TV-Reviewed

With over one hundred episodes under their belt, the MythBusters rarely air a good myth that I haven’t heard of. Sure, we saw some Internet myths last week that I wasn’t familiar with, but they weren’t very good myths either. But this phone book friction myth turned out to be a terrific one.

Adam and Jamie tackled a myth submitted via the Internet which claimed if you interweave the pages of a large phone book, it’s impossible to pull the two books apart. I admired the video the submitters used. It was very similar to how MythBusters sets up their videos, what with the blue paper and sketches.

Once the fellas were unable to pull the books apart themselves, they enlisted help from the other MythBusters (10 in total) and they were unable to pull the two books apart. I would have gone straight to two pickup trucks, but Jamie and Adam stretched things out a bit by instead using two sedans which were unable to successfully pull the phone books apart.

I like how resourceful the guys are nowadays. They can get access to just about everything now that the show is so popular and well-respected. So it didn’t surprise me when they managed to convince a gentleman to use a tank and an APC to pull these two books apart. I’m glad Jamie and Adam upgraded the plywood to steel because I don’t think the plywood would have held for more than a few seconds with these two behemoths pulling.

The second myth was another movie myth. Movie myths seem to more about explosions more than anything these days. Sure enough, Tory, Grant, and Kari were tasked with some myths involving one of the final scenes in the 1999 film Deep Blue Sea.

I admit I’ve seen the movie a number of times, but when it comes to movie myths, I wouldn’t have initially thought to test anything in this movie, but I forgot that that scene at the end was loaded with mini-myths. The gang tested everything imaginable when it came to the explosives used, the harpoon gun, and whether or not the movie’s hero could survive the blast.

I can’t say that I was surprised by any of the results. So much of what goes on in movies is often exaggerated. This scene was ripe for criticism, but I consider it a typical Hollywood scene. I have to give Tory credit for being able to shoot that harpoon gun so accurately. I don’t know if he was given any practice with it ahead of time, but the one shot that was shown on MythBusters was perfect.

Some episodes have just one myth, while others can have four or five. “Phone Book Friction” brought us two myths which were pretty good. If they include too many myths in each episode, certain details aren’t shown and, well, everything seems rushed. But two myths is a good number to try and stick to. The show’s going to run out of stuff to test at some point, so drag it out a bit, I say.

Of the two big myths on this week’s installment, the phone book myth was clearly superior in my view. The fact that I’ve not heard of it makes it all the more noteworthy in my book. I wonder how long it took to interweave those phone books like that… not to mention how many phone books were harmed during the filming of this episode.

Rating: 7.6