TVSquad

The Mythbusters crew aren't scientists, but they sort of play them on TV -- submitting everything from movie stunts to common household sayings to proven analytic methods.

Of course, it's more fun to determine whether you can cut a tree in half with a machine gun than it is to test the effectiveness of a new polymer, so Mythbusters gets a TV show -- and your average scientists don't.

To celebrate Mythbusters' completion of its seventh series of episodes on Discovery Channel, series stars Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage hosted a set visit of their testing and production facilities in an industrial park just outside San Francisco's Mission District.

Hyneman led the tour himself through M5 Industries -- a former visual effects house turned production shop for the popular debunking series.

Sorry for the lame headline.

We're in the middle of the Discovery Channel's annual Shark Week celebration, a whole of programming involving sharks, sharks, sharks, sharks, and the people who love/fear them. But David Zurawik over at The Baltimore Sun doesn't understand why some people get excited about it. He wants someone to explain its appeal.

I almost chose the above pic for this week's "What the heck is this?," but realized it would be too obscure for readers to get. What is it? It's a bloody pair of chewed up shorts, and it's part of the press kit for Discovery Channel's "Shark Week." James Hibberd over at The Hollywood Reporter gives a rundown on what the kit looks like up close. It includes Hibberd's obituary.

I once got a "Shark Week" T-shirt from the network but nothing like this.

I don't know how true this axiom is, since I just made it up out of thin air. But it seems to me that, in the world of reality TV, you can edit a nice person to look like a jerk, but it's much tougher to edit a jerk into looking like a nice person. It's just harder to fake being a good person than it is to fake being a jerk. And what I learned by the entire season of Pitchmen, including last night's tribute episode, was that Billy Mays was a good guy.

Sure, he had an ego. Sure, there are probably production staffs out there who think the guy was a jerk because he was having a bad day when he worked with them. But, the entire season of Pitchmen showed that Mays was a fun-loving guy that seemed to be a dedicated family man; he also seemed to be truly committed to helping people realize their dreams through their inventions. Considering how many different people teared up during the tribute episode last night, I could tell the guy was loved and admired.

The season finale of Discovery Channel's Pitchmen airs tomorrow night at 10PM (after a day-long marathon of the show). But now that Billy Mays has passed away suddenly, what should happen to the show?

Discovery hasn't made a decision yet. They could continue the show will just Anthony Sullivan, they could get another commercial/product icon to take Mays' place, or they could simply cancel the show. What do you think they should do?

Jessica Alba could be facing vandalism and tagging charges for gluing several "shark conservation posters" all over Oklahoma City in an organized stunt.

Alba apologized for her participation in the incident after she was busted online. She's in Oklahoma City shooting her new movie and somehow got lured into this sticky "save the shark" poster campaign.

The city wide display is an obvious move for shark preservationists, as millions of the large fish are slaughtered every year by heavy hunting off the Oklahoma coast. Also, the classic film Jaws was set near Tulsa.

The show that transformed the Discovery Channel from a stuffy science documentary network that even A/V club nerds found drab and dull into the media franchise it is today is returning to the network that birthed it.

Monster Garage will return to the cable network for a new series run set in Detroit called MG: Motor City. It is set to debut in the fall.

The new series will gather a gaggle of gearheads to task them with turning a timid Ford Model T into a fire-breathing, fuel-guzzling, Firestone tire-eating race dragster. What's the grand prize? What else? A multimillion dollar government bailout!

If you've got a hankering to see Will Ferrell's new comedy flick Land of the Lost, you definitely don't want to miss tomorrow night's new episode of Man Vs. Wild (airs Tuesday 6/2 at 10PM ET on Discovery Channel).

The special, dubbed Men Vs. Wild, will feature Ferrell trekking out into the harsh wilderness with host Bear Grylls in what's sure to be a more humorous than informative hour. Exclusive clips from Land of the Lost (it opens this Friday) will play throughout the commercial breaks.

Personally, I'm more excited about this than the movie itself. I love Ferrell, but Land of the Lost just strikes me as a remake that didn't need to be made. However, you have to admit, this is one helluva perfect cross-promotional stunt - anything to see Ferrell cracking jokes while peeing in the Swedish wilderness and wearing a dead animal hide.

Here's a preview - after watching it, I'm pretty sure Ferrell would have a hard time surviving in a supermarket.

Regular watchers of American Chopper will look at the picture to the right and immediately ponder the following question: is Paul Sr. giving Paulie Jr. a big hug or a meaty, larynx-crushing choke hold?

I've been notoriously anti-reality TV for a long time, but I gave American Chopper a grace chip when it ran on the Discovery Channel for the first few seasons. It can get just as over-the-top as most reality shows tend to do, but it still had a genuine level to it somewhere in just about every episode, and it offered viewers something more than just grown men fighting. I'm also a pathetic wanna-be gearhead and would watch a custom Buick LaSabre build contest if I thought I could generate an ounce of knowledge from it over my rich, car-building friends.

So imagine my surprise when the New York Post broke the biggest spoiler in the show's history, other than the fact that it is still on the air.

I was going to type this entire post in all caps, the way Billy Mays talks, but I thought that might be a little annoying.

Everyone's favorite informercial pitch man is getting his own reality show on The Discovery Channel. It's called But Wait...There's More, and will follow Mays and Anthony Sullivan as they find new products and pitch them to you.

Discovery also has other new shows coming up, including Out of the Wild, which will have suburban-dwellers trying to rough it in Alaska, and Working on the Edge, a movie spinoff of the popular Deadliest Catch series. You'll follow the adventures of a fishing boat in the Bering Sea.

But wait...there's more! Act now and you'll also get Swamp Blogging, which is about a tree logger. I'm not even sure what the hell blogging has to do with logging. Maybe it's a typo?

If this is a success, maybe we'll see a show with ShamWow guy Vince as a private eye.

When Tim Russert passed away earlier this year, the talk of course turned to the topic of who would take over for him on NBC's long-running Sunday news show Meet The Press. Tom Brokaw has been doing the show for several weeks now, but could former Nightline host Ted Koppel be the new guy in the interviewing chair?

Koppel has announced that he and The Discovery Channel have parted ways. He still had six months left on his contract but decided to leave. This is all just speculation at this time, of course, but since he's leaving Discovery early and the end of the year is upon us, it's interesting timing.

One of the most frustrating things of blogging about US TV series is the fact that I can't watch episodes or most of the webisodes on the official network sites because I live in Canada. I can't even have access to content on Hulu and the like because of International Internet laws (or lack thereof) and distribution rights issues. I don't know all the legalities behind this but I find it weird that on my basic cable set up I have access to US-based channels for all major networks (except The CW) and yet, I can't access the full content of US-based network websites.

Since I've started blogging here on TV Squad, I've read many comments from international readers saying that they can't watch episodes or videos we embedded in our posts. It's irritating to follow a link to a video and see "This episode is currently only available to viewers living in the United States." Therefore, I researched the web to find websites where Canadians could watch US TV series online and in all legality (of course, people in the US can watch episodes online at AOL TV, Hulu, etc.).

Here is a list of "Canadians welcomed" websites that stream US TV shows. You can thank me later.

Discovery Health will be showing a four-part series about the human body this September. Body in Numbers will show viewers how the body functions throughout the day and how it adapts and reacts to things humans do.

From the press release, the show sounds like it will be a lot of astounding statistics. The surface area of the lungs is about the size of a tennis court. And the fastest sneeze was clocked at 100 miles per hour (those are some fast boogies). So, if you're into cool graphics and interesting facts or just like learning about the human body, this sounds like it could be for you. However, as I read the press release, I couldn't help but wish that Discovery Health got the kid from Jerry Maguire to narrate the program.

Body in Numbers premieres Wednesday September 3rd at 8 p.m. ET / PT and will continue every Wednesday night in September.

When I saw the headline that Discovery Channel was working on a Da Vinci series, my first thought was that they were finally dipping their toes in the scripted drama pool. Because, really, there's some mileage to be had with a show about Da Vinci, don't ya think? And with other cable channels having success in the fiction department, it doesn't seem an unreasonable idea for Discovery to join the fray.

Alas, that's not what we have here. It's still a pretty good idea though. A team has been assembled and they will be tasked with taking the original designs of Da Vinci and building them with modern tools to see if they really work. The team will be comprised of a rocket scientist, a special effects expert, and an in-the-garage inventor. The show is tentatively titled Doing Da Vinci, but I suspect that will change. Somewhere in the development process someone is going to point out that, "It might mean something different than what you think it means."

Last week I had the pleasure of interviewing Andy DeHart, a shark expert who currently works at the National Aquarium in Washington, D.C. Dehart talked to me about his first experience with sharks (when he was five!), about his interest in conservation of the species, and about Shark Week, Discovery's annual documentary series (in its 21st year this summer). Other than Big Brother, Shark Week is the only reason I turn on the TV in the summer. I was pretty excited to talk to him about this year's event.