10 January 2010

Top Gear vs. Mythbusters

I begrudgingly appreciate mythbusters, although I generally find it tedious and that Jamie guy totally winds me up. Yesterday we were watching a bit that the vastly more likeable 'B' team were working on that involved underwater explosions and trying to surf the resulting waves. One of the things that bugs me about the show is how overly cautious they are about everything. They constructed a robotic paddler on a surfboard to not expose anyone to the possible dangers of the detonations, while they stood very far away, wearing hearing protection. We got to talking about how much better this would be if Top Gear were doing the same test. They'd have Richard Hammond out on the surfboard. He'd be complaining the whole time. James and Jeremy would likely put more explosives in than required, and would lie about how deep it would be submerged, all in a good-natured effort to kill their cohost. The detonation would happen, Richard would get tossed about, or possibly critically injured, and they'd all be pleased as punch.

4 comments:

JustJoeP said...

LMAO! So true! Mythbuster's science is sound, but indeed, they are panty-waists about any and all danger, no matter how remote. Maybe the US produced MB show has more lawyers than TG does?

pyker said...

It's not the lawyers. The TG guys are just dedicated to, well, guyness. One of the presenters famously gave himself a massive brain injury crashing during one filming, and spent months in recovery. Less drastic, but another one broke a thumb when they tested used cars by driving them head on into brick walls.

harveyne said...

I think also there's a different notion of responsibility. I'm sure the Mythbusters team would be devastated if someone got hurt trying to replicate one of their experiments. I suspect the response from Team Top Gear would be, well, different.

pyker said...

This had a whiff of Top Gear about it.