Mythbusters v. Smash Labs
Feb. 27th, 2008 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
redneckgaijinMythbusters has been the Discovery Channel's biggest hit show for five years and one hundred episodes.
Smash Labs is one of the cable network's new shows, scheduled directly after Mythbusters.
I'm a Mythbusters fan, and I've watched a few episodes of Smash Labs...and hate the latter.
The reasons are twofold.
First (and this is the major reason), Mythbusters is popular because of its cast of (and I use this word with feeling) characters. The show gives ample opportunity for the hosts to show off their personalities and to ad-lib on camera. It's possible to get an empathic bond with them, to get the illusion that you know them. The cast of Smash Labs, on the other hand, is interchangable. They don't show any real personality, any whimsy to speak of, or even any individuality. The camera goes to them only so they can explain what they're doing- usually right after the narrator has already done that. Mythbusters is at least 50% about the people: Smash Labs is almost 100% the science, and moreover the science as presented by a pedant dealing with a severely mentally challenged student.
Second... the premise of Smash Labs is that the crew is testing unusual techniques to improve safety. The four episodes I've seen are: (1) using aerated concrete (the crumbly stuff they use at the end of runways to stop planes) to prevent a bus from crossing a median; (2) using airbags mounted on a train like an old-fashioned cowcatcher to reduce damage to cars at crossings; (3) using kevlar fabric to hurricane-proof an old-style trailer house; and (4) using solid-fuel rockets to stop a runaway truck and trailer from going off a cliff.
These ideas all share two common factors: they're all really stupid ideas, and they're all prohibitively expensive to implement even if successful. Aerated concrete is a bitch to pour, and you'd have to pave all the grass medians completely for it to work. An airbag may lessen the initial impact force of a train, but it's still going to push a car for half a mile or more. Wrapping a trailer in kevlar won't stop it from coming unanchored and flipping in a hurricane or tornado- the main hazard trailers face in such storms. And solid-fuel rockets... are just, in general, as a matter of course, a really bad idea for ANY application. They're too unreliable.
To answer the question the show's premised question, does X work, the answers are: (1) No, because even a bus isn't heavy enough to bog down into the crumbly concrete; (2) no, the car still gets shredded, flipped, and totally mangled; (3) maybe- kevlar resists impact well, but that trailer's still going over in a major hurricane; and (4) no, because driving a truck and trailer combo with two BOMBS welded on- that's what solid fuel rockets are, semi-controlled BOMBS- is much more dangerous than the possibility that your brakes will fail near a cliff.
On Mythbusters, we see experiments go from planning to completion at the rate of three to five per hour-long episode. Smash Labs: one experiment, maybe two (the aerated concrete ep experimented with AC Jersey barriers and paved medians alike). And Smash Labs is dragging out experiments so bloody stupid that it shouldn't take a minute to figure out that, y'know, it's not going to work.
So: Smash Labs- boring cast, incredibly stupid experiments that go on forever in the most pedantic manner possible.
Mythbusters: fun, funny, interesting people, challenging ideas that at least sound plausible at first blush.
If anybody tries to tell you they're the same kind of show, don't you believe them... well, unless you think that a Ford Mustang and a Ford El Camino are the same kind of car.
Smash Labs is one of the cable network's new shows, scheduled directly after Mythbusters.
I'm a Mythbusters fan, and I've watched a few episodes of Smash Labs...and hate the latter.
The reasons are twofold.
First (and this is the major reason), Mythbusters is popular because of its cast of (and I use this word with feeling) characters. The show gives ample opportunity for the hosts to show off their personalities and to ad-lib on camera. It's possible to get an empathic bond with them, to get the illusion that you know them. The cast of Smash Labs, on the other hand, is interchangable. They don't show any real personality, any whimsy to speak of, or even any individuality. The camera goes to them only so they can explain what they're doing- usually right after the narrator has already done that. Mythbusters is at least 50% about the people: Smash Labs is almost 100% the science, and moreover the science as presented by a pedant dealing with a severely mentally challenged student.
Second... the premise of Smash Labs is that the crew is testing unusual techniques to improve safety. The four episodes I've seen are: (1) using aerated concrete (the crumbly stuff they use at the end of runways to stop planes) to prevent a bus from crossing a median; (2) using airbags mounted on a train like an old-fashioned cowcatcher to reduce damage to cars at crossings; (3) using kevlar fabric to hurricane-proof an old-style trailer house; and (4) using solid-fuel rockets to stop a runaway truck and trailer from going off a cliff.
These ideas all share two common factors: they're all really stupid ideas, and they're all prohibitively expensive to implement even if successful. Aerated concrete is a bitch to pour, and you'd have to pave all the grass medians completely for it to work. An airbag may lessen the initial impact force of a train, but it's still going to push a car for half a mile or more. Wrapping a trailer in kevlar won't stop it from coming unanchored and flipping in a hurricane or tornado- the main hazard trailers face in such storms. And solid-fuel rockets... are just, in general, as a matter of course, a really bad idea for ANY application. They're too unreliable.
To answer the question the show's premised question, does X work, the answers are: (1) No, because even a bus isn't heavy enough to bog down into the crumbly concrete; (2) no, the car still gets shredded, flipped, and totally mangled; (3) maybe- kevlar resists impact well, but that trailer's still going over in a major hurricane; and (4) no, because driving a truck and trailer combo with two BOMBS welded on- that's what solid fuel rockets are, semi-controlled BOMBS- is much more dangerous than the possibility that your brakes will fail near a cliff.
On Mythbusters, we see experiments go from planning to completion at the rate of three to five per hour-long episode. Smash Labs: one experiment, maybe two (the aerated concrete ep experimented with AC Jersey barriers and paved medians alike). And Smash Labs is dragging out experiments so bloody stupid that it shouldn't take a minute to figure out that, y'know, it's not going to work.
So: Smash Labs- boring cast, incredibly stupid experiments that go on forever in the most pedantic manner possible.
Mythbusters: fun, funny, interesting people, challenging ideas that at least sound plausible at first blush.
If anybody tries to tell you they're the same kind of show, don't you believe them... well, unless you think that a Ford Mustang and a Ford El Camino are the same kind of car.
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El Camino?
Date: 2008-02-28 04:35 am (UTC)Re: El Camino?
Date: 2008-02-28 04:49 am (UTC)(I watch Top Gear now and again, but sports cars I'll never see enough money to buy leave me cold. I've thought now and again about a poor-ass American response, for people who buy used and/or compacts because that's all the money they have. Call it Crapboxes.)
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 04:53 am (UTC)I was only able to get through one episode of Smash Labs. Everything those guys said felt so forced and fake, like they weren't comfortable in front of a camera.
Jamie and Adam already have tons of experience and knowledge to draw from, those smash lab kids looked too much to be my age.
On the one hand they do say that the first episodes of any show are going to be different from later ones where they find their footing, but, I'm not sure that would make enough of a difference here. I don't expect that show to go on too long.
Jamie, Adam, and Mike Rowe are my heroes.
no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 07:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-02-28 03:06 pm (UTC)