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.

Smash Lab is probably one of the greatest disappointments of the new year, almost to the point of inspiring mass Discovery fan suicides. And who could blame them? First off, this show is nothing more than a Myth Busters knock off with Myth Buster wannabe characters. Deanne must be Discovery's answer to Kari, and their shameless attempt to draw viewers to this show because of this is borderline shameful. Maybe they should have put such efforts into making a decent show, instead of appealing to 50 year old slobbering men.

The premise is also insanely weak. Scientists and Engineers supposedly build to make the world better, when their experiments are weak and neutered. MythBusters is interesting mostly because it has some meaning to keep you watching. Smash Lab, on the other hand, just seems like a waste of time and life since the hosts aren't actually helping anyone. Discovery, by trying to cater to the MythBusters crowd (and by possibly thinking that the MythBusters crowd are retarded) has forgotten the number one rule that made their other shows popular: Dumbing down = Crap show.

This show wouldn't be so bad, other than the fact that it is unbelievably boring. For a show named "Smash Lab," the hosts seem to just walk around the whole time, wasting moments of our precious lives. The hosts literally look like surfer dudes that you would find on a California beach, who of course morph between scientists, builders, physicists, and anything else that the teleprompter tells them to be. Never have I seen such poor Chemistry between cast members either. I would be willing to bet that as soon as the cameras turn off, they start beating the crap out of each other or cutting each other off in the parking lot while making obscene gestures. Why don't they just make a show about that? It would be a heck of a lot more interesting than this drivel.

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.

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.

This show is a disaster. I watched the episode where the hosts were trying to develop a magnetic fire escape system for high-rise buildings. The solution they came up with was so impractical that a 5th grader would've laughed. Yet, they were busy patting themselves on the back at the end of the show.

But the worst part about the show is the cast. They seem very self-conscious about being on camera, it feels like they just met, and they completely lack charisma. Definitely not TV host materials. I cringed several times watching them as faking "YEAH!" "WOAH!!" and Hi-5s. Obviously they were trying to use those precious moments to offset their dull screen presence.

Also, And I'm sure the girl is a nice person, but her voice is extremely obnoxious to listen to, and her on-screen persona doesn't help her credibility as a scientist.