Adventures in TV

I watch TV; and although I’ve always said in this space that I think that TV is like junk food – it’s best when it’s bad for you – I do partake of fine cuisine every once in a while.

Shows like I Shouldn’t Be Alive, A Haunting, Sci-Fi Saved My Life, How Do They Do It, Zero Hour and all the history stuff like Altered Statesmen on the Discovery Channel make me glad I’m an introvert. (Hey, I’m devoted to Tyra Banks and maybe Sam Oh as well, but those shows make me feel that I gotta do something – get a makeover or something, maybe even crash a swanky party.) But I will gladly forgo social pressures to be a sociable animal if Mythbusters is on.

Presented by two of the most impressive moustaches in TV today (attached to hosts named Jamie and Adam), the show’s concept is simple: to test and possibly debunk every stupid myth that’s flourished in the information age.

To elucidate: my favorite James Bond film (well, among those with Sean Connery and next to the new Casino Royale) is Goldfinger. It’s got a bald villain, cool gadgets and the best chicks – I mean who can resist a lesbian exhibition pilot named Pussy Galore? Plus, who can forget the sexiest corpse in cinema history (second only to Laura Palmer of Twin Peaks), Jill Masterson – naked, dead and painted in gold? Supposedly she died of skin asphyxiation – a little factoid that author Ian Fleming picked up from hanging out with exotic dancers.

According to Mythbusters, though, this myth ain’t true. To scientifically demonstrate, Jamie had himself painted over completely, but only suffered dizzy spells.

In the same film, Bond explains that you can’t fire a gun in an airplane’s pressurized cabin. As we’ve seen in numerous films, blowing a hole through a plane’s wall at such an altitude would cause everything inside to be sucked out by the loss of cabin pressure. Right?

Not so, as proven in another episode of Mythbusters.

Other myths tackled on the show include:

If you get caught in the rain, will you stay drier if you walk or run? (Believe it or not, it’s better to walk.) 

Can a simple candy like a jawbreaker become a potential explosive? (Confirmed!) 

If you drop a penny off of the top of the Empire State Building, would it kill a person on the ground if it hit him on the head? (Nope, this myth was busted!) 

Can cola polish chrome/shine a penny/erode a tooth?  (While it’s a great chrome and penny polisher, your dentist will be happy to hear it cannot erode a tooth.) 

The new season currently airing on Discovery is no less fun and fascinating. Burning questions they tackle include: Is it actually humanly possible to catch a bullet in your teeth? Could yodeling cause an avalanche? Is breakfast cereal really good for you? 

With more than 30 years of combined experience in animatronics, model building and special effects, Jamie and Adam are no less entertaining to watch. Now if only they could teach a guy to grow that much facial hair…

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All new episodes of Mythbusters will air every Thursday at 9 p.m. (SIN/HK) starting January 11. Episodes encore on Friday at 5a.m.), Saturday at 12 p.m., Sunday at 6 p.m., and the following Thursday at 8 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Next week we reveal the winners of our Mythbusters contest!