I am violently jealous. I’m going to be stuck for the rest of my life in a job that I hate, and these two loserfaces get paid for blowing stuff up and tearing stuff apart. I mean, really. What could be more satisfying than hotwiring a CD-ROM drive, water skiing behind a rowboat, or building a gun to launch frozen chickens at airplane windshields?

Mythbusters is hosted by Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman. Adam is a builder, set designer, sculptor, carpenter, welder, actor, writer, and just all around creative genius (visit his website! It’s übernifty! www.adamsavage.com). He’s easily excitable, a bit of a jokester, and often seems like the teenaged son in the partnership. Jamie majored in Russian languages and Literature before running a sailing and diving business, then moving on to model building and the like. He is much more restrained, has a more subtle sense of humour, and takes on an almost fatherly role. Both have to keep each other in check, as it is easy for them to get carried away. The junior partner in the group is Buster, the much-abused crash-test dummy. Buster has been set on fire, spun around in a washing machine, fired out of any number of things, bruised, battered, and beaten. It is unlikely that any portion of the current Buster is an original part.

The show is infused with a sense of fun and marvelous wit. The announcer, Robert Lee, seems to have as much fun narrating as Jamie and Adam do actually filming the show. These guys should come teach Physics at PHS... There is little that I love watching more than incredibly intelligent and talented people enjoying what they do well. MythBusters is almost as entertaining as Whose Line in that regard. And it has an added educational bonus. From watching, I’ve learned to microwave my CDs before I attempt to destroy them, that a crash-test dummy hit with a mute shot out of the bell of a trombone will fall forward rather than backward, and that if I really must leave two pig carcasses in my sealed vehicle, I should NOT climb in and shut the door immediately after opening it for the first time in two months. See, parents? Let your kids watch MythBusters! It’ll be a learning experience!

Above all, however, I love how these two geeks have taken a truly nerdly premise and managed to make a really awesome show that appeals to the adolescent boy in us all.

Busted!
Written March 9, 2004.