The Discovery Channel’s wildly popular MythBusters series ended in 2016, but it turned out that the show just couldn’t stay away. The Science Channel picked it up again, airing a game show to choose the new hosts of the series. Last month, the new MythBusters, Jonathan Lung and Brian Louden, started their own run of the show with plenty of all-new myths to explore.
I have to say, I don’t think the new MythBusters lives up to the standard set by Adam and Jamie. The show feels unpolished, and while Jon and Brian are fun, they don’t have the chemistry Adam and Jamie did. Now, part of this is probably inexperience. Jon and Brian are new and don’t have the ten years of mythbusting under their belts that their predecessors did. If you went back to the early seasons of the show, you would probably see some lower-quality work there, too.
What worries me a bit more is what I feel like is a drop in the scientific rigor and thinking of the new show. Adam and Jamie sometimes had this problem, too (don’t get me started on some of the driving myths), and to be honest, I felt that their final season was also lacking in fact-checking and well-thought-out conclusions, and it’s not all the new hosts’ faults.
It’s hard to say precisely why I feel the show has lost something in the transition. It’s little things like not doing the (fairly easy) math to find the correct fuel-air mixture for the chimney cannon (it makes sense in context) and failing to properly account for the order effect in the road rage myth, not to mention using a much smaller sample size than they used to. I’m just seeing some red flags here.
Still, it’s early, and I’m hopeful that Jon and Brian will learn over time as Adam and Jamie did. They’re off to a shaky start, but the show it still entertaining and worth watching, and with its strong history, I’m optimistic for its future.
My rating: 3.5 out of 5.
Science Meets Fiction 
Hi, Alex. Your review is way too generous. John seems to have some spontaneity, personality, and comedy. Brian has none of those, and relies on someone to write the script for him to produce artificial personality. In addition, it seems to me that the episodes have a lot of retreads to them. I watch one recently in which they were catching farts effort to test their flammability. Seen that before. In fact, Adam came up with a much better approach to catching the farts. I suppose the producers had to show these guys coming up with their own solutions, despite the fact that Adams was much better.
I understand the fact that Adam and Jamie were not going to work together anymore. I think I understand that Adam did not want to continue as well by himself. Frankly, Jamie added a one tenth of the pizzazz to show that Adam did. Adam’s crazy but true personality carried the show. Second to that was Torie, then Carrie.
But I will never understand why they did not work with Tori, Carrie, and the other guy who also left on me much less of a personal impression than Torie and Carrie. Beyond that, there were a number of other contestants other than Brian and Jon Who in my opinion would have done a much better job. In fact, I think they could have picked five of them including Brian and John and Done much better.
It may be worth watching, depending upon what else is on, but I will not be anxiously awaiting each new episode, as I did with the originals. I also have this dark thought that I would like this thing to flop big time, so that the producers might Wise up and bring back Adam, Torie, Carrie, and what’s-his name. What a grave mistake. No offense to these new guys, but not everyone should be on TV.