Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Grab Your Duct Tape

I was never a fan of "MacGyver" growing up. I don't think I've ever seen one complete episode of the Richard Dean Anderson opus.

The series was about an agent who would foil the bad guys by using whatever was handy - duct tape, string, etc. - to build some ingenious device that would save the day.

One of the best Super Bowl commercials in recent years was Visa's, in which Anderson buys a bunch of knick-knacks with his Visa card, and puts them together to escape the bad guys. The commercial was "priceless."

I bring all this up because I want to catch "Mythbusters" (Disc, 9 p.m.) tonight. The show devotes its whole hour to recreating MacGyver's most ingenious devices and seeing how real they are - if he could have actually used what he supposedly built in real life.

I'm a big fan of documentary style shows that build neat things, and I think the premise of this episode is especially clever. It's not the first time "Mythbusters" has influenced the outlook of a TV series, either. "CSI" took a premise from a previous "Mythbusters" episode about a person being decapitated by a broken truck tire.

RETURNING SHOWS UPDATE: TVGuide.com is reporting that word on the street says "Scrubs" might get its final few episodes to wrap up the series in a proper way.

But bad news out of "Friday Night Lights" camp. Taylor Kitsch (Tim Riggins) has been confirmed as Gambit in the new "Wolverine" movie, and the filming looks to coincide to when "FNL" would be shooting its new season, meaning its likely that cast and crew are getting permission to do other projects because the show isn't coming back.

WEDNESDAY'S BEST BETS: Last night, you voted for the men. Tonight, it's the 12 women finalists for "American Idol." (Fox, 8 p.m.)

"Cashmere Mafia" (ABC, 10 p.m.) airs a new episode opposite a new "Law & Order" on NBC.

2 comments:

Jonathan said...

I enjoy "Mythbusters," but at times I wonder if they're just taking the fun out of movies and television. I realize that 99 percent of what goes on in a James Bond film is BS, but I don't care, nor do most people. It's a movie after all.

Although, I do enjoy when they tackle the huge cliches like shooting a lock off a door or when they actually tried out their own version of an ejector seat.

Phillip Ramati said...

On the flip side, though, if they prove that something ISN'T bogus, it makes the scene from the movie or the TV show that much cooler.