In case you haven’t seen these, the series is off for the summer, but Discovery has decided to take old episodes, add occasional pop-ups with relevant information, and call them new episodes. I have a problem with the last bit. These aren’t new episodes. Adding Buster animations and a few informative pop-ups don’t make for a new episode in my book.

Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savager

Discovery, I have a suggestion for you and I hope you give it strong consideration. These new “Buster’s Cut” episodes contain little or no new footage, despite the marketing which says otherwise. Every show contains one or two clips from the MythBusters asking fans to visit the official site to check out clips which didn’t make it into the show. Why not include these clips in the show this time around? I’ve only visited the official site twice strictly for the intent of finding this extra footage and I know I’m not alone.

I see no harm in including actual never-before-aired footage in these episodes, especially when they’re marketed as new. I’d be a much happier local viewer of MythBusters if the marketing matched the programming. MythBusters fans deserve better than what we’re getting. I know there must be some videos lying around worth including in these “Buster’s Cut” episodes.

Jame and Adam tackled two myths while Grant, Tory, and Kari took on another two. I’ll start with the torture myth. This one came from stories about soldiers who were taken prisoner during the war and were tortured by being held to the ground while Bamboo trees grew into their bodies.

I was quite skeptical of this, but it proved to be a rather straightforward myth to test. Get a bamboo tree and a human analogue and see what happens. The trees grew at a surprising rate and grew right up, through the bodies. This proved the Bamboo trees could in fact be used as torture devices – yet another method of torture for President Bush to implement, eh?

The always entertaining Adam Savage and Tory Belleci

Their second myth was another drinking myth. The gang has come into a lot of these lately, even involving Kari in one or two of them. This myth was specifically looking into whether or not Brandy could help a person stay alive. This goes back to the old stories about Saint Bernards carrying around those little kegs of Brandy, saving people from hypothermia.

I didn’t learn much about here, but I found the myth’s testing and explanations to be very accurate and I know others would be able to learn from it. As the body cools, the blood is taken in towards the trunk to protect the vital organs, leaving the body’s extremities to become cold. The alcohol counteracts this, warming the extremities but cooling the body’s core. Although you may feel more comfortable, it’s bad for survival.

The MythBusters trio of Tory, Kari, and Grant took a myth about certain alkaline metals being able to create explosions in bath tubs and toilets. Again, pretty straightforward. Bring on the toilets and tubs as well as obscene amounts of alkaline metals and explosives and the myth was busted. Clearly the online video was a hoax.

Last was a rare piano myth. The gang has done a few musical instrument myths in the past but they tend to only come up once in a great while. The myth said that a piano when lit on fire would explode, likely due to the tension from the strings.

Yeah, it may sound like a good theory, but it has a big hole in it. When metal heats up, it stretches. Therefore, no explosion.

I have to hand it to Grant, Tory, and Kari especially because not only did they test the myths, but when they proved the myths were false (busted), they went the extra mile and tried to replicate the results. This is something I often complain about them falling short on, but they did a good job this time around.

Rating: 9.5

The episode was another one which dealt with idioms, common phrases which go back generations. I used to be a fan of these, but these types of myths are rarely all that entertaining.

Can you polish a turd? This was clearly one of the least appetizing myths to be tested in some time, but Jamie and Adam gutted it out and consulted with an expert and managed to in fact polish a turd. I have to hand it to them for bringing in the expert because neither of them was making much progress with their own methods.

Kari Byron of MythBusters

If you hit the ground running, will you move faster? Not exactly. Tory, Kari, and Grant tackled this myth which proved to be troubling and their tests remained inconsistent at times. Kari certainly had a lot of fun with this one when she got to get behind the wheel of a car. I’m sure Grant and Tory were full of envy the entire time.

Is ending with a bang the best way? This was unbelievable lame. The MythBusters shouldn’t have ended the episode/season this way… leaving the status of a myth up to the fans. My gosh. If you’re going to go out with a bang, put together a five minute montage of explosions. With over a hundred episodes in the can, I’m pretty sure they’ve got enough shots to accomplish this.

I have to admit that this episode was wonderfully, fantastically disappointing. Idioms rarely leave me with a sense of wonder or in awe and this episode didn’t do much to make me change my mind. I liked the thermite mess Jamie made, but it wasn’t enough to counteract the lame way they ended the season.

Rating: 6.5

The bulletproof myth that Jamie and Adam tackled was what I was most interested. I’ve always had an interest in these sorts of myths and they sadly get overlooked for ones which require the use of some sort of explosives. The guys can take a trip to the gun range just as easily and it doesn’t require an entire FBI team to overlook everything.

After testing a few objects like a policeman’s badge and iPod, Jamie came up with the terrific idea of homemade body armor. It inspired a fun little competition between the two and Adam got his butt kicked. Nearly everything Jamie tried was successful, even a simple sheet of bathroom/kitchen tile proved to be more bullet-resistant than Adam’s lame baggie of water and corn starch.

Grant Imahara of MythBusters

The boys would eventually make a bunch of plates which consisted of the tile and some of Jamie’s special mud and took them out to the firing range. Their results weren’t particularly surprising. I would have loved to have seen Jamie include some of those little aluminum blocks in between the two sheets of tile as well. It would have made for a very thick plate of armor which quite possibly would have stopped the .223 round, though I’m not convinced it would stop the deer slug, for that is a very powerful round to try to stop.

The other myth surrounded a myth from the movie Kill Bill, which featured a woman punching her way out of a coffin and climbing out of it, despite being buried six feet under the topsoil. I’ll admit that this sounded interesting, but I was very doubtful. I didn’t think the punches would be able to break the coffin with all of that weight pushing against it.

I was impressed by their obtaining the assistance of an MMA fighter in the testing of this myth. A trained fighter has much more punching power than the typical person and would be an ideal test to see if this is possible.

Despite building a robot which seemed to work flawlessly, the MythBusters weren’t able to break their way through the coffin nor were they able to reach the surface. I applaud the effort which went into the testing of this myth. They did everything they could to prove that even a machine, which doesn’t get tired or run out of oxygen, couldn’t do it.

I can never get enough gun myths, so bring on more, fellas. I didn’t expect pizzas to be as bullet resistant as they proved to be.

Rating: 7.4

Jamie brought up an interesting point early on in this episode as far as whether or not this is possible. He correctly pointed out that it seems rather difficult to change all of that energy from going straight to all of a sudden skyward. And as the test would prove, he was right in his concerns.

The ineffective pigeon catcher cannon that was constructed a while back made a return to serve as the flag pole shooter in this episode. I always find it interesting to see the boys hook stuff like this up and assemble the bike trailer and its complicated setup. I wouldn’t even pretend to know how to get all of that going sometimes. It took them an attempt or two to get everything dialed in, but their rig was a definite success.

MythBusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman

Elsewhere, Grant, Kari, and Tory worked on another prison escape myth. We’ve seen several of these by now, but this one was a little more commonly known. Can you break out of prison with bed sheets? How about a rope of hair? Or a rope of toilet paper?

I really felt sorry for those involved with these myths, not just the three MythBusters but those assistants who helped with everything. You can tell a lot of work went into getting all of these ready for the big day and to my surprise, they all worked. I was most surprised of the hair because of the difficulties with braiding one section to the next. Kari and company obviously found a successful technique for this. Everyone seemed to walk away with some lovely rope burns. Those will keep this myth in their memories for a while.

One of the reasons I liked this episode is that although the Motorcycle Flip myth was busted, Jamie and Adam didn’t just give up. They replicated the results of the myth. This is one of my constant complaints with the show. Adam and Jamie usually see this through while grant, Tory, and Kari seem to get lazy and quit before the job is done. Kudos to the boys.

Rating: 8.4

The first alcohol myth was the phenomenon known as beer goggles. The idea is simple: as you drink more alcohol, people of the opposite sex become more attractive to you. The guys got to test out a slick new smart screen for this myth and it proved to be useful.

Kari proves just how drunk she is

Adam, Jamie, and Kari took part in this myth, each getting drunk and rating a series of photographs of people. Predictably, they prove that beer goggles is in fact real, though Jamie claimed he wasn’t as susceptible as Kari and Adam.

After that, Adam and Jamie tested ways to sober up. They included drinking coffee, vigorous exercise, dunking one’s head in ice water, and getting slapped. The exercise segment was one where the boys proved to have poor judgment thanks to the alcohol. Using the green screen was pointless and Adam running on a treadmill while being drunk proved to be dangerous. Poor Adam came crashing down to Earth after a few minutes of running.

I’m not going to go over the results of each method. I just want to mention that I loved that high-speed camera work. Jamie really let have Adam have it when he slapped him. Adam’s face looked like goo… very bizarre.

I rarely consider the myths done by Kari, Tory, and Grant to be the best of the show (they’re the B team in my opinion), but the myth about the Hwacha, an ancient Korean weapon of war, was much more entertaining to see. This weapon was allegedly capable of firing 200 blackpowder-propelled arrows which would explode on impact. The existence of the weapon was never in question, just its effectiveness.

Hwacha!

After several tests, the group got to try out their creation and it worked exceptionally well. I hate to wonder how many hours went into assembling everything, but it was worth watching it in action. It’s too bad the arrows overshot their target. I would love to see how several of those Hwacha’s in action, firing at a larger army of infantry. Kari’s comments on how terrifying it would have been seeing the Hwacha fire its arrows in your direction as spot on. If I were a soldier, I’d think twice about standing in the arrow’s way.

Rating: 9.0

I’m a big fan of myths revisited because the guys will sometimes make mistakes, but here, they simply were given the chance to prove that they had it right which is fine with me. Shockingly, they managed to find a guy who was willing to allow them to shoot arrows at him. I thought he was able to do a good job of protecting himself, but he wasn’t able to catch many of them.

The ninja was right about how he would defend himself in a real battle. As he did in practice, he deflected the arrow with his sword and charged Adam before Adam was able to draw a second arrow. The archer would have a chance if he is close to the ninja as was proven here.

Be very, very quiet. We’re spying on ninjas.

While Jamie, Adam, and the ninja were testing several ninja myths, Grant, Tory, and Kari were off trying some of their own ninja myths. They all had to do with a ninja submerging himself in water, breathing through a bamboo tube and using that bamboo tube to fire a poison-tipped dart into an enemy.

Poor Tory had to be submerged in the cold water and managed to do a good job staying under there. Still, I would think a ninja would do a better job because in theory, a ninja would be a superb athlete, so I didn’t think that Tory was the ideal candidate for this.

They had fun with building the bamboo tubes. Kari ended up cheating, depending on how you interpret the rules set forth by the team. She proved to be very accurate with her shooting once she managed to figure out how to compensate for the refraction caused by the presence of water.

“Ninjas 2″ was a very enjoyable episode and nearly every angle was looked at by the MythBusters. I thought Jamie and Adam did a terrific job with their various arrow tests. They’ll never be able to please all of the fans, but I thought they put a lot of effort into it and it made for a solid episode.

Rating: 8.6

After attempting to drive themselves, Jamie and Adam found an actual blind person to drive the car. Jamie did a very nice job of coaching the man, Jerry, around the course which was very freaky. It was a post-apocalyptic-looking city which the military used to use for all sorts of nasty tests.

After an impressive first run, Jerry got to drive again, but this time, Jamie was drunk. Jerry wasn’t able to drive nearly as well with the silly Jamie suckin’ down the hooch. Jerry did a lot of weaving, which made him look drunk. All of this, of course, came from a myth which was a true story. In England, a drunk man asked his blind friend to drive him home. The drunk man told him where to drive and ended up getting pulled over by the police. I thought it was a very nice myth to test. They did the right thing by getting an actual blind person for this myth.

Jerry drives Jamie around town

Elsewhere, Kari, Tory, and Grant were off working on a few golf myths. One had them swinging clubs in the ruff, trying to prove/disprove the myth that claimed trees are 90% air. I thought this was a pretty silly myth to test, but they’ve tested sillier myths before.

Since Tory was the only competent golfer among the, Grant was forced to assemble an air cannon to shoot golf balls from. Predictably, the team came to the conclusion that trees are not 90% air and that it isn’t very wise to try shooting your ball through the tree should you get stuck behind it. Only 25% of their shots made it through the tree.

The trio then took a trip to the local PG&E plant to do an electricity test. They’ve been to facilities like this one before. They proved that metal-cleated golf shoes do not increase your odds of being struck by lighting. Duh! The tiny amount of metal that is present is too close to the ground to attract lighting.

The last myth was from the sports movie Caddyshack, specifically the scene where Bill Murray blows up the golf course and sinks the putt. It’s been a while since I’ve seen this classic movie, but am surprised it’s taken MythBusters this long to showcase this myth, especially since there are explosives involved.

Although they did a good job in setting everything up, the guys failed on one key point: replicating the desired result of the myth. They used C4 and failed to get either the look of the explosion as shown in the movie or the sinking of the putt. They then used gasoline to replicate the look of the explosion and then went home.

What the hell?! What about sinking the putt? One of the things that I’ve always liked about this show is Jamie and Adam harping on if they find a myth is busted, then they try to replicate the desire result. Here, the guys just packed it up and went home without trying other explosives (or changing the spot of the explosion in relation to the hole) to sink the putt. I was really disappointed by their follow-through.

Rating: 6.5

The big myth of the show was Jamie and Adam’s attempt to combine water guns with a taser gun. It came thanks to a myth that suggested the government was working on a gun which would essentially work as an water stun gun, a very effective tool if it’s possible.

And that’s just what the duo tried to do: see whether or not it’s feasible. This myth reminded me of the one where they tried to see if someone could get killed if they urinated on the third rail. That one proved to be a difficult one to crack, with the problem being keeping a constant stream. Electricity can travel very well through water… to a point. Water offers a great deal of resistance over a particular distance and that made this myth impractical. Jamie and Adam weren’t able to make a model small enough for anyone smaller than the Incredible Hulk to carry around and use on would-be bad guys.

While the boys were playing with water and electricity, Tory, Grant, and Kari had some fun with fire. They tested one myth which sounded rather silly to me… throwing a fire extinguisher into a fire and letting it explode, thus extinguishing the fire. The gang proved the exploding extinguisher works, but it really just sends the embers flying everywhere.

For me, that extinguisher myth wasn’t very interesting. I thought eventually they would try a different approach, as sort of a spin-off. Suspend a stick of dynamite above a fire. Detonate the dynamite and watch it immediately put out the fire by sucking out the fire’s oxygen. Oil fire fighters have used this method for years and has been depicted in an episode of MacGyver as well as the John Wayne 1968 film Hellfighters. I think it’s a nice spin-off myth to try on a future episode. It’s not going to surprise anyone with the results, but the fire myths in this episode were less about surprises and more about the science behind it.

Speaking of which, the last myth was fire walking. Again, nothing surprising going on here. Successfully (safely) walking the fire is less to do with meditation and more with simply remaining calm when every natural instinct tells you to get your feet out of the burning coals. At least we got to see Adam get a little toasty. I was a little disappointed he didn’t break out the graham crackers, marshmallows, and Hershey bars for a little S’more action alongside the fire.

Rating: 7.1

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