Smash Lab

I, like all the others was hoping this would be a good show since I am a huge Mythbusters fan. This show however disappointed in a big way. I agree with all the other reviews here so i wont repeat them but i will add a few things about the show that drive me crazy. This show feels so staged. On Mythbusters it feels like the cameras are following Jamie and Adam around throughout their day as they work. Smash lab feel like the hosts show up in front of camera after getting their make-up and hair done and are told what to do and say. I am certain that the hosts of Smash Lab auditioned for the show. Jamie has often said that he doesn't give a crap about the show but loves the work involved in the stuff they do. This clearly shows with the crew of Mythbusters and makes for a much better show. The hosts walking down the hall a la Monster Garage must go. Again this makes the show look incredibly fake. Anytime Mythbisters does anything like this they are doing it for fun and you know that they are laughing at themselves when they do it.

It's a real shame because it seems like Smash Lab has a giant budget. I would really like to see some of that money used on Mythbusters.

I, too, was expecting something of the quality of Mythbusters, and was generally disappointed by Smash Lab. The one episode I have watched has the crew trying to use Aerated Concrete to prevent run-away vehicles from crossing the median on a divided highway and hitting oncoming traffic. They begin by driving a vehicle into several stationary cars to show that that sort of accident is bad (I guess we didn't already know that) and used the pretense that they wanted to determine the GForce affecting the car during the accident. Any data received from this experiment would be useless because in a real accident, the target vehicles (those in the other lane) would not be stationary, and the momentum of those vehicles would have a huge effect on the results. More accurate data could have been ascertained using a pencil and paper far more cheaply than the 6 cars they destroyed.

OK - The crash is good for TV, though, and it is their big premier, so they want to do something big. I can let that slide. Unfortunately, none of the science in the entire episode seems any more reliable or useful. They never mention any attempt to calculate the strength of the aerated concrete, nor do they attempt to calculate the PSI generated by a 4 ton car traveling at 60 MPH (figures referenced frequently in the episode). They only allow their concrete to cure overnight, which would leave it very weak compared to it's 28-day-strength.

I think they would have been much better off stringing together several clips of crashes and explosions, and omitting any claim to science. I still may have watched it, but would not have been disappointed because I would know what to expect.

This show is a Mythbusters rip off, except with 4 sub-par actors who have no personality, jockeying for horribly generic lines like "Big explosion, that's what I like to hear." Mythbusters is entertaining because everyone on the show has their own distinct personality, and they are all goofy and quirky in their own way, which makes it a very fun show to watch in addition to the great writing and topic selection.

Smash Lab is the exact opposite of this. There are 4 people who are very transparently acting, and worse, all of them are competing to be the "cool" one, the "renegade engineer" personality on the show, the result being just awkward and lame dialog. This also contaminates their body movement; it's hard to describe, but often times they make these weird positions like someone who is trying to act like they are *really* interested in something. As though it was not rehearsed when it obviously was.

Each of them wants to be the one that talks, but the vast majority of the time what comes out of their mouth is either something totally obvious that didn't need to be said, or them trying to develop their own personality, except with really bland comments that are, again, meant to show them off as *the* "cool renegade engineer guy" on the show. "Oh yeah, that baby's burning!"

One of the comments already posted that was particularly acute was about the one woman on the show, "The Scientist." She doesn't seem at all like a scientist, just someone who is obviously acting, who has these awkward "scientific sounding" lines jammed into her mouth. Example, someone will say something plain (and of course, with their trying-to-be-cool personality), "Oh man that's hot stuff," and then she will say "Yes, that translates to 500 degrees Centigrade" for no reason. She especially has annoying fake body movements, like someone will come in with some material, and she will lean in, in this attempt to look interested as a scientist but also sexy at the same time. It's hard to even write this review without repeatedly rolling my eyes.

Everyone and everything on this show is completely transparent and lacking any substance. They try so hard to have personality but they just don't have it. It's really pathetic.

On the pilot episode of Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel, Adam and Jamie test whether spray-on pickup truck bed liner can be used to make a building blast proof....wait, wait, sorry. Wrong show. The show is actually called Smash Lab, but the idea is basically the same. Take some nerdy guys, a skinny woman, have them spout techno-engineer babble, while gearing up to set off a large explosion. The only problem with this idea is that it's been done, and done much better. The comparison between the two shows was inevitable, so it makes me wonder why the creators didn't do more to make a distinction.

Smash Lab has taken the final five minutes of Mythbusters, where Adam and Jamie go for the biggest explosion possible, and made it the subject of an hour long show. Much like Smash Lab's free standing single-story building coated with Rhino Liner, I'm not sure the show will stand for very long.

I normally don't write reviews, I just vote my opinion and thats it. I used my DVR to get the first episode of this show knowing it was nothing but a mythbusters spin off. I expected something watchable but had to stop half-way through. You have 3 guys and one girl(The Scientist), hey that's pretty close to mythbuster's 4 guys and one girl. One major problem I had was that "The Scientist" sounds really stupid. I felt like some writer was giving her lines to say which sounded as scientific as they could come up with while she seemed to me to be dumber than a dumb blonde. Everyone on mythbusters seems to know what they are talking about and it doesn't feel like someone wrote lines for them to say. Though I've always wondered what the specialty of the girl on mythbusters is, she's never seemed stupid to me. Why watch a fake version of mythbusters on the same channel as mythbusters when you can just watch the real thing. This show won't last very long. Don't waste an hour watching it, you're better off washing your hair or watching 2 rerun episodes of the wonder years :-).

edit I've tried watching some of the episodes following the first one. I finally forced myself to finish watching the first episode on my DVR, which left me wishing I had just not finished it. I have been unable to sit through an entire episode of the show as it feels so fake. As many people have stated, they are trying hard to take the last 5-10min of mythbusters and stretch it in to an hour long show, unfortunately it just doesn't work. With mythbusters I love every bit of the leading up to the big bang. This show makes you want to fast forward to the end to see if there is anything interesting there and when when you get there, there's not. I wish they would just show another episode of mythbusters in this time slot until they find something else to replace it.