We know Adam and Jamie dont "like " each other...but did they really had to put that on the screen?

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Yehoshua_Hasufel@reddit

On the contrary, it's ironically better to have an honest rival than a fake friend.

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Show developer Peter Rees, all his bitterness aside, had an interesting take on this. He claims they aren’t friends because Jamie is entirely antisocial and will not have friends. But if he did ever have a friend, it would be Adam. Rees talks about hiring Jamie for other projects, pre-mythbusters, and that Adam would be at M5 helping Jamie solve issues even though he wasn’t working there. When he brought up the idea of mythbusters, it was Jamie who brought on Adam. I take it that that is as close to having a buddy as Jamie gets.

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85tornado@reddit

I think "entirely antisocial" is a bit much. I've met him. It wasn't a lengthy meeting, probably 15 minutes or something, but he seems like a nice man.

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DryPomegranate2753@reddit

Peter Rees certainly has an entire lumberjack camp of axes to grind with Jamie, so his descriptions should certainly be taken with a grain of salt. He described Jamie as not having close friendships outside of work, and keeping all his work relationships entirely professional. I have, sadly, never had the opportunity to meet him, so I make no claim as to what it’s like to go have beers with him.

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lavahot@reddit

I have met people like that. They exist. And if ever there were, Jamie definitely has those vibes. And that's okay and valid if he is.

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One-Box-7696@reddit

I'm sure he's glad to hear that you have validated him

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SciFiNut91@reddit

What Ron Swanson wants to be.

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lavahot@reddit

Yeah, but Ron Swanson wants to brag about it.

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Sirix_8472@reddit

He's the greatest friend I ever had, we still never talk sometimes.

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LukasSprehn@reddit

It could be something like avoidant attachment style. Possibly even dismissive avoidant, or fearful. Or even avoidant personality disorder. We may never know.

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Old-Kaleidoscope1874@reddit

Being asocial is different from being antisocial. As an introvert, I have asocial tendencies, but I don't dislike people. I'm just not comfortable making small talk. I don't socialize with anyone I work with, but am always friendly to them. I enjoy the company of my family and will have lunch with a few close friends. I can teach classes and give presentations, but get exhausted from it afterwards.

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beartheminus@reddit

just because someone is nice and personable and can talk well in conversation does not mean they enjoy it or have a lot of close friends.

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gahidus@reddit

I think that asocial might be more apt than antisocial. You can be a nice man while still keeping everyone at arms length and never really engaging with people beyond perfunctory or professional interactions. That seems more like what they mean.

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p_user3@reddit

Back when the show was running, I emailed him about something completely unrelated, out of the blue. He took the time to think about an answer and emailed a nice reply back to me. This from someone who likely got dozens (at a minimum) of unsolicited emails every day.

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N4BFR@reddit

I really like that. I have no problem with coworkers appreciating each others work but not going for a beer at the end of the day.

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MechGryph@reddit

Yeah. They work well together and know how good they work as a team. You can have a great working relationship with someone without being friends. I think even Adam mentioned it on Tested once. How they worked super well together because of their different methods, but outside of work? They're not going to each other's house for dinner.

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Echo-Azure@reddit

That's a nice take on it!

Because while everyone knows they weren't devoted friends and there was friction at times, some of which was filmed, there were also times when they could say with perfect sincerity: "It's a pleasure building strange crap with you".

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luckybuck2088@reddit

They were very open that they respected each other professionally, and I think that was as close as they could get

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sadicarnot@reddit

it was Jamie who brought on Adam

Here Adam talks about getting the call from Jamie

https://youtu.be/OSMLCySKMWo?si=EBes4jRiphBbciny&t=251

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JSunshine11@reddit

I think it a tad blown out of proportion.

But I also think it’s a great dichotomy of science. It requires: wonderment, excitement, thinking big and outside the box, and a certain childlike attitude of “what ifs” and “what could be”. It also requires: strictness, sense of detail, methodical process, rigor, and critical thinking about “what is” and “what can’t be”.

They compliment each other in a way that is exciting but real, funny yet serious, playful but strict. Yin and Yang.

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TransportationNew715@reddit

They disagreed with some methods used during the myth busting. Like Jamie's idea was a simpler approach and Adam would go out of his way to make it more complicated.

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LongDong9000@reddit

Yeah and Adam always wanted to go the fast more risky was while Jamie was a lot more methodical and willing to go slow (ex. Quicksand)

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Rafnar@reddit

in the ping pong ball boat rescue jamie rushes through with the ball feeder while adam wants to test it better, later in the episode their having a problem with the ball feeder.

i feel the quicksand was more a "i can't be bothered to call and be allowed to use a fire hose when i got this garden hose right here"

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LongDong9000@reddit

Fair enough, I suppose it’s mostly situational

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SheikahEyeofTruth@reddit

Pretty sure they liked each other just fine. You can like your coworker and at the same time not be best friends who hangout all of the time. This episode was later on in the run wasn't it? I think at this point is when the "rumors" of the two of them despising each other were at its peak and that was Adam making a joke and playing into what he knows everyone was talking about. Which is exactly in line with Adams peronality.

At the beginning of the show the constant drama that was peppered throughout was 100% the producers using it for ratings and views. The whole shocking Adam thing that you could tell was absolutely wrong to do was because of a producer. That's why all of the stupid little drama clips slowly faded away as the show went on.

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DrScott88@reddit

Adam repeated talks about how they practically hated each other on his channel

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Alyeska23@reddit

There are coworkers that I respect whom I will never hang out with after work. There are coworkers who are my best friends.

Jamie and Adam respected each other but were not friends. The Trio looked like BFFs.

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dylanmadigan@reddit

I think they are more like Penn and Teller.

Not friends. But they don’t hate each other. They just go into work and the other guy is there and they happen to be great collaborators.

I’ve worked with people for years who I’m not friends with. I don’t have a problem with them. I respect them. But we don’t hang out.

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1NqL6HWVUjA@reddit

I really admire Adam for patiently and steadfastedly explaining over and over again — for literal decades at this point — that a real working relationship between adults is more nuanced than the extremes of "they hate each other" or "they're best friends forever". They had moments of conflict, and they have very different personalities, but Adam and Jamie have loads of respect for one another, and ultimately had a healthy and long-lasting professional relationship.

I respect the show for depicting some of the subtelty of their relationship with relative honesty, rather than bullshitting the audience with an "everything's perfect and happy all the time" kind of vibe. The parts of the show that didn't fit in for me were the forced scripted bits for that reason.

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no1nos@reddit

Yeah we have to realize that Jamie is never going to get in front of the camera to give his side of the story. Not to say that Adam would intentionally misrepresent the situation with Jamie, but Jamie's side has not been told.

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RDUppercut@reddit

On camera, probably not. But they used to do shows for live audiences, and they'd come out (separately) between segments to do Q&As with the audience. Jamie's response echoed Adam's, that they had a great professional relationship and trusted each other implicitly with the wild and dangerous shit they do, but they didn't really have a personal relationship and nobody was upset about it.

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jonkenobi@reddit

Thank you for bringing this up. I like my job and I love my co-workers, but I have never, ever, hung out with them outside work or visited each other's houses. had beers, etc. We each have our own circles of life and then we go to work and we talk, cooperate, get along, even joke with each other, and then we go home, and that's it. I'm sure everyone has co-workers they don't hang out with but still get along. There's many, many degrees of in-between.

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teambob@reddit

Even worse is the made up conflict

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beartheminus@reddit

I think its important for people to hear, that, despite not being friends and having vastly different personality types, they are able to check their egos at the door and find a way to work well together. In fact, I would argue that they work even better together than two people who do get along well and like each other, because they are always trying to poke holes in each others logic, rather than being courteous or agreeing simply because they like the other person.

I think that being nice and polite and getting along above all else is taught enough already, its good to showcase the fact that in a work environment, its not always the best way forward, and that you don't have to have everyone like you all the time to get along. Also, that you don't just have to surround yourself in your own bubble of influence, with only people that are like you, and stepping outside of that and working with people you don't necessarily see eye to eye with can help you grow as a person and learn.

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42Cobras@reddit

I think people are putting way too much blame on Jamie. During one of the BTS finale episodes, they showed a clip of Adam stopping a production meeting for 40 minutes because a costume he ordered had finally come in. It wasn’t a costume for an episode. It wasn’t an essential element for filming. It was just a thing he ordered and had to try on immediately.

I can admire the nerdiness at play here, I really can, but that’s just purely unprofessional. I’d be mad, too.

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troubleshot@reddit

I like it because it felt real, very little of TV these days feels that real. I also can relate to both of their views of one another, Jamie was difficult and Adam was annoying (I kinda love them both though and Adam has matured a LOT).

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Templarofsteel@reddit

One of the reasons apparently was that a lot of people assumed they were friends/close and that annoyed one or both of them. Combine that with the fact that around t same time as the shows early stage American Chopper was getting a lot of mileage out of exploiting and exacerbating drama they saw similar potential in Mythbusters. Though in the case of the latter while you do see some stuff with them trashing each other more in early seasons it was brief (allegedly both came to view it as fairly unprofessional and also a potential safety hazard with part of the goal seeming to be to wind them up).

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endangeredpenguin@reddit

I remember something similer in the Duct Tape Bridge where Adam said something along the lines of "even through we don't get on on a perosnal level we can work togeather". I wonder if it is the producers bending Adams ear, we never hear anything like that from Jamie who is strictly all business.

Part of me thinks it was just the producers thinking adding drama will get bigger ratings and it just wasn't needed, I didnt know for a long time that the didn't get on on a personal level but it has never and it will never change my POV of the show, their relationship never altered the presentation of the show.

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85tornado@reddit

Peter Rees felt the need to add drama. Dan Tapster did not. The difference in personalities was already there, and adding drama was unnecessary.

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Petkorazzi@reddit

Peter Rees felt the need to add drama.

Was he the douchenozzle that thought it'd be "funny" to zap Adam with a cattle fence?

If so - yeah, fuck that guy.

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gandalf_sucks@reddit

If you didn't know then you'd think it was just an on-screen joke.

I think it's best to take TV shows separate from real life, and not project the real life info onto the TV show. It's almost like meta gaming the system.

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OldDarthLefty@reddit

They are both somewhere on some spectrum. Makes it hard.

My favorite was the one where Jamie had a demonstration set up with dirty old oil funnels and Adam tore it all down saying "I cannot believe you still don't realize we are making a TV show"

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85tornado@reddit

Adam has said that he has ADHD. I believe he said that Jamie has Asperger's Syndrome, but don't quote me on that. (On a side note, people have decided to stop using that as a diagnostic term because they want to avoid the misconception that Asperger's Syndrome is a different condition from autism. Hans Asperger's research was also unethical, to say the least. He was a Nazi.)

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jmdaltonjr@reddit

Maybe Jamie's a Vulcan. Since he doesn't want friends. Kinda like him even more now.

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sadicarnot@reddit

Here Adam talks about working with Jamie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QuzIlMxLnQM

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sadicarnot@reddit

Here Adam talks about Jamie calling Adam to make a demo real. I would have to say Jamie probably had a lot of respect for Adam if Adam is one of the first people he calls.

https://youtu.be/OSMLCySKMWo?si=EBes4jRiphBbciny&t=251

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sadicarnot@reddit

On Tested, whenever Adam talks about Jamie, it is always in high regard. Here is Adam speaking about Jamie. Granted these reminisces are nearly a decade after MB ended. Other than saying Jamie is tough to be friends with, I have never heard Adam saying anything negative about Jamie.

https://youtu.be/9mxGo7QglRU?si=fO9OB6K2QrR9rqXD&t=244

https://youtu.be/OSMLCySKMWo?si=61edbJjJQx9fyHQL

https://youtu.be/QuzIlMxLnQM?si=YfEPp9fmg8aCxRxm

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sadicarnot@reddit

I worked with a guy that I could not stand socially. At work we were a great team. He liked to do work stuff I hated (meetings and reports) and I took on the stuff he hated, so we were a good team. He ended up having a heart attack and I was very worried about him. In the end I realized that while we would never be friends outside of work, we were best work buds.

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CHILLAS317@reddit

I prefer to see this, I think it's an excellent lesson that two people can work together without being best buddies

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agallantchrometiger@reddit

100% people can have personal and professional respect for one another while having very different personalities, interests, and past times.

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spderweb@reddit

It's basically said as a joke for the show, regardless of truth in it.

That said, they didn't hate each other. They just had nothing in common other than work. So they could work together fine, and make jokes etc about it. But otherwise,they had no interest in being friends. Totally fine.

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Fuzzy-Butterscotch86@reddit

I think during the run of 14 seasons they knew some obvious tensions that had developed had to be apparent on screen. So it was less "let me tell our viewers about our problems" and more "let me use the obvious to make a point".

On top of that, I feel the lack of friendship was a talking point in interviews more than it was a focus of the show. Like, during the entire 14 seasons you can probably count the number of times they address it on the show on one hand, but, you can find an endless stream of articles about it, and probably a dozen or more instances of them being directly asked about it.

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TGin-the-goldy@reddit

I agree that it was unprofessional