the primary ‘busters, Adam and his co-star Jamie Hyneman, who are now running the show by themselves. Being that they can no longer cut to another group, all of their transitions must now run seamlessly into each other, something the duo has not had to worry about since Grant, Kari, and Tory joined the show soon after it started.
Another change that Adam hinted at is showing a lot more of the team’s mistakes in the course of running their experiments. Now that they have more time to fill, they can do it with more in-depth looks at how the experiments are set up, how the tests are run, and of course how they go wrong.
There’ll be times when I specifically will not engage with a certain piece of information—like, I won’t read [a result] until the camera is rolling—in order to see what happens. I’m not going to pre-educate myself. I’m going to walk in cold and see what occurs. That makes the story a lot more dynamic.
This change to a more serious take on the myths was hinted when it was first announced that the trio of co-stars would be leaving the show, and it still may turn out to be a positive. Having the MythBusters get back to its heavy science roots and away from goofy experiments may bring back some older fans that have drifted away from the show in recent years as it – and the Discovery Channel in general – have become less about education and more about entertainment.
As you might expect, a lot of fans ask for a lot of things to be busted. One of them pointed out in the interview was a minute-long ad from Japan that went viral earlier this year where two girls deep fry shrimp by firing it out of a cannon. In the commercial, everything is set up very similar to how Adam and Jamie run the show, right down to slow-mo cameras and the same type of camera angles. And, to be fair, “firing shrimp out of a cannon to see if it deep fries” sounds like the most MythBusters’ sentence ever, so it wouldn’t be a surprise if they ever end up doing it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lkaIoH6Um60
Another piece of information that was previously known but expanded upon was the fact that Adam and Jamie aren’t really that close of friends. As Adam put it, the two know each other more than many close friends actually do, but they aren’t necessarily friends themselves. This has arguably helped the show more than anything, as some of the duo’s testiest moments are some of the shows most compelling. Seeing them argue and come to a conclusion in the type of scenario where two friends might just rollover and agree with each other is always great TV, and leads to better run experiments.
One thing the two do agree on, according to Adam, is the lack of subversive advertising. “Everyone in the world wants us to “bust myths” about their product,” he told EW, “We’ve turned down just gobs of money to not do that because we have our integrity. We only get to spend that [integrity] coin once.” The show has done a lot of episodes themed around a certain show or movie, but they have always been at the request of the MythBusters, not the other media coming to them. If Adam had his way they would also have done a Die Hard 2 special by now, but alas, they can’t acquire the rights to use clips from the show.
[button type=”link” link=”http://insidetv.ew.com/2014/12/19/mythbusters-interview/#” size=”btn-sm” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Entertainment Weekly[/button]*Featured image courtesy of indoorboys.com
Last Updated on January 12, 2019.
Comments are closed.