Well, I'll say this: the Black Beauty is a really cool car (though I personally prefer the less weapon-laden original), so I don't mind an episode focusing on it -- although I think it's a shame that the movie apparently subjects the car to such ongoing abuse. And I guess that Rogen fellow wasn't as annoying as I feared he might be, for the most part (though I got sick of him saying "me and Kato" rather than "Kato and I"), and was even somewhat funny at some points.
As for the myths:
Buried car/bulldozer: This is one of those things where, after I see the results, I realize I should've been able to predict them just by thinking about the physics. Of course I should've known the explosion would just blow out the dirt around and beneath the bulldozer rather than blowing it up and away. After all, this isn't a cannon here. The dirt around the explosive is a lot less solid than the dozer, so it's going to be displaced more, rather than containing the explosion and directing it upward.
By the same token, I should've realized that the occupants of the car would be toast. Well, I mean, I knew there was zero chance of their survival, because of the overpressure; even if the armor had protected them from heat and shrapnel or whatever, the air around them would've still transmitted the intense pressure wave which would be fatal by itself. But I hadn't anticipated just how thoroughly the car would be shredded. But that stands to reason too now that I think about the physics. Again, as Jamie said, an explosion follows the path of least resistance. The blast was surrounded by dirt on all sides -- except for the air pocket inside the car. So it follows that most of the force of the explosion would be concentrated into that open space, so thus the car and its occupants would've suffered the worst damage.
As for sending a bulldozer flying with explosives, I can see why that's hard to calibrate. Jamie's right -- maybe you could do it with just the right parameters, but as a rule, explosives aren't the best way to move things around. It's kind of surprising that even Frank Doyle's experienced team, choosing the yield and configuration of the explosives very carefully, still got such drastically different results from what they were aiming for, but I guess it goes to show how exacting a science demolition is -- even a slight error or uncertainty can make a huge difference.
Anyway, that blasting range is starting to look pretty familiar to me after all the times it's been used on the show. There was this tree on the other side of the pond from the blast site that got hit by a piece of the dozer -- it was on the right side of the screen in a couple of shots -- and I have a suspicion I've seen that same tree get hit by debris from exploding trucks before. I feel sorry for it.
One thing I'll give Mr. Rogen -- he showed good insight when he said that the smaller amount of fire in a real explosion as compared to a Hollywood explosion meant it was actually more destructive. Although I guess he could've just been using irony.
And I guess it's cool that he actually took the time to participate in the myth rather than just doing a brief intro. I wish President Obama could've done that last week, though it's obvious why he couldn't spare the time.
Car cut in half: Okay, I guess Rogen couldn't spare enough time to participate fully in two myths, since he was just in the intro sequences here. Anyway, this stunt was obviously fake just from looking at it, the way the car in the film instantly splits in two the second it hits the roof. The shot wasn't remotely convincing. So the interest wasn't in knowing whether it was busted, but in learning the specifics of how it would fail.
Again, I should've anticipated that the car would've been crushed and tilted back like that, since there was nothing to hold the front end down. Most likely, the occupants would've been trapped inside if not crushed themselves.
And I definitely didn't know enough about cars to know why it would fail if the car were cut in half. I am aware that the gas tank is in the back, and to be honest, it never would've occurred to me that residual fuel in the lines and engine might be a factor. But there's so much else there I didn't know about. The brakes not working? Why? Cars have front brakes, don't they? But did the brake fluid leak out when the car was cut? And what's this about starter fluid? What is it, and why does spraying it into a carburetor make the car start? And if it's needed to make the car start, why isn't the supply entirely in the front half of the car?
The front half of a car being able to drive if you rig it with a fuel tank and stuff doesn't surprise me too much; somehow it seems I've seen it done before. I'm probably thinking of something from a movie, but it would be something where they rigged up a half-car to actually drive, like the gang did here.
Where Rogen became annoying to me was when he kept insisting that Kato had miraculously known this was going to happen and rigged the car accordingly. The first one or two times, as a joke, were fine, but the way he kept clinging to it got quickly tedious, especially when he forced the gang to call it "plausible" when it should have been completely busted. After all, the movie itself doesn't mention a "car zipper" or a special fuel tank, so those claims shouldn't be accepted for the purposes of evaluating the myth.
Kari's t-shirt in the racetrack segment gave me pause (and not for the usual reason that looking at Kari in a t-shirt gives me pause). How do you pronounce that? "I atom science?"
Grant would make a good Kato.
Well, he kinda looks the part, and he has the tech savvy, but the guy's not exactly a super-tough martial artist. He's pretty much the least physically robust one of the whole group. If he had to, say, kick down a door, he'd build a door-kicking robot.
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