MythBusters, the long-running Discovery show that attempted to investigate urban legends and famous moments from television — admirably, I might add — by blowing things to hell with explosives, is coming to an end. The network released the following statement earlier today: “After 248 episodes, 2,950 experiments, 1,050 myths, and 900 explosions, hosts Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman will say goodbye to the series this winter.”
The writing was kind of on the wall for this for a while now. The ratings have been slipping and last year the show jettisoned its M7 Build Team (Kari Byron, Tory Belleci, and Grant Imahara). Also, Adam and Jamie are rather famously not friends off-camera. Perhaps it was just time. Savage addressed some of this in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, which broke the story.
“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.”
And Hyneman, in addition to discussing the show’s legacy and his future plans, also explained the relationship — or lack thereof — between the hosts, saying, “We sort of managed to tolerate each other. I think it’s probably safe to say that continuing our on-screen relationship in front of the camera is probably not happening.”
But that’s the sad news. Let’s focus on the positive here. Most notably, all those explosions. Sweet, sweet explosions.
