The Cutprice Guignol

You know what I love? I love Mythbusters. I’m re-watching the early series and I’ve fallen back in love with the berets, the bits and the banter. It’s like an American Scrapheap Challenge meets Urban Legends; two glorified pub buddies with science degrees test myths to see if they could possibly be real. 

I’m cruel about the presenting team of Adam Savage and Jamie Hineman only because I love them so; most of all, what comes through in their onscreen appearances is that they genuinely look like they’re having a good time; taking the piss out of each other while trying to blow up a petrol station with a mobile phone. The panting puppy of Savage mixed with the steely science-teacher-cum-paedophile-looking Hineman bounce of each other perfectly. Yes, it’s shitely scripted but it’s funny. A damn sight more amusing than the bland brain-poking of rip-off Braniac: Audience Abuse. 

And I hate science and mechanics. I try and pick fights with people in lab coats because they probably fucking deserve it, the uppity shits. Think you’re better than me, do you? With your genuinely useful contributions to society? What has science done that this blog hasn’t? Shut up. I really don’t like science. But it’s hard not to enjoy this cushy sofa-science, mixed as it is with a ennervatingly enthusiastic voiceover and shots of one of the two wearing some piece of women’s clothing or doing something unspeakable with breast implants. It’s the scientific equivalent of inhaling Doritos and torpeodoing Pepsi but it’s fun as all hell and at least feels like an attempt to make science and mechanics accessible by people who care not, say, belated- Top Gear hosts with the look of a condemned man behind his eyes. Just off the top of my head, Hammond, you shit.