At Large
Buster and Kim Sam-soon
By Rina Jimenez-David
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 21:50:00 07/05/2008
PERHAPS THERE IS NO HARDER-WORKING TV “star” than “Buster,” the crash-test dummy who gets thrown from planes, has his insides stuffed with explosives, absorbs bullets and other lethal material, and generally takes on the more hazardous tasks in that great Discovery Channel show “MythBusters.”
Now it turns out that “Buster” is actually a second-generation myth buster, with the official name “Buster 2.0,” since the original dummy has become too battered and bruised and needed to be retired.
By contrast, the five human busters are as hale, healthy and harebrained as ever, dreaming up ways to prove or disprove what its maker lists as “urban legends, popular beliefs, Internet rumors and other myths.” The team is headed by the pair of Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage, a duo described as having between them decades of experience in movie special effects, with a shared background in toy design, model-making, and general mayhem. Jamie, the one with a black beret and a walrus moustache, heads his own special effects firm, called M5 Industries, and it’s in his workshop where many of the zany tests are concocted and conducted. Adam brings his trademark zest and enthusiasm to the show, along with much of the “science,” as Hyneman concedes. The two are joined by the “build team,” who come up with many of the devices used in the show: Kari Byron, the only girl in the show, who is an artist and adventurer; Tory Belleci who started his career as a go-fer on M5 Industries and earned his spurs in Industrial Light and Magic, Steven Spielberg’s special effects shop; and Grant Imahara, an expert in electronics and robotic control, known for making R2D2 move in the (chronologically) first of the “Star Wars” movies. He is also, by the way, the cutest of the five myth busters, boyishly eager, especially when he gets to create a new toy.
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IT’S the interaction among the five, along with their incendiary antics (they don’t seem happy unless they’re able to end a segment with a big bang), that you could say is “MythBusters’” secret of success.
But I also appreciate the fact that the myth busters believe even the most absurd myths and suppositions can be laid to rest through science and observation. Albeit cheeky, cocky and irreverent, “MythBusters” is teaching its viewers a lesson: not to take anything for granted and to question everything.
At the start of every show, the team discusses which myth or belief can stand some testing, and then they sit around planning ways to test its accuracy, with a lot of laughter and banter among them. Savage has been quoted as saying that their goal in every show is to “replicate the circumstances and then duplicate the results.” At the end of every “experiment,” the team then decides whether the myth has been “busted,” could be “plausible” or proven “confirmed.”
Among my favorite busted myths is the saying “like a bull in a china shop.” The team let a herd of bulls run through a pen in which shelves of delicate china had been lined up. Surprisingly, the bulls ran through the rows of shelves without breaking a single item, proving that you can let a bull loose in a china shop.
“MythBusters” takes on a lot of the special effects in movies and TV shows, scenes which seem entirely possible and grounded on reality, but which are eventually proven to be impossible, if not absurd. But it also takes on popular beliefs like ninjas being able to walk on water (busted), that finding a needle in a haystack is impossible (busted; you can find the needle, but you need a lot of time and large, noisy machines), and that bloodhounds always get their man (confirmed, with Savage traipsing through the woods after dousing himself with cheap cologne).
Best of all, “MythBusters” is one show that proves science, logic and engineering can be loads of fun as well as endlessly entertaining.
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I’D been looking forward to the local version of “My Name is Kim San-soon,” an enormously popular TV drama in Korea, which even gave rise to the “Sam-soon” effect among single women, modeling themselves on the lead character who is in her 30s, independent, and defiant of the popular norms of what makes a woman “attractive.”
The Korean actress had to gain 15 pounds to make her character credible, but for “Ako si Kim San-soon,” singer Regine Velasquez elected instead to wear a fat suit. I think this was a mistake. The fat suit opens our local version to caricature, and with her constant mugging and rubber features, Regine comes close to that. Which is unfortunate, since if there was one thing that made the original Sam-soon so endearing, it was her integrity, her refusal to fall into any one of the convenient slots which modern society is fond of assigning women to, as well as her all-too-human yearning for some connection and commitment.
The show is still in its early stages, so I hope that as it moves along, Regine not only consents to drop the fat suit (or dons a less lumpy one) but also goes deeper into her character, finding the many issues she has in common with the pastry chef.
Still, it’s a fascinating process, this transplantation of a popular TV drama born in the imagination and set in the milieu of a society different from ours. Will Kim San-soon Buot resonate in much the same way as her Korean counterpart did with women of her generation? Will they recognize her dilemmas and desires as their own? Ratings for “Ako si Kim San-soon” have been steadily climbing and the show is already among the top three primetime TV shows (after “Dyesebel” and “Joaquin Bordado”), so I guess it’s winning an audience of its own. I can only hope it does so without turning Sam-soon into a cartoon figure.
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