• ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 months ago

    Fuck Discovery for ruining a good thing

    A few years ago I was rewatching the Smyths edit of the show and I was wondering if it was ruined or if the show just was a product of its time and couldn’t exist in <modern year>

    I think the internet has turned urban legends on their head. What constitutes a plausible myth has changed. We can just search for a lot of these now (and back then too, but it was less common and there was less stuff online). A lot of new urban legends are floating around now, but I don’t know, a lot of these early episodes tackled timeless schoolyard myths.

    But the point wasn’t always to test the myth, the myth was just a premise to see them build things and blow them up. Even when I remembered the outcome from when I was a kid, I loved rewatching some of these episodes. It was really interesting to see how they set their experiments up as well. Very practical, very “workshop-brained” in the very best way.

    But more than that, I think there’s just no way any network is bankrolling anything like that anymore. My understanding of TV show finance is very limited but I can’t see a modern Mythbusters being profitable, between the insurance and the networks’ unfailing appetite for canceling shows and writing them off, especially expensive shows. Didn’t Netflix make a spiritual successor with the B team only to cancel it, back when Netflix was just blowing up in popularity?

    I firmly believe Mythbusters was made in the best possible era for it. Right when the internet was becoming a part of everyone’s lives but not to an intrusive level. Right when there was enough public interest in educational (well, educational-adjacent) TV and right when it was feasible to make the show.

    Of course I’d like Mythbusters to exist in some form today. Maybe a tiny self-funded operation with its own in-house streaming site. But are there enough 25-40 year old vaguely nerdy types willing to pay for it? Adam Savage’s YouTube just isn’t the same. I appreciate it, but it’s a shadow of the real deal.

    I do really miss seeing the world through the eyes of a kid flipping channels and landing on Jamie Hyneman creating a frozen poultry cannon.

    • Thebeardedsinglemalt@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Didn’t Netflix make a spiritual successor with the B team only to cancel it, back when Netflix was just blowing up in popularity?

      Yeah, White Rabbit. I watched it an even then it was very appealing iirc

        • LordGimp@lemm.ee
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          2 months ago

          To this day, losing Grant is still a kick in the head. I always root for Grogu in any context because that was one of his very last projects.

        • ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          2 months ago

          Oh shit, I thought he died after it ended. Still the worst celebrity death for me, and one of the few that I could care about.

          What a great guy.

          • Pandantic [they/them]@midwest.social
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            2 months ago

            And I didn’t know he died!!

            Edit: for those like me. The cause was reported as:

            Imahara died on July 13, 2020, at the age of 49, after suffering a ruptured, previously undiagnosed, intracranial aneurysm.

            Wikipedia

            Or, as Yahoo so simply put it:

            “died suddenly” from a brain aneurysm.

    • lightnsfw@reddthat.com
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      2 months ago

      I do love his youtube channel. It’s like they’re specifically creating content to appeal to my personality. I don’t have a Youtube account but he’s the only one I actually check to see if there’s new videos on.

    • GraniteM@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      There was a guy on YouTube who built a rig to see if it was possible to cook a turkey by slapping it, and I got emotionally invested in his process!