Finally watched some. I think Bill is mostly fine, and have zero issue with most of his "crotchedy-ness" that seems to bother some people. But overall the show is pretty weak and I don't think helps anything (basically anti-science people will cite this to support cult of personality they use to prop up their anti-science irrationalizations).
Frankly, I hate the format of the show. Having an audience would be fine if he had them actually participate beyond basically being a cheer/laugh track. Show how easy it is to get hands on in science and that it is not something that requires you to be super smart to do. Total missed opportunity.
After the first episode and that terrible bit with Zach Braff, I really want to say "fuck celebrities" and rant about how it adds nothing to a show like this (and actually works against them), but most of the other celebrity guests were better (so far, there was a cringe inducing stupidass song thing at the end of Episode 5). They really are just kinda there and don't add or detract so still largely pointless.
The panels are too short and really should just be a one-on-one session for the time they had. Another missed opportunity. I would have liked an entire separate show with experts discussing this stuff more in depth.
The in the field stuff was the best. Be it the woman that went to the sound healer, or Derek Muller, they got down to business showing what they needed to, were still entertaining, but not pandering or being condescending.
Simply put, this is a science show for people that aren't actually interested in science but want to be part of this science as pop culture push (basically people that cheered when Matt Damon "scienced the shit out of it"). This isn't even to the level of other mediocre science "entertainment" shows on TV either, and there's tons of much much much better science shows on Youtube.
Have to mention again, Derek Muller is great and glad that he's on there quite a bit. I really wish they had given the money to produce this show to him, and let him step up his Youtube show (so basically let him make more stuff like Twisting the Dragon's Tail). I think the guy is a great science advocate and you can tell he enjoys getting people involved/interacting with science.
For those that might not be familiar, Derek has a Youtube Channel Veritassium:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHnyfMqiRRG1u-2MsSQLbXA
He did a really good documentary about Uranium for PBS:
http://www.pbs.org/show/uranium-twisting-dragons-tail/
Do they say it's for kids? I don't really want to click that, but I'd assume it's for people that were kids when Bill was doing actual science stuff.
In the first episode they explicitly say this is more for people that grew up watching his show and are now adults. Definitely shows and not in a good way. Don't like how sometimes he treats his audience as though they haven't learned anything since and likely forgot most of what he taught them before, although usually it's just a nice little "tell what a term means" text blurb, so it's not too bad most of the time.
I watched part of the first episode last night, and he did in fact say that the show was for adults.
I stopped watching when it got to the panel discussion because I don't generally enjoy that format, I'd finished the task I was working on, and he kept just vaguely saying "no one wants nuclear power" with very little supporting evidence.
I may watch more and just skip the panel bits.
The panels were pretty short. I think it was major missed opportunity and could have made for an excellent side show (kinda like the, what I think is horribly terribly stupid bad "Talking Dead" and shit like that, but here it would be great as they could have more in depth discussion, it'd be easy to skip for the people not into it).
I did have to laugh during the one episode where one of the people was advocating for some alternative medicine stuff (I think he was talking about stuff like LSD; which there's some interesting science starting to be done, but he was trying to claim that it is proving detecting "auras" and some other nonsense) and he started getting pretty excitable and then they pretty much blue-balled him and the panel was over.
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