What's on the idiot box Part 4 (or something)

[Amentep]

For a second there I thought they'd just stranded the pair on the alien world.

[Leferd]

 

Been watching The Muppets with my daughter, it's pretty dang good. My favorite moment was Ms. Piggy getting a hot stone massage and the Swedish Chef popping up muttering something about bacon.

It has its moments, but the 15 minute pitch piece managed to capture the feel of the muppets much better than the show does.

The second and third episodes are better than the first.

[Oerwinde]

 

 

Been watching The Muppets with my daughter, it's pretty dang good. My favorite moment was Ms. Piggy getting a hot stone massage and the Swedish Chef popping up muttering something about bacon.

It has its moments, but the 15 minute pitch piece managed to capture the feel of the muppets much better than the show does.

The second and third episodes are better than the first.

Lawrence Fishbourne was awesome.

[Blarghagh]

So wait, is the Swedish Chef a closeted transgender woman now?

[Raithe]

So possibly....A Time Bandits tv series is being worked on...

 

Terry Gilliam is a cinematic genius, but he’s also a cinematic genius who wronged a sorcerer in a past life or something. His battles with movie studios are the stuff of legend. The movies that have literally fallen apart around him are too many to count. And then the internet went and falsely reported his death. If Gilliam’s own movies didn’t present a self-awareness about the absurdity of existence and cruel unfairness of life, it would be easy to fear for his sanity.

 

Could his salvation come via the small screen? We already knew he had a deal in place with Amazon, but now Gilliam has revealed that he’s working on a TV version of his 1981 comedic fantasy Time Bandits. Maybe things are finally looking up for the most cursed of filmmakers.

 

Check out Gilliam’s own comment on the Time Bandits TV series after the jump.

 

While participating in an online Q&A over at The Guardian to promote his new autobiography, Gilliamesque: A Pre-posthumous Memoir, Gilliam was asked about his future in television. After all, he recently signed a deal with Amazon that would allow him to resurrect projects like The Man Who Killed Don Quixote and The Defective Detective, both of which he’s struggled to bring to the screen for years. And while Gilliam’s answer mostly dwells on The Defective Detective (whose script is being expanded into a six-hour series), he does open with that Time Bandits news:

 

We are involved in two possibilities — one, a TV series based on Time Bandits, another based on a script by Richard LaGravanese and I wrote after Fisher King, called The Defective Detective. We’re currently adapting a two hour film into a six hour series. It’s about a middle aged New York cop who was once a hero who has grown fat and cynical and is in the middle of a breakdown, ending up in a child’s fantasy world where the rules of the mean streets of New York no longer apply. The best way to kill a dragon is no longer a gun, but a tree branch you think is a sword.

 

Wait. What? Tell us more about that Time Bandits show, sir!

 

Gilliam has been talking up The Defective Detective for a long time now and that description (while certainly very interesting) hasn’t changed much. A Time Bandits TV series, though, is from completely out of the blue. The last time we heard anything about something being done with Time Bandits, it was 2011 and phrases like “big-screen kids action franchise” were being thrown around. We don’t know anything about this new version and it already sounds better.

 

For those unfamiliar with the original 1981 film, Time Bandits follows a group of little people who are employed by the “Supreme Being” to repair holes in the spacetime continuum. Tiring of their work, they steal the map that charts all of time and space, embarking on a quest to journey throughout history, stealing stuff. Naturally, a normal kid gets pulled along on the journey. Even more naturally, everything goes wrong and they must confront the literal embodiment of evil. It’s all very silly and whimsical, containing all of the slapstick and satire of Gilliam’s work with Monty Python while hinting at the dark and malicious themes that would arise in films like Brazil. If Gilliam thinks it could be a TV series, we trust his judgment.

 

The question now is whether or not Time Bandits is part of the Amazon deal. After all, Gilliam says he’s working on a top-secret project for the BBC and we wonder if the network that makes Doctor Who could be interested in another time-hopping adventure series. You can hear Gilliam talk about this unidentified project in the interview, right after he exposes himself as a massive Breaking Bad fan.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_efIc7hADA&

 

Combinations of bad timing and money and fate have robbed us of so many Terry Gilliam projects. Whoever can give his career a second wind, whether it be Amazon or BBC or someone else, is a hero. Never stop fighting, Mr. Gilliam. We are on your side.

[majestic]

For a second there I thought they'd just stranded the pair on the alien world.

 

 

Sure looked like it for a moment. I thought it odd to (apparently and for now at least) end the obelisk/monolith storyline like that, so soon into Season 3. Then again, it'll probably be back to haunt them in some way. At least I hope.

 

I didn't like Ward going full villain this episode, what with rebuilding Hydra and all that jazz. He seemed so... one-dimensional and boring. Eh, and Dalton actually *acting* like it didn't help any. Bad, just... bad. I hope this isn't indicative of his performance for the rest of the season (or however long Ward has left to live, I mean, he's Murdoc'ed enough by now).

 

[Oerwinde]

Looks like Madame Mask is the big villain for Agent Carter season 2

[Gfted1]

We Saw the First Episode of Ash vs. Evil Dead and It Blew Us Away.

 

TL;DR: "The premiere debuts on Starz on October 31..."

[Raithe]

The first full trailer of Shannara Chronicles...

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCr3z_sTSNU

[Raithe]

Some commentary on the upcoming season of Persons of Interest...

 

io9 - How the heck will the machine gang get numbers in season 5?

 

 

 

Person of Interest season four ended in a very dark place. And it’s also an ending that seems to obliterated the show’s format, going forward. How do our heroes find out the Social Security Number of this week’s “Person of Interest” in this dire situation? We asked the show’s cast and producers.

Spoilers ahead...

 

Sadly, because Netflix went back on its promise to post Person of Interest season four on Sept. 22, many people have still not seen the show’s most recent season. So this is a bit of a spoiler for a lot of people. Suffice to say, the season ended with the Machine being taken offline and dismantled, and its basic program stored in a tiny briefcase. So it’s hard to imagine how the show can keep its format (every week, the Machine spits out a new number of a victim or perpetrator) in this situation.

 

So last weekend, when we were at New York Comic Con doing roundtable interviews about Person of Interest, we asked the stars and producers just how this is going to work. And yes, there will be numbers of the week in season five.

 

The numbers are less straightforward

Michael Emerson, who plays Mr. Finch, told us that they still get numbers, but they arrive in “a moer complicated way,” that’s more ambiguous and less trustworthy. Once the Machine Gang rebuilds the Machine, it doesn’t entirely work right for a while, “so you don’t know what you’re getting and why. It’s even less direct than it used to be.” The Machine’s messages require “more parsing, more interpretation,” Emerson added.

 

All of the “cases of the week” are in the context of “this battle between these two A.I. gods,” said Emerson. “Everything is enmeshed now, in a way that it maybe wasn’t before.”

 

The show is still balanced between serialized and case-of-the-week episodes, added producer/director Chris Fisher. “One of the things the fans have always loved is the show has to care about the underdog, the person who [has fallen through] the cracks. We care about that. The show cares about.” The show’s compassion towards “the unknown soldier, so to speak,” is part of its DNA, “and it will never really go away.”

 

Fisher directed the show’s two-part premiere. “It’s always fun to shoot two episodes at the same time. It’s like a movie.” You get to have stronger character arcs and more time to develop the story, “and it really feels like going to do an independent movie.” It’s been a huge challenge to pick up after last year’s season finale, and then every script has been a huge challenge after that.

 

This season will have some kind of ending

“I think it has to find some kind of resolution, just in case this is the end,” Emerson told us. “I think they’ll have some real fireworks in store for those 12 or 13 episodes, but they’ll be wise enough to leave a backdoor so everything can be fired up again” if there’s a sixth season. Right now, they’re filming episode eight, and there’s no sign of how the show could possibly wrap everything up.

 

Season five has “more conceptual stuff” than previous years, added Emerson—similar to that episode last season where the Machine keeps running simulation after simulation. “We flirted with it in that episode,” but “we’re playing more head games this season, along those lines.” In the past, said Emerson, viewers were “in the habit of accepting whatever they saw in an episode as being straightforward narrative. But what if it’s not? What if we find out, as we did at the end of that episode, that we were looking at something conceptual?”

 

Producer Margo Lulick also told us that they’re enjoying playing with the line between what’s real and what’s not, and teasing out whether the Machine has any humanity, especially now that it’s been rebuilt.

 

They’re also taking chances with their format in other ways. One of the case-of-the-week episodes is set outside the city and has “a really big cinematic scope to it,” said Lulick. Even with the huge scope of the war between the Machine and Samaritan, “with our heroes, everything has become a little more intimate, a little more under-the-magnifying-glass, in a really good storytelling way.” The show’s style of filming has gotten more handheld and less classical, so the “storytelling is more tactical.”

 

Rebuilding the Machine

As Michael Emerson teased in our exclusive interview a while back, the Machine Gang will fight over how to rebuild the Machine. As Amy Acker told us, Root feels as though “the Machine needs to have some modifications to enable it to defeat Samaritan.” She added that Root believes this is their chance to make a “new and improved” Machine. “This may be our only chance to have a victory over Samaritan.”

 

“It’s a collision of philosophies,” Emerson told reporters. “It’s almost like two different fates.” Root and Finch both “hold their positions so fervently that it’s hard to find middle ground.” He added, “There’s not a lot of gray area: The Machine is either encumbered, or it isn’t. It either has limits, or it’s an open system.”

“Root has continued to implore Finch that he needs to do something, to make his Machine more aggressive or proactive this year,” added executive producer Greg Plageman. “Harold has been forced to a certain level of self-examination as to what he did [or didn’t do], to allow Samaritan to take over.”

 

Acker said that Root feels like she has a huge stake in this debate—not just because she feels connected to the Machine, but also because she chose to save the Machine instead of Shaw, when Shaw was being carried away from the hospital. “My character felt like, if we didn’t save the Machine, there was no reason to save Shaw,” said Acker. And as the season begins, Root has not given up on finding Shaw again, and there’s a feeling that the team has a “missing piece.”

 

Finch’s crisis of faith

As the season begins, Finch isn’t even sure if he’s capable of reconstituting the Machine, said Plageman. There’s a terrific scene in the season opener, where Finch is losing optimism and faith, and it’s reminiscent of the last time we saw his old collaborator Nathan Ingram (who’s back in flashbacks in this episode.)

Reese “has to buck [Finch] up and tell him how they’re going to put it together,” said Plageman.

 

As far as Reese is concerned, he’s “had to complete missions, being separated from his equipment,” said actor Jim Caviezel. “He could complete a mission with a buck knife.” So Reese is able to offer Finch that perspective, of having been in a hole with no way out, and still come through. “We have done much more with much less.”

 

Caviezel said what he admires about this show is that it has always focused on its core characters, even with its big science-fiction concepts. “It is all about the humanity of these people.”

 

Is it even the same Machine?

Emerson added that there’s some question as to whether this is even the same Machine as before, in any case. “There’s a feeling that there was some damage, some corruption of circuitry, when it was so hyper-compressed,” so when it’s put back online, it’s already somewhat different.

 

As a result, said Emerson, “you can’t have the same confidence in the Machine that we used to.” The Machine used to work perfectly, even if it was sometimes cryptic, but now it seems more flawed, which may make it appear more human. Or, he added, “maybe we’ve just begun to think of it as more humanized.”

All of the characters are starting to think of the Machine as a person, and as more than just “something that spits out numbers,” added Fisher.

 

Samaritan is in charge

At the start of season five, “Samaritan has prevailed,” Emerson told us, “although a lot of people don’t know it.” At this point, “Samaritan is in charge of whatever it wants to be in charge of.” This is a scary scenario, with a lot of terrifying applications for real life, and it’s “kind of like letting something out of the bottle, that you can’t ever put back in.”

 

Nobody has even thought about what a post-Samaritan world could look like, said Emerson. But Acker said that the Machine’s main “platform” has always been to respect people’s free will, so if the Machine prevails, it’s somewhat less likely to become a dictator and rule over humanity.

 

Fusco wants answers

Lionel Fusco “goes a little rogue this year,” said Kevin Chapman, who plays Fusco. “He’s got a lot of unanswered questions. He knows there’s something awry, [and] he’s hell-bent to find out what it is.” For years, Fusco has been doing stuff for the Machine Gang, without actually knowing why, and “it’s been a lot of fun” to play. But now, he’s ready to demand an explanation

 

Can they trust Shaw?

Sameen Shaw does eventually rejoin the team after having been captured and brainwashed by Samaritan—but is she a “Manchurian candidate?” asks Caviezel. Has she been sent there to divide the team, or is she really on their side?

 

Origin stories

There will be some interesting new origin stories this season as well. Plageman said we’ll meet a new Samaritan operative—and this time we’ll get to see how Samaritan takes an ordinary person and recruits him. We’ve seen characters like Martine who were fully-formed Samaritan ops, but “we’ve never seen how they come about.”

 

Meanwhile, “we’ll learn the origins of the man who recruited John Reese into the CIA. It’s kind of a cool story.” And we learn about the person who created that man—someone who had a talent for manipulating people and, essentially, turning human beings into machines, by dehumanizing them.

 

 

[BruceVC]

The latest season of American Horror Story is out, its looking very good so far...Vampires and Lady Gaga. Could we ask for more 

[HoonDing]

Vampires and Lady Gaga. Could we ask for more 

One could certainly ask for less.

[Volourn]

Watched  Crazy Ex Girlfriend. Don't know why but I did.  I must be the crzay one to find such a mentally disturbed woman so adorable. L0L

[ManifestedISO]

The Flash ... Iris and Joe's exchange about her mom and his wife ... millennial TV shows are supposed to be fluffy, fleeting drama, not sternum punches. And Earth 2 Flash, I freaking love that guy. He makes the future seem secure. 

[Hiro Protagonist]

Finished watching:

 

Aquarius. Interesting series with David Duchovny as a cop in the 1960s intertwining with Charles Manson.

Defiance - Season 3. I feel this is the best season yet. Can't wait for Season 4 when they go into outer space.

Fear the Walking Dead.

Scorpion - Season 1. Quite ridiculous. One of those shows you leave your brain at the door to enjoy it.

Traveler. A show from a few years ago which I enjoyed. Cancelled after one season but the creator of the show, David DiGilio, posted an "answers blog" detailing Seasons 2 & 3 and how the show would have ended.

[kirottu]

Defiance got cancelled. Season 3 is going to be the last season.

[BruceVC]

Defiance got cancelled. Season 3 is going to be the last season.

Oh no...I like Defiance 

[Oerwinde]

Me too, but I'm not surprised it got cancelled. The game didn't do as well as expected and I'm not sure how good the ratings were.

[Raithe]

Mythbusters Ending Interview

 

 

 

There’s no debunking this one: The next season of Discovery’s Mythbusters will be its last, EW has learned exclusively.

 

The pioneering reality series, one of cable’s longest-running shows, will stage its final gonzo experiment during next year’s 14th season after 248 episodes and 2,950 experiments. 

But there is some upside: Stars Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman have secretly known the end was coming all year and have been crafting an explosive final run for the seven-time Emmy-nominated series. “It was my greatest fear that Mythbusters would just stop and we wouldn’t be able to do proper final episodes,” Savage tells EW. “So whether it’s myths about human behavior or car stories or explosion stories, we tried to find the most awesome example of each category and build on our past history.”

 

Below we have two must-read interviews with Savage and Hyneman. The perfectly opposed duo, famously never friends off-screen, offer very different perspectives when asked their feelings about the show’s conclusion, with Savage expressing remorse over the turn of events, and Hyneman confessing some longtime frustration with the Mythbusters format. In addition to the final season, the duo are going back on the road for one last Mythbusters Live tour starting next month, and both expect it might be their final time working together.

There is one thing the costars agree on, however: The proud legacy that Mythbusters will leave behind, as the cable reality show has inspired generations of viewers of all ages to become interested in science. “Their unique personalities and extraordinarily diverse skill sets have literally redefined science television,” notes Beyond Productions general manager John Luscombe.

 

Below are the Q&A interviews. Savage and Hyneman requested to be interviewed separately. We start with Savage, then go to Hyneman, then return to Savage for a couple follow-up questions.

 

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction when you learned this was the final season?
ADAM SAVAGE: Every show has its bell curve. We’re cognizant of our ratings. It’s not like they were terrible but we could see them changing. Three or four years ago we started wondering more if we were going to be renewed. It’s not like it’s unexpected. Still it was kind of amazing that it happened. The thing that really makes me happy is most cable shows like ours just end. They get past their freshness date, you finish a season and then you hear you’ll never see another one. I truly thought that’s the way Mythbusters would end. We’ve been filming the last season this year and we get to send it off. We get to pay homage to this thing that’s changed our lives.

 

It’s very unusual for a show in the cable reality genre to have that kind of heads-up notice. Even serialized network dramas sometimes don’t get that.
SAVAGE: It really is! It’s a testament to Discovery, they’ve always said to us we’re more than a TV show, we’re really deeply embedded in the their brand mission and they put their money where their mouth is. People fall in love with shows even when the ratings are low. It’s great to be able to tell fans how important they were because they’re are they reason we’re on the air and have given us 40 percent of the stories we’ve told. The Internet and social media radically changed the way we made this show as we made it. We’re now getting second generation compliments from Ph.D. graduates who say they got into science because of Mythbusters and now they’re raising their kids on Mythbusters. Pretty much everything that’s happened on Mythbusters has exceeded our expectations. Our finale will go out with a bang, as everyone would expect.

 

When were you told?
SAVAGE: We knew it at the beginning of 2015. So we’ve been filming the last season episodes all year long. I can tell you I’ve been going through all the Elisabeth Kubler-Ross stages of grief – anger, acceptance, denial – it’s all been happening. I did the math at some point, I spent something like 25,000 hours filming. There is also some release. I’m tired. We’ve been making the show 40 weeks a year. That’s a rough schedule, even in television. At the same time, the future is uncertain and that’s an intense state to confront. Mythbusters has have given me this incredible platform to tell stories and produce television. I’m really excited about doing more storytelling in the future, in front of and behind the camera.

 

For the final season, I know you’re blowing up a cement truck with 10,000 pounds of ANFO, and crushing a 60-ton train tanker with steam implosion …
SAVAGE: When we construct the final season list of stories, our guiding principle was what are the iconic categories that fans of Mythbusters that should not be ignored in the final season. We really tried to address each one of those. The series finale is pretty amazing. I wanted Jamie and I to wake up to Suzanne Pleshette afterwards, but we did find a way to say goodbye.

 

Looking back, what is the best segment you’ve ever done?
SAVAGE: It’s almost impossible to answer. I was particularly astonished at our “Flights of Fancy” episode last season. My flight in the U2, I think that’s the loveliest segments from a cinematography and storytelling perspective. I also loved the variance of going to The Simpsons one week and to Indiana Jones the next. The episodes that stand out are the ones where we learned something new about how to make the show.

 

What are you most proud of in terms of the what the show’s accomplished? 
SAVAGE: I am most proud that we found a way to tell compelling stories that have real information in them. I see the state of reality television — whether it’s Pawn Stars or Steampunk’d or Face Off — and I see the same kind of narrative playing out endlessly, with people competing and trash-talking. Sometimes you see some craft being exercised, but it’s very formulaic. Mythbusters stayed away from being formulaic. We’ve continued to make a fairly vibrant and vital show that I’m very proud of. Jamie and I will head out on tour in November and half the audience will be kids under the age of 8, all the way up to cranky old engineers. When people say, “I’m a physics teacher and your show has helped me do my job,” or, “I have a kid with ADHD and he really responds to the show,” every time I hear one of those things it moves me and humbles me. We were even scientists when we started. Making this show has fundamentally changed the way I think and act in the world.

 

What do you think you’ll do next?
SAVAGE: I’m definitely going to do more television, behind and in front of the camera. I love producing this show and figuring out how to structure the episodes. I’m going to jump into the website Tested.com. I’m looking forward to visit Comic-Con.

 

… And now we’re switching over to my interview with Hyneman …

 

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: What was your reaction when you learned this was the final season?
HYNEMAN: We’re executive producers on the show and have been for a while. So we were part of that decision. We felt like we’ve had really strong material for the whole run. It’s been 14 years and its just time. We want to go out on a strong point.  

 

What would you like to tease about the last episodes?
HYNEMAN: There’s an emphasis on looking back, we could do a Ph.D. dissertation on the things we’re tackling. We’ve tried to go as deeply as possible into the things we’re doing, and gave them the respect and care they deserve.

 

What will you do next?
HYNEMAN: There’s a scripted show we’re executive producing at CBS that was announced, and that’s exciting. I can’t talk about it yet, but when it comes out it’s going to knock some people’s socks off. As far as me personally, there’s some outside projects I’m starting to ramp up. There’s an Office of Naval Research project. I’m developing some new kinds of robotic firefighting vehicles to help with the massive forest forests we’re dealing with in the West. I’m keeping the M5 [special effects company]. I’m a builder, first and foremost. There are people I have to work with filming [Mythbusters] that are interested in how to build things for the sake of the story rather than what I’m trying to accomplish. I don’t want to sound sour grapes about it, but for a show, you have to tell a story. You present it in a way that’s interesting and easy to follow. But I want to circle back to actually doing build projects where I don’t have a bunch of film people getting in my way and manipulating what’s going on.

 

You and Adam have famously had a great working partnership but have never been friends. Given that, do you think you’ll still continue any kind of partnership now that the show is over? 
HYNEMAN: That’s a good question. We like to point out we’ve known each other for 25 years and never once sat down to have dinner alone together. We sort of managed to tolerate each other. I think it’s probably safe to say that continuing our onscreen relationship in front of the camera is probably not happening. I expect Adam may well pursue things in front of the camera, but I’m most likely not. It’s not who I am. This has been a very rewarding and interesting decade, but its not really what I’m cut out for.

 

It’s interesting to hear you say that. Mythbusters has been a huge series. You’re obviously an integral part of the show and therefore one reason for its success over all these years. So I think some fans would disagree that you’re not cut out for it.
HYNEMAN: I appreciate that and I’m glad that was the case because that meant I was doing my job. I suppose the difference there is I’m not somebody who wants to be in front of the camera, so I lent a certain kind of grounding to what was going on. It’s part of the interplay between myself and Adam, who loves to be in front of the camera. It’s part of our chemistry and one of the reasons for the show’s success. But I’d put it this way: I like the building and engineering so much, and if I’m doing something in front of the camera, it takes 5–10 times as long as if I was just making it. For somebody who truly is interested in design and engineering, it’s frustrating. I’m like a race horse attached to a freight wagon.

 

I should circle back to your comment about some people manipulating and interfering with the show. I don’t know if I’ve heard you say that before, and I wanted to give you a chance to elaborate and explain so it’s not misinterpreted.
HYNEMAN: I’m concerned it will come off like I’m complaining about it. Certainly there are a lot of things I would have liked to have changed in that regard. I’ve been working in film behind the camera, and now in front of it, for over 30 years. And I understand filmmaking is a collaborative effort and has to be. There are always compromises, always give and take. But we are somewhat unique in that space. And the general way this was set up, and the way it had to be set up, is that around 50 percent of what we do is actual science and engineering. We had to do this daily dance of interacting with the camera and with production people who have totally different priorities about what’s going on than I do. It’s a difficult and unique process. The filmmakers often give priority to the results. I know some reality TV programs that present themselves as giving you something that’s real when in reality it’s totally contrived. Mythbusters is not at all that way. There are times when compromises have to be made that can be frustrating to somebody like myself who’s a purist for the engineering and not in it for a desire to be on television. It’s about building something I might not have access to otherwise. So it’s understandable that I’d get frustrated when I get pulled in another direction.

 

Okay, that’s clear. What’s your fondest memory of the show?
HYNEMAN: There have been so many moments where we were doing something really unusual we’d never have the opportunity to do. It goes back to when we were doing the first rocket car and I was piloting this car in the desert from a helicopter. It was like some wild animal in the savanna and it out-ran the helicopter. It was like a kid’s dream. There have been a lot of moments like that over the years.

 

Do you have anything else to add?
HYNEMAN: Other than embracing how much I’ve learned and grown in this process, the main thing I value is the show has had an impact on popular culture and science. Adam and I do a live stage tour — and this fall will be my last one for the same reasons I said, about not waiting to be in front of the camera anymore. We’ve seen thousands of people across the country and abroad. The kind of appreciation that’s been expressed by people all over the place for what we’ve done, for encouraging them or their family or kids to be interested in science, is absolutely wonderful. I can’t think of anything that would be more important than that. I think there’s something in the playful experimentation that we do that seems to appeal to the way people’s minds work, young people in particular, by doing things that are destructive and creative and challenging, all at the same time. Science is a deeply creative enterprise. The public doesn’t often associate science with being deeply creative. We have pointed out how fun and creative and thought-provoking science and experimentation can be. The rest is all fluff.

 

 … After speaking with Hyneman, I figured I should circle back to Savage because I didn’t ask him the partnership question, and I also thought he might have an opinion on Hyneman’s feelings about the show’s format. I reach Savage a week after our previous interview. Appropriately enough, he’s filming one of the Mythbusters final episodes …

 

I asked Jamie whether you guys still expect to collaborate after the show is over. He figured this was probably going to be it. 
SAVAGE: I would say the same thing. It has been an incredibly productive marriage, but I think this is plausibly the end of the line. Though you never say never. We were at the White House last night, live hosting the online streaming for their astronomy night. I expect we’ll be thrust together again through many different circumstances. 

 

He also mentioned he has long been frustrated by the show’s storytelling, the compromises needed to make the show an entertaining format. I suspect that’s something you’ve heard before. 

SAVAGE: Jamie was never interested in the storytelling. This has been one of the primary sources of friction between us — what is experimentation and what is storytelling? I want to be as honest as possible about who I am and I like putting on costumes and [making the process entertaining]. Jamie doesn’t give a **** about the camera, and that is also equally as compelling — he’s just being himself. Storytelling is all I’m interested in. When I was gluing [pieces onto] the spaceships for Star Wars, it’s only interesting if I know the story behind what I’m doing. The only thing I’m doing is communicating a story with the things I make. The reason I label everything with colored tape is so viewers who want to freeze-frame the show can follow along. I don’t think it should come as a surprise that Jamie is not that interested in that.

 

…The interview concluded, Savage notes he’s bracing himself for the online reaction that will come once news of Mythbusters’ demise hits the Internet. It’s been nearly 14 years, and all their fans will know the secret they’ve been living with for so many months. “I’ve been going through genuine grief,” Savage says. He sounds surprised, as if objectively observing himself from a distance, a scientist whose own reaction has now become the experiment. “Even food doesn’t taste as good.” 

 

 

[Bartimaeus]

That's a shame. It was a decent show. I just hated the format of filling up what felt like somewhere between 25-33% of each show with them repeating themselves, reexplaining what's going on, or just filling it up with pure filler. A shame.

[Hiro Protagonist]

Defiance got cancelled. Season 3 is going to be the last season.

 

Oh well. The show sort of ends at Season 3 anyway.

[Nonek]

The Last Kingdom, an adaptation of the Bernard Cornwell novel about a Saxon protagonist caught in a culture clash between the invading Danes and Saxons, Paganism and Christianity. Set in the ninth century as the last Atheling was rising to power.

 

A cracking debut, though a little truncated. One to catch on BBC America, the i-player or what have you.

[Hurlshort]

The Last Kingdom, an adaptation of the Bernard Cornwell novel about a Saxon protagonist caught in a culture clash between the invading Danes and Saxons, Paganism and Christianity. Set in the ninth century as the last Atheling was rising to power.

 

A cracking debut, though a little truncated. One to catch on BBC America, the i-player or what have you.

 

I love the book series, I'll have to look for this.    

[Leferd]

It's been decent so far and added it to my DVR list. I've been a fan of Cornwell for years.

[ShadySands]