The Search - Episode 3

Myth 1: this wasn't really much of a myth, but as a build project it was well chosen. it gave them a good clear objective and plenty of opportunity to fail. I think the person who went home earned it honestly, and I think other competitors are showing an increase in maturity and teamwork. this time, the MVP was no surprise. that, too, was earned honestly.

Myth 2: this time I came into the myth with the expectation that it would be mostly just putting people in a different environment and doing an almost random skill test; which was only minimally graded. so it was more or lessup to my expectations, and left me free to critique the execution.

that said, with the setup of a target stand, with a speaker on it (replicated three times), and the shooter was expected to shoot at the target that was making the high pitched noise.
so: they brought the shooter in blindfolded, so they had no real elevation cues - while the myth was a shooter who knew his environment and then had no light. they had a well designed safety rig - basically a frame that limited their range of motion to prevent them doing the classic pinata maneuver. (whacking the host in the family jewels) to me, the largest flaw in the bust was the noise. they only used a high pitched tone as a test noise - a well known trio of scientists have demonstrated that a high pitched tone is hard to target, while a lower pitched white noise would have been easier to target. also, I wasn't sure where the actual speaker was - if it was on the ground under the target, that would explain why most of the competitors were shooting into the ground under the target.

I have nothing to add on the cardboard boat thing, except for the observation that the guy I didn't like for a number of good reasons in the first two episodes actually started to exhibit some of the team work skills and humility that I'd been missing from him. He's also becoming better on camera. He's loosening up a bit, which suits him. He hasn't quite started to grow on me yet, but if he keeps evolving like he's been doing, he might.

As for the shooting blindfolded myth, I'm not ready to call that yet. Not one contestant fired in the wrong direction horizontally when the sound went off, but they all had issues with the vertical axis (I think it was Jon who pointed that out early on) and ended up shooting into the ground short of the target. They were clearly able to hear where the sound was coming from and point the gun in the right general direction. The elevation was just off. There were actually a few shots where they might have hit the bad guy in the foot if they'd been lucky. A more experienced shot might be able to overcome the elevation issue.

Standouts for this episode:

- Martin for his boat building, leadership and communication skills (I generally like him)
- Tamara for some good ideas along the way, good team work abilities and becoming even better on camera than she was to begin with (she's apparently a teacher, so she's used to being "on")
- Allen for team work abilities and just being naturally entertaining
- Jon for cutting through the crap when his teammates went AWOL on Brian and him and just generally trying to make the best of a bad situation by at least making his team's effort entertaining to watch

I generally see those four as front runners to win it at this point. On the "being entertaining" part, Allen and Jon are both standouts in my opinion. It also seems like the editors have taken special note of Jon as someone who's good at explaining to camera how and why something does or doesn't work.

All true, which is why I've never gone on first impressions alone (as evidenced by my slowly shifting opinion of Hackett). Doing that, you can easily end up discarding a lot of good people that you might have eventually come to like if you'd given them a chance.

Looking at it again, it looks like he had a tendency to squeeze the thumb of his right hand up against the slide on the far side of the camera view. What's being seen as unsafe gun handling due to the jams seems more to me to be a case of him actually wanting to be safe, both by taking his index finger off the trigger in between shots and having his thumb ready to operate the safety. Because it's a .22 and the slide is so light weight compared to a higher caliber weapon, that thumb going for the safety catch seems to be inhibiting the slide from going all the way forward and locking the next round in the breech on the reload cycle. Even so, his reaction to each jam was to be calm and collected, keep his finger off the trigger, the gun pointed down range and wait for the range master, so I can't really see what's so unsafe about that.

To be honest, after having seen that again, his partner in crime on the whole going AWOL on their team thing was a hell of a lot more unsafe at the range than he was. I'm not sure they made the right call on who went home and why there...

EDIT: Just watched one more time and on the second jam, the slide didn't come back at all when the shot went off. I didn't see anything in his handling that could have caused that, so I think it's faulty ammo and bad luck on jam number two.

While I could agree that the gun issues may not have been the shooters fault, the fact that no one else had them, and the fact that the expert on the range seemed to feel it was, makes me believe it was. Something in his grip was poor, and watching it, it does look like he was holding it odd. As for the other person who was at the bottom, I think it'll be difficult for them to let her go, there are only 2 women left, so I think they'll stay unless there really isn't another candidate to go.

I also like the same folks Oz likes. John is quickly becoming a go to for explanations and is good in front of the camera. Alan is the kid inside us all, the kid we wish we could be, and on a show we all wish we could be on. He has some good all around skills, and is just an optimistic guy.

I still don't like Hackett, although he wasn't nearly as annoying this episode as in past episodes. It is very possible I'm biased against him, but I just don't care for him.

There was definitely something weird on his first shot, but I can't imagine what he could have done on the second one to make the slide not move at all. In my experience, that's either down to poor maintenance, bad ammo or a combination of both.



Depends on whether they're going for the politically correct "we have a quota of females we need to meet", or if they're just going to pick whoever is best suited for the job.

I generally like Tracy, but she didn't do well in this episode at all. She was downright unsafe at the gun range and, as TLW points out, she was part of the two person team that went off on their own and wasted a lot of time on something that didn't help anyone. As for why they did it, I think they both knew they were hanging on by a thread after the range and wanted to stand out. They succeeded in that, but not in a good way.



If I was making the call right now and we're going for a five person team like the original, I'd take those four and add Brian to the mix. He's not the best communicator, but there's a Jamie-like quality to his range of skills and that makes for some easy points.

I completely agree with you on Allen. He's goofy and funny, but it doesn't seem forced. I don't get the impression that he's actively trying to be funny. He's just that guy. (No, not THAT guy. For this episode, Jason was THAT guy.)



There's still some arrogance to him that just seems out of place for a setting like MythBusters. Even when he conceded on camera that most of the reason for his team's win was Martin's knowledge of boat building, he still had to throw in that little, "Oh, okay... Yes, Captain Martin!" remark, like he resented Martin for having expertise in a field that he didn't. Considering the amount of humiliation you have to be willing to submit yourself to in the name of science on this show, that attitude doesn't fit in.

There's a long way to go before I'll be able to say I like him, but he's getting better and I'll give credit where credit's due. Let's hope he keeps going down that road, because even though there are definitely a lot of things about him I don't like, there's something interesting about him too. Like when Kyle asked the contestants if they all still had their fingers before leaving the range and everyone stuck their hands out and started waving their fingers like a bunch of 5-year-olds. Hackett was the only one who didn't and that tells me he's less susceptible to social pressure than most people. That's a good trait to have if you're going to make a living challenging commonly held beliefs. If you blindly do what everyone else does or what you think is expected of you, how likely are you to seriously question what everyone else believes to be fact?

That's the one.

He seems like a very stoic and pragmatic person who's picked up a lot of weird and wonderful skills along the way and you just know there's an interesting story attached to each and every one of them.

I'm pretty sure they broke the mold after Jamie was made

Can I just put in a quick "thing" that I thought was known...
Rangd sergeants on newbies, if you shoot low, they ask "Do you shut your eyes when you pull the trigger"....
[or more accurate "Stop shutting your eye when you fire Plonka!!"]
Many n00bs do that when they first start because "We all seen the rifle shoot backwards".


I thought it was a well known fact when you shut your eyes you loose sight of the target, people aim down at that point, maybe its a "Safety" thing?...
Being blind in the first place, would you have to "fight" your own instincts to aim up at a target?.