"MythBusters" Drops Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, Tory Belleci 364
rbrandis (735555) writes In a video announcement Thursday on Discovery Channel, MythBusters hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman revealed that longtime co-hosts and fan favorites Kari Byron, Grant Imahara, and Tory Belleci are no longer on the show. "This next season we're going back to our origins with just Adam and me," Hyneman said in the video, which explained that the change took hold as of the season's last episode on August 21. (Our interview with the original-and-remaining Mythbusters is one of my favorites.)
Re:My wife will miss Grant. (Score:4, Interesting)
I wonder if "returning" to roots means smarter shows though or just trimming the budget?
It think it means declining ratings.
Modern Television Style - Thanks Beyond Production (Score:5, Interesting)
I am a big fan of the show, but Ive stopped watching it because of the modern style of production - geared to those who have ADHD.
Modern shows now lead the viewers into the direction of the show... So, you have a few minutes of introduction, then a quick preview of whats coming up, then an ad break. Then after the ad break, they show you what you saw earlier, a quick little update, and then another flash forward to what you'll see coming up. Repeat repeat repeat.
With ads, it drives me mad. Without ads, its even worse. 10 minutes of real content gets padded out to a full 45 minute episode. So Ive quit watching - which is a pity, because the small bits of content embedded in the forward flashes and back flashes is usually quite good.
Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)
Ob XKCD... (Score:5, Interesting)
http://xkcd.com/397/ [xkcd.com]
Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)
When Friends and Big Bang cast members decide to unite for higher paychecks, the executives cave. A few years ago, some of the minor stars on CSI tried to do the same and were canned immediately.
I think they were trying to set a precedent for 2nd/3rd tiet actors/participants in a show that such actions will result in a 100% paycut. I can't totally blame them either.
Re:No Kari??? (Score:5, Interesting)
I can't say much for certain about Mythbusters, but I'm sure of one thing: Kari Byron's career is not over.
Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)
My money is on "studio offered much less than they were making last season and wouldn't budge" The three decided it was better to move on to something else either as a group or individually then to settle for less money. They are relatively young and fairly popular right now so it's a good time to move on to something else as Mythbusters won't last forever.
Jamie and Adam are both older and will NOT be seeking work after Mythbusters is done so even if they were offered less money for another season, they would be content to accept as it still would be decent money. I'm guessing Mythbusters gets one or two more seasons until it's canceled all together, nothing lasts forever on tv.
Re:My wife will miss Grant. (Score:5, Interesting)
Haven't watched the show for a while now. It became too much blow shit up and other dumbed down shit.
That's true, but it was always the build team (Kari, Grant, and Tory) doing that. Standard episode breakdown:
1) Teaser talking about something interesting, we'll call this "project one".
2) First steps towards building project one.
3) Go to something completely different with the build team, which possibly has some tangential thematic ties to project one.
4) First steps towards this second project, we'll call this "project blow-up-something-and-laugh-about-it".
5) Show some small scale models of project one, but don't go any further, just to hold the audience's interest.
6) Flip back and forth between the two groups, making sure to hint each time that the audience might actually learn something next time.
7) Finish project blow-up-something-and-laugh-about-it. Watch Kari, Grant, and Tori force out laughter and exclaim about how awesome that thing was when it exploded.
8) Finally get around to finishing the interesting project. Hope that the audience says, "Better late than never..." and comes back for another episode.
Really, I don't have any issues with Kari, Grant, and Tory. They seem like decent people and it was pretty clear that their excitement over the stupid shit was forced. The producers are to blame for the state of the show... In fact, I recall something where Adam was up on stage talking about Mythbusters production and pretty well said as much about one particular producer. None the less, if they drop the build team and don't replace them with something equally heinous the show will be better off for it.
Incidentally, there are fan edits of Mythbuster projects where they cut out the cruft. Search for "Smyths."
Re: good (Score:5, Interesting)
Except, of course, the show's been on for 11 years, not seven. The newest of the B team is Imahara, who joined in 2005, nine years ago. They've already renegotiated contracts at least once.
Either they demanded more money, the ratings are down enough to want to cut costs, or they've got something else planned - they may get their own show.
Or, of course, they may all just be tired of filming 48 weeks out of every year, to get ten episodes.
Re:No Kari??? (Score:5, Interesting)
Looking back at my time at the university there were very few female students. A true minority, if you will. Most of those women were rather geeky and talking to some of them revealed for me that they didn't have it easy growing up with their particular hobbies. The female geek seemed to have an extra hard time in society because they performed in a field that was somehow attributed to boys and frowned upon by other girls of younger ages, making them social pariahs, because they weren't interested in most of that "girly" stuff, that simply every girl at that age had to be in head over heels. Now I realize that this is clearly some sample bias, but combined with all the efforts universities take nowadays to encourage women to enter the STEM fields and their little success it made me curious.
These things lead me to believe that the lack of women in the STEM fields is mostly a result of cultural stereotyping, which begins at an early age. Most likely it starts at home with their parents, TV shows that their parents watch and so on. Therefore I think that Kari Byron did serve as a useful role model for people that deserve a role model, a women being successful doing geeky stuff while not being super boring. While you may question the "science" that was done on the show and find out that it is of little value to scientific literate people, they actually managed to reach a lot of the rest, perhaps got them curious and thinking about some of that rather mundane stuff.
Re:good (Score:4, Interesting)
I think they worry too much about what constitutes a good myth.
I'd like to see a lot more smaller myths tackled - that'd get rid of the 'fluff' and like some have mentioned, they spend too much time repeating stuff - at least 3-4 times they say what they are going to do.
They need to stop catering for an extremely low common denominator.
If they made the episodes available worldwide, DRM free 1080p with the ads and repetitions removed, I might find it hard to resist snapping them up even at $2 each.