New MythBusters, Episode 1

They don't really have much choice but to use footage from the Search to introduce the new hosts to viewers who didn't watch that show. Heck, last night I ran into someone who didn't even know that there was a new Mythbusters series, let alone new hosts.

They will probably continue to use footage from the Search at least for this season, until they start to pile up enough footage from aired episodes with the new hosts to be able to use that instead.

The results in the decapitation myth were no surprise to anyone: even at the speeds they did. HOWEVER, once the myth was busted, I would have liked to have seen them try and reproduce the results. I thought the same thing TLW did, use a thin, taut piano wire. They could still use the rocket rig, just have 2 tracks with the rockets on top, and the wire sitting BELOW so that once it slices through it can continue without the rocket rig hitting it.

The airbag myth results surprised me a little. I thought that in the one with the feet ON the dash (not above it) the legs would come straight back into the face/chest and cause even more damage than it did. Both scenarios would be devastating, but I thought it'd be even worse. Daughter asked the question, what would you rather have, broken ankles, or ribs?

Broken ribs or a face full of windscreen, no-brainer, maybe less brain if you manage to go through the screen...
Broken ribs is painful, but not as much as being put in traction in a hospital bed being fed through a straw, and you can walk about with cracked ribs and get places.
But you are alive.

Airbags, I would take the slight discomfort of being alive with an airbag rather than the fractured shoulder dislocate I suffered in the first head-on I ever had.
The seatbelt took my shoulder with it, but, importantly, I didnt nose-job the windscreen...
If the speed had been above 40, I would have had more injury, above 50, would I have died, I dunno, but the addition of an airbag, I would have survived a 60mph head on in that vehicle.
Injured, yeah, but survived.... thats gotta be a bonus.

I didnt get to see this one yet, so let me come back with what I see when I do, but until then, I will always keep my airbag on.
If there is any reason that may require me to put the passenger airbag to "Off", I question the reason for that passenger not being a back seat passenger?.
And keep your feet OFF my dash.

it is satisfactory. was the bothan's note that they have the same voiceover? that was Mrs TLW's first comment.

on the rocket sword: it occurs to me they could have redesigned the track, so it used the same blade they used for the pneumatic sword: using two rails that were parallel, until the point of impact, and then curved to produce the slash. a longer track would have better enabled the sword to reach the end of the thrust phase at impact, as well a test rig for a piano wire would be a bit more challenging - but perhaps holding the wire still and moving the dummy would work. if the head stays onboard until the dummy stops, then you would have a success.

the one short story in which this was a story element used monomolecular wire, which makes it untestable due to lack of technology. but it bears mentioning that the key point in the story was that there was a speck of dust on the wire, which caused the victim to notice the cut, which points out that a three dimensional blade, as compared to a two dimensional blade, will disturb things.

A note on the airbag test:

Besides the thing about the doors being removed and the airbag deploying upwards that TLW already pointed out, as good a simulation of a human being as a Syndaver is, it can't simulate the instinctual reaction of a real person tensing up their legs on impact. The Syndaver is completely limp, so there's no muscle reaction, which I suspect could make the legs go straight up into the face.

That said, I don't think anyone will be volunteering to take the Syndaver's place, so if they fix the things TLW noted and try again, I believe this is as good a test of the myth as we'll ever get.

I have no comments on the sword test, except ROCKET SWORD!!! HELL YEAH!!!

I was worried about the sled hitting the head after the sword as well, but the high speed clearly showed that the head was moving because of the sword well before the sled ever hit it, making the test perfectly valid.

I've clued in a person or two as well.

the catch to winning over TC is that we are at least a little bit more objective than the average viewer. (the closest we tend to get to "you did it wrong because you didn't get the results we wanted" is "we want to see you replicate the results")

but yeah, we certainly want to see them not pander to the twits.

I think it's not that we're a hard audience so much as that we are a representative audience.

Clarification; TC's members are the long term 'hardcore' fanbase of Mythbusters (or are representative of them). While any TV show needs to change over time to bring in a new audience, if they can do so without alienating the existing fanbase its a win-win situation all around.

You only have to look at Star Trek to see what can happen if a series (or franchise) changes to draw in new viewers, but in doing so alienates the existing fanbase.

That we, as the 'hardcore' fans are not having any issues with the new series, especially the new hosts, and seem to be rather positive about what we are seeing means that a significant chunk of the existing fanbase is going to be as well. It's a small sample, but gives a decent idea as to how the series is being received before any viewer figures come in. It also gives a good idea as to what the general word of mouth is likely to be - which is something critics and viewer figures can't give but in the long run is very important to the longevity of the series. There are going to be some of the older fans who will not have seen the new series simply because it doesn't have any of the original hosts. But if they hear its worth watching from others who are also fans they are likely to give it a chance.

As to being smarter than the average viewer....Well the Bothan told me that when they were going through some fan emails they were astonished to find an email in which the sender had managed to misspell 'Hello' in the opening line, and proceeded to misspell every word after that. Apparently the Bothan checked the email account, as they thought the prefix was familiar, and was astonished/dismayed to discover that the email originated from an American West Coast University even I, as a Brit, had actually heard of.
So in some regards 'smarter than the average viewer' doesn't always mean a great deal....

There are highs and lows on every spectrum

I'm not saying we're all geniuses who are in the absolute top tier of Mythbusters viewers, because I know for a fact that "the old show" had NASA engineers and the like among their fans. I'm just saying that if the average viewer represents the populace at large, most of us might be just a couple of points ahead of that baseline. And I'm not just grabbing that hypothesis out of thin air. Most of us here spent a considerable amount of time on the Disco boards debating "average viewers" on some very silly topics. I can't help but notice that the amount of downright idiotic myth suggestions has plummeted since we all left those people behind and came here.

And let me guess: UCLA or Berkeley? Those are usually the first two Europeans think of when we hear "American West Coast University". Not that we haven't heard of others, but those are the ones most often depicted in movies and TV shows.