Interviewing pilots violates the show's Show, Don't Tell policy.
But yeah since why the plane is hard to fly, which was just the landing, they could have just showed the landing but that wouldn't be mythbusters.
They pretty much showed the landing at the start of the episode. Everything else was an excuse for Adam to fly in a near-space plane.
Fresh-eyed movie blogMythbusters is still a television show meant to entertain an audience. It's interesting the interviews with Jaime and Adam, where Adam mentioned that Jaime was always more about the work instead of the storytelling. It's mostly that any documentary that claims to be 100% real forgets what is basically the Heisenberg principle of filmmaking, you change the outcome by observing it. Camera's make people less interested in looking stupid or foolish.
Sad to see the show go, it was certainly revolutionary. But these things can't go on forever, 13 years is a long time for a scripted show and they certainly worked a lot more hours than the average actor.
![]()
I saw their live stage show when it came through a couple years ago and it's undeniable: Adam is much more the showman while Jamie takes more of a backseat and/or operator role, other than having a couple dedicated annecdote/Q & A segments. In the blooper reels for the show there are definitely times where Jamie comes off as downright grumpy. It shows in their side projects too; Jamie is more into robotics and the highly technical stuff while Adam is more into model, prop and costume making (often in connection with some fandom...and see his TED talk from several years back about Obsession). This was a great pairing for when M5 was a special effects shop but CG has pretty much consumed most of the physical effects trade and you might have noticed that the project Jamie mentions was one coming from government funding. And he wholly owns M5, to my knowledge - always has.
Still, I've never entirely bought the idea that there's nothing between them at all...strictly professional maybe, but after almost two decades of partnership, lots of fun times, several once-in-a-lifetime experiences and several cases of literally putting their lives in each other's hands, that's got to count for something.
edited 24th Oct '15 12:29:25 AM by Elle
Adam wouldn't have this job if not for Jamie and his lack of showmanship though.
I just wonder where M1-4 and M6 went. Or was M7 just the name the producers gave to the Build Team's shop for a fleet feel?
I should really give that Travel Channel show that snarfed up Kari, Grant, and Tory a try though. It's not MB, but it keeps them together and their rapport can continue to be televised.
edited 24th Oct '15 9:55:05 AM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blogM5 was a name chosen by Adam, he made a joke and was wanting to name it after the British spy agency but got it wrong. M6 was the build team's first place, they got shut down thanks to certain experiments. M7 was their newest place farther away from people who might complain.
edited 24th Oct '15 10:09:16 AM by Memers
I'm glad that all through this final season they've been acknowledging that the Build Team are part of their history. Last season I felt like there was some Orwellian editing going on.
Fresh-eyed movie blogAnd the show has finished its run. I think they gave Buster a great sendoff in the finale.
The Mansion of EI'm slightly disappointed that the finale was all spectacle and no experiment, but then, what myth could live up to the series finale?
Fresh-eyed movie blogI was in middle school when the show began, but I didn't get to see any of it until high school, because my parents have never had cable. I can't remember if it was a church trip, or a family trip, but I remember being in a hotel room watching either a marathon or a late-night four-hour schedule dump of reruns.
In college, a lot of my Sundays were spent watching Mythbusters reruns all afternoon because that's what Discovery did on Sundays.Eventually it got to the point where all the ones in the rerun rotation were too familiar. They were also experimenting with streaming the new episodes online for free on a week or two delay, but that only lasted a few months.
When I moved out of the dorms, my housemates got cable plans with a DVR, so I was able to record the new episodes. And then when I finished college, I was able to get it online through legitimate means and Perfectly Legitimate Means.
Fresh-eyed movie blogWas that only on the Science Channel? Because it showed up for me as the next episode after the finale.
They get pretty candid about not liking the stupid myths they were assigned in the early years at one point, so I was hoping they'd also get candid about things like "the decision to axe the Build Team", or at least "what the Build Team has moved on to".
Also the fact that at some point "Buster" stopped being a specific dummy and started being "whatever dummy we're testing with this week". They should've addressed that in the reunion if not in the "Buster's Last Myth" segment of the finale. They didn't even address Buster 2.0, which they did an entire special about building and made a point of using the face from the original off-the-rack crash dummy.
Fresh-eyed movie blogAt some point even the face was probably replaced due to trauma or getting lost. And I think Buster 2.0 proved to be more difficult than he's worth. He was designed and built to include maximum data with their experiments with places for sensors and his "skeleton" having similar tensile strength to actual human bones, but most of the time they just needed for a human replica with proper weight distribution like the original crash test dummy. There's no questioning if his bones will break when hitting the ground at terminal velocity.
And it's generally frowned upon to talk about behind-the-scenes politics in candid detail, especially in an official reunion episode. You might get some information at conventions and interviews years after the fact, but even then they are dodgy about including names. Adam was purposefully vague when telling the whole story about the "Ark of the Covenant" gag and the producer who set it up.
I just remember one episode where they said "Buster gets a reprieve this week because we need the kind of data only a Simulaid can provide", and then a few years later they were calling a Simulaid "Buster".
Buster's Last Myth also apparently fudges some facts a bit. They played the aftermath as "we can't find any of Buster. He completely disappeared." And then in the reunion they hand out bits of shattered Buster.
I didn't even know it was a producer's idea. But I was surprised they mentioned the incident at all, and when they got to talking about how ridiculous they thought it was to be ordered by the producers to test things like plant ESP, I thought they might get more into those behind the scenes politics.
And it wouldn't even be production politics to discuss what the Build Team has moved on to. They could frame it as the class that already graduated.
edited 6th Mar '16 7:56:56 PM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blogHm, I didn't know there was a duct tape episode this season. Seems almost after the fact.
edited 9th Mar '16 5:08:52 AM by edvedd
Visit my Tumblr! I may say things. The Bureau ProjectYeah, that came up after the finale for me too. They couldn't do a final season without one more duct tape special, but I have no idea why they held it until after the finale.
Fresh-eyed movie blogYou might get it the next week, like we seem to have.
Or, I don't know what channel it will be on in Canada. They moved the entire catalog to Science Channel here.
edited 14th Mar '16 5:08:05 PM by TParadox
Fresh-eyed movie blogOkay, now I have multiple questions.
- What's this about a duct tape episode?
- What's this about Kari, Grant and Tori having a new show?
- What was that about there being a "lost episode" on the Science Channel?
- Is there a decent DVD set of at least most of the series out there? There's apparently both "collections" and "season" DV Ds, and I'm confused.
I think Travel Channel picked them up as a set for a show about extreme tourist attractions or something. I recall something about a very intense waterslide they tried out.
But I think they've all gotten separate jobs as well. I know Grant has done multiple rounds of "rumor busting" about McDonald's factory processes.
Fresh-eyed movie blogTurns out the show's not dead, they just fired the hosts they hadn't fired yet.
(Science Channel is going to do a talent search reality show to cast new, less expensive hosts and then revive Mythbusters.)
Fresh-eyed movie blog

The episode this past season where Adam flew in the special military plane had "because I want to and I can for now" written all over it. Going through all the training and getting in the air did nothing to test the myth because he was a passenger and it was about piloting. You could have gotten the same answer just from interviewing the pilots.
Fresh-eyed movie blog