Time for a reboot?
Posted by Only-Ad5049@reddit | mythbusters | View on Reddit | 63 comments
I’m sure this has been asked before, but has it been long enough yet for them to reboot the series? They will never recapture the magic of the original series and there won’t ever be another team like Adam and Jamie. Kari and Tori already tried a couple of times (White Rabbit Project). The last reboot didn’t go well, but it may have been too soon and I don’t think they picked the best team (others in The Search would have made a better team).
I’m not sure if YouTube, etc. is filling that gap now, but I know of a few things they could test should they want to start the series again, plus there were some that I don’t think they got right or variations of ones they tested.
followthedrama@reddit
Umm I may be missing something but aren't they back and have been for 3 years? Mythbusters here's your problem.
Ok-Mobile-3746@reddit
They tried again with Mythbusters: The Search It was an 8 episode competition to find the new Mythbusters. Then I believe there were 2 seasons made, I dont know why it didnt continue.
Wolf-Darkrose@reddit
i wouldnt mind tory and jessy maybe but as for the search guys and i dont see adam ever coming back as he has his own thing now mind you its amazing and has the old mythbusters style as for jamie. i havent heard anything on him and with grant passing away sadly. i honestly think as we are seeing in april of 2024. the episodes are going out in full on youtube. let the mythbusters rest and watch the old videos with your kids and there kids and hope it inspires them as much as you to make build create and destory. the mytrhbusters will never truely die as long as the creativity watching them as a kid stays with you and your kids. RIP grant you were a legend gone far far too early. sleep well my friend.
AnnieCake15@reddit
One more Mark Rober stan here. He's excellant
everythingisreallame@reddit
The reason the show was so successful, in my opinion, was it was kind of a rag tag group of normal looking nobodies who had just enough connections to get a show that no one had done before a chance. The pilot literally looks like my friends and I had a camcorder in 1999.
Reboots never capture the essence of the original shows and all good things eventually run their course.
NASTYH0USEWIFE@reddit
This. Just look at the “reboot” with the new hosts. Most of what made the show so good was the weird chemistry between all the hosts, the guys screwing around on camera film style, and the fact that it almost always felt genuine. The “reboot” didn’t feel as genuine and also most of the stories just weren’t interesting. If this show ever comes back it will have to walk the line of being familiar but also completely fresh which will be extremely difficult to do.
DracoAdamantus@reddit
This is the essence of it. I fell off watching the show in 2015 because it became too…corporatized? Reality TV-ed?
In essence the season when the build team went away and they changed the intro, the whole vibe of the show changed too. You could feel Discovery Channel standing just off camera with a checklist and a gun to keep the show in line with what they wanted out of it. Just from the way people talked you could tell there was a lot less agency and more influence from the network.
MellerTime@reddit
Agree completely. I didn’t realize until recently that I’d only seen the first two or three seasons, so I sat down to do a complete rewatch.
The last three are increasingly cringe, especially when they are teaming up with other shows to test myths from them. “Hey, we should test “myths” from a completely fictional animated show starring a fat bald guy” said no one, ever.
I tore through the first few seasons, but this last 1 and a half is taking me forever.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Using Homer to save a house? That was great and silly but tested some real physics. Were you upset about the fat cops cushioning a suspect in a crash? same idea.
MellerTime@reddit
Yes, actually I was. That was equally as stupid.
“Curving bullets” with the build team slinging guns and expecting them to not go straight out of the barrel was probably the first episode that had that dumb of a premise. It was also ridiculously unsafe - watch those replays and see them pulling the triggers at 45° in the arc.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Proving the stupid things seen on tv and movies aren’t real
Blog_Pope@reddit
They also tested the "Moon Landing was faked", I don't think anyone involved with the show that it was faked, it was about demonstrating why these ideas don't work. That plus needing "big/exciting" to draw viewers in
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
I don’t really get your point here
TheDesktopNinja@reddit
Yeah clearly the combination of having tested so many things already and obviously increasing direction/meddling from discovery executives really did taint the latter seasons.
Blog_Pope@reddit
I recall around Season 3 they were feeling like they had tested most the common "myths"
Also Jamie and Adam kind of grew to hate each other as I recall. They don't hang out like Zack Braff and Donald Faison, who I somehow image actually do live next to each other like in the T-Mobile ads show.
Hutchiaj01@reddit
The last episode is just so much feels tough
Kitsunisan@reddit
Same feeling for me. Once the Build Team left, so did I.
MellerTime@reddit
You know, oddly enough this is the flip side of one of my biggest pet peeves watching the later shows. Every episode suddenly has all their “don’t try this at home” spots talking about how they’re experts.
No, they’re not, and at the beginning they were up front about that because they were trying to encourage kids to stop thinking about science as “something smart people in lab coats do” and start thinking about it as natural curiosity and experimentation that everyone can do.
Once they started calling themselves “experts” it just felt like they lost a lot of the authenticity and it just became another “unscripted” scripted reality show.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
How were Adam and Jamie not experts? They became firearms rated, race course rated, with explosives JD was there doing it or supervising.
MellerTime@reddit
I’m not saying they weren’t after 10 years. I’m saying that being honest about how we stumbled around and made tons of mistakes and learned a lot on our own, rather than just “asking these smart people” was really what made the show at the beginning.
To me that’s the entire learning aspect of the show when they started. You don’t need to be an “expert”, you just need to have a curious mind and want to explore and try things out. The last several seasons are completely the opposite - it’s entertainment, not experimentation.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Rewatch the show, they asked “smart people” a lot. And the “we’re experts” has to with “we know enough to safely do this” because they asked smart people on how to do it, and pretty counter to your “we are curious, let’s explore bombs.
I agree there was a lot of trial and error to how they did things and they were curious but they were also humble about what they didn’t know and who did know more than them. They knew what they knew, owned up to what they didn’t, and asked questions of who did know. The show was great
HatsAreEssential@reddit
You have to remember how many experts they had train them on various skills and tests though.
After a decade of that, they're more expert at science than many literal lab scientists. They're just broad experts, not specialized.
1NqL6HWVUjA@reddit
Agreed, this was key to the vibe of the show. It grew into something bigger and higher budget, but it started very ragtag and grew naturally — and that can't be faked. Plus, much of the chemistry and camaraderie came from genuine professional relationships that existed before the show.
A reboot would try too hard to emulate and recapture the original, and would inevitably cast hosts, rather than let the hosts pick each other. And the end result would feel false and artificial like the previous attempt.
polkjamespolk@reddit
I could get behind it if the main hosts are Kari Byron and Tory Belleci. Extra points if they bring Adam or Jamie back as mentors.
In other words, the show starts each episode with Jamie and Adam appearing on a TV monitor. They describe a myth and assign experiments.
Tory and Kari to the experiments, build the whatevers, and report back at the end of the episode.
Bringing in new hosts would simply guarantee that I will never watch it. (See "season 20")
HeadGuide4388@reddit
The airplane toilet episode where they're just wandering around town looking for "500 gallons of a skin like latex"
Both_Organization854@reddit
Ahh the episode that introduced us to Kari Byron!!
Funkytadualexhaust@reddit
Memorable..
Robdd123@reddit
I think that ship has unfortunately long since left the pier. Mythbusters was like lightning in a bottle and you can't just recreate that; it needs to happen organically.
The reboot failed because it was forced. They had an awful Survivor styled, reality TV show to determine the hosts which felt so out of place. It also happening about a year after the original ended didn't help, the two guys they picked really just couldn't match the dynamic that Adam and Jamie had; airing so close to the original and accompanied with a marathon of the old stuff really put it into perspective how much of a downgrade this reboot was.
If they wanted to keep it going the right idea was to keep the Build Team on and elevated them once Adam and Jamie left. They had the pedigree (being around on the show for so long) and the charisma and chemistry to have been able to take over the show IMO. Then they could have found a new build team and over time built them up as the original had done.
See the problem is Discovery is obsessed with awful "reality" TV and has been for more than a decade at this point. I remember a time when they used to air some really awesome educational and insightful programming; now every block on their programing is dominated by crap like "Curse of Oak Island", "Gold Rush", etc. Even shark week became corporatized.
I think we're never going to recapture the magic of the original and that's ok; all good things must come to an end, all great stories must have a final chapter. The bigger issue right now is having the incredible story of the TV show "Mythbusters" readily available for people to watch. A Blu Ray box set of everything with behind the scenes stuff would be the dream but I'd even take a full DVD box set if it meant having all of the content for home media consumption.
One thing I will say though, the best chance of a proper spiritual successor is probably going to be through some random creators on Youtube. I could see two college aged guys with science and engineering backgrounds get together in their garage, basement, or yard and just film themselves testing tall tales or myths. It doesn't have to be anything crazy like, "let's blow up a cement truck!", but rather it could be simple things something like the mentos and soda or the various duct tape myths. And it'll just happen overnight one day; you'll be scrolling through Youtube and you'll get a recommendation
DangerSwan33@reddit
There's a ton of creators on YouTube that kind of continue on the spirit of the show in varying ways.
Allen Pan (who actually was one of the new host contestants) does a lot of really fun build vidoes. On the surface, he's just building ridiculous, useless shit, but from a testing perspective, he's really saying "could this thing exist, and what would it take for it to exist?", which is very much like "testing the myth vs reproducing the results".
Mark Rober does a cool job of coming up with a hypothesis, and then making a build to satisfy it. He's not necessarily "testing" a ton of stuff, but it's still in a similar spirit.
The Action Lab is much shorter videos. He does less builds and more just "what happens if you do this with this".
But that's just the engineering side of things.
I think the Mythbusters "spirit" has actually held strong throughout the general cultural zeitgeist, and YouTube is full of it from a ton of angles.
There's a ton of sports content creators that use a scientific approach to answer questions or contest common beliefs.
Foolish Baseball/Foolish Bailey is a good example of this.
And I was surprised to find that there's actually a lot of videogame channels that are kind of in the spirit of Mythbusters.
Real Civil Engineer does all sorts of "testing" in Cities Skylines. One of his most common recurring themes is trying to stop a massive tsunami with different city or geographic designs.
I've actually also recently started watching a ton of JRose11, who does things like trying to beat various Pokemon games with rigid stipulations like only using one specific pokemon, or even only one specific move. It's kind of dumb, but he's pretty scientific with his approach, and his storytelling is tight, so again, it sorta scratches that itch.
Long story short, the general concept of "busting myths" became so ubiquitous, that it has absolutely bled into newer content.
What I love about it, however, is that you're really only going to mostly find it on DIY platforms like Youtube/Patreon/etc. To me, even as big as Mythbusters budgets eventually got, the DIY approach to their builds, and even to the show as a whole, was a HUGE part of what made it magic, and a lot of these creators do a great job of capturing that.
jasonreid1976@reddit
Another couple of good channels: The Backyard Scientist and The Slowmo Guys.
I feel like they also recapture the spirit with some of the dumb shit they do.
harley-belle@reddit
For food and cooking related myths, I really like Ann Reardon from How To Cook That.
Robdd123@reddit
Huge fan of JRose, I love his Pokemon challenges. You might like these two videos made by pretty small creators that are Pokemon based:
Can you beat Pokemon Blind and Deaf?
Can you train AI to play Pokemon
The second one is extremely interesting because it demonstrates the ability of AI to learn something as complex as a video game; the second half also goes into detail of the coding aspects of getting it to work. Pretty sure it also shows how you can run it yourself.
DangerSwan33@reddit
That's awesome! Thank you!
ExtremeAlbatross6680@reddit
If they do the 9/11 episode, they would break the internet and be popular again. Its all they have to do
TransportationNew715@reddit
They did try a reboot called Mythbuster: The Search or Search For The New Mythbusters. It only had one season. There was a Mythbuster Jr., also last a year hosted by Adam
StreetDark1995@reddit
I thought they had something with bringing the kids into the show. Have a new batch of kids every season and switching out the mentor as well. Could’ve got at least 5 more seasons out of that. Ok maybe 4 cause I don’t think Jamie would have been interested in coming back in.
Only-Ad5049@reddit (OP)
Last I checked, Jaime is a professor in Finland so he wouldn’t be available.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
There are some YouTube videos (they have been posted here) with Jamie working with Fins.
StreetDark1995@reddit
Really it’s down to 3 now that Grant is gone. I wish we would’ve gotten more from him. He had the right stuff.
firehawk12@reddit
This has been on my mind a bit because of a recent Safety Third episode where Kyle Hill and Allen Pan talk about their time on the Mythbusters reality show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPz1Bue-dN8
But yeah, I think YouTube has replaced anything that Mythbusters can do nowadays.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Can you summarize or give a time code? That was a bit of a mess to listen to
firehawk12@reddit
It's the first half I think, where they talk about the search and how it was produced (including that it was just a bunch of suits who picked who won and none of the people on the show knew how people were eliminated) and then go into kind of the general decline of old science content and how they basically all became the next wave of science communicators via YouTube.
I never thought of it, but these guys and other related channels like NilesRed are basically nextgen Mythbusters, but they aren't constrained by the limitations of TV or the demands of network executives.
The second half goes into some of the "fallout" of Allen doing Mythbusters parodies and "stealing" the Mythbusters trademark from Warner Discovery.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Thank you, I appreciate this. I tried using the time codes and scanning but couldn’t find relevant well anything. Like “Adam hates Allen”, nope no idea, I figured out it was about the trademark from the comments.
Get_a_Grip_comic@reddit
No too soon, let it happen naturally.
Someone will create a new thing and it will be the spiritual successor to mythbusters.
Only-Ad5049@reddit (OP)
Yeah, eventually the content creators will get tired of doing stupid stunts that risk injury and graduate into doing science shows again.
It will be tough to find somebody with Adam and Jaime’s skill sets, though. It is one thing to come up with the ideas, it is another to build all of the props necessary to test them. Adam and Jamie did special effects and had the skills before the show started.
Get_a_Grip_comic@reddit
Exactly they weren’t random people off the street, even the build team each had their skills
Only-Ad5049@reddit (OP)
Kari and Tory were with Adam and Jamie from the very beginning. Kari talked about how she was an intern and drove all night to be there. Look closely during the episode and you will spot her a few times. Tory worked with Adam before MB
Get_a_Grip_comic@reddit
Jami knew grant before also right?
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Adam worked with Grant at ILM
Get_a_Grip_comic@reddit
Huh cool
DangerSwan33@reddit
Jamie, Adam, Tori, and Grant were all at ILM at the same time.
The three of them all ended up working for Jamie at other points, too, IIRC.
Ragnarsworld@reddit
No. They tried the reboot and fucked it up badly. The reason it went so badly is they were trying to reboot/recreate the show with some stupid ass "reality show" type contest to pick the new guys.
That's not gonna work. People rightly viewed the whole thing as a bad put up job and didn't watch it.
Rebooting Mythbusters isn't going to work. Mythbusters Jr almost worked but it you watched it, there was too much Adam and not enough kids working things thru.
Be more creative and make your own thing.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Myth Jr might have gone longer and later seasons could have allowed Adam to step back. There was probably too much exec meddling and saying “make sure Adam is in every other shot”. Also what the kids were doing needed adult supervision.
Also look at Master Chef junior, Ramsey is pretty active
Only-Ad5049@reddit (OP)
The reboot might have worked if they had given it a few more years and then brought Kari and Tory back as hosts (Grant also if he was still alive). It is possible they were asked and turned them down. Handing over to a couple of random people who happened to win a reality show was not the right way to reboot the series.
At the same time I think dismissing the “build team” when they did was good for the show. By that point they were mostly just reproducing ideas they found on YouTube instead of their only original concepts. It became more of “was this viral video faked?” than “is this a myth”. They were fun myths, but not original ideas so they went against the heart of the show.
When they pulled back to just Adam and Jamie for the last couple of seasons, they found their roots again, but it was too little, too late, and often too expensive. However, those couple of seasons had some of their best episodes of all time. They probably could have kept that formula going for a lot longer if they had the network support, and the desire to do so.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
Yes the post build team episodes were good. I really enjoyed how diagrams became more of the show
DangerSwan33@reddit
The final seasons had some absolutely fantastic actual myths, but actual valuable testing was more few and far between by that point, and the show had really kinda become more of a "can we build this?" or "can we recreate this scene?"
Which, ironically, is actually kinda what the show was a lot of the time in the pilot or first season. For example, the first JATO myth isn't really testing anything, other than whether or not Adam and Jaime can build and RC a rocket car.
LordZupka@reddit
Did anyone watch white rabbit project? I wish they’d done more of that.
ExcaliburZSH@reddit
I do not think it could get made on TV now unless there was an executive who made it their mission. If you haven’t already go to Tested on YouTube, Adam talks a lot about the behind the scenes effort it took to make the show. It is pretty much in a class by itself. It would require a lot of time and money, it would also need to build a following (especially if Adam was not in front of the camera).
We also need to give credit to the unique chemistry of Adam and Jamie. Adam has an acting and theater background (front stage and back stage), so he knew the in front and behind camera need, and Jamie has possibly one of the most diverse work histories. They also had an established history together, they already knew how the other worked and how to deal with each other. That only got better with time.
drillgorg@reddit
If you're looking to scratch a similar itch to Mythbusters, try to dig up episodes of Prototype This.
Alyeska23@reddit
Just get Adam, Kari, and Tory back. Get the band back together and let them keep blowing stuff up in the name of science.
ColCrockett@reddit
The time for a show like mythbusters has passed
You can go on YouTube right now and see a million experiments done by actual scientists and engineers with far more precision and accuracy than mythbusters.
There’s a reason by the end they were basically doing exclusively explosive myths, it’s the one thing most people can’t do without institutional support.
bsischo@reddit
They could do more of Mythbusters JR. I’d watch that again.
dem4life71@reddit
I feel like they’ve tested so many urban legends and myths that any new group would be scrambling for content. One of my all time favorite shows, that’s for certain.