The Artist Formerly Known as Science
Guy
(This
review contains minor spoilers!)
Bill
Nye the Science Guy is the rare show that is just as popular now as it was
when it went off the air in 1998. Classrooms everywhere were quick to pick up
on how the show was able to teach students about various scientific subjects in
a fun and entertaining way that everyone could enjoy. I personally remember
always being excited whenever the teacher would wheel in the good old CRT TV
and put on some Bill Nye. It ranks up there with Magic School Bus and the Humongous Entertainment Junior Adventure
games as some of the best edutainment you can find for kids.
With the advent of Netflix, I guess
somebody decided the time had come for Bill Nye to return to the small screen. Bill Nye Saves the World is meant to be
a more adult oriented take on the classic formula, as Bill takes on modern and
controversial topics such as climate change, asking the audience big and
difficult questions. However, the biggest question viewers will have upon
finishing the pilot is how Mr. Nye expects to save the world when he can’t even
perform the simple task of keeping his audience invested in what he’s trying to
say.
Saves
the World’s biggest problem is apparent from the first five minutes. This
show has absolutely no clue what it wants its target audience to be. Right off the bat Nye comes out and
explains that this show will be much more adult-oriented than Science Guy was because of the more
grown up topics he’ll be focused on. But this is very quickly thrown out the
window as he goes into a science experiment/stand-up routine about climate
change, spouting millennial lingo and cringe-worthy jokes that are so painful
you don’t pick up on the actual science he’s talking about.
If there was ever a show that
personified the “how do you do, fellow kids?” meme, it’s Saves the World. Adding to the problem of the demographic
confusion, the show that is so proud about how “adult-oriented” it is that it
proclaims it in the cold open seems to be vying for attention from millennials
more than anything. Bill seems to have visited the Duke Nukem school of humour since the last time we saw him, because
now he apparently thinks that references = jokes. Everything from emojis to
hashtags are covered, and it feels less like Nye trying to be funny and more
like your weird uncle trying to be hip with the kids. In the end Saves the World, which is so content in
tooting it’s horn about how adult it is, comes
across as more childish than Science Guy
was.
Even worse is that this show has a live studio audience,
which means a laugh track every time Bill makes an attempt at humour. Can we
all agree it’s time to get rid of laugh tracks? The only purpose they serve is
to try and convince the viewer that something not funny actually is.
Actually, come to think of it, that’s
exactly why this show needs one.
So the humour sucks. Is the science
interesting at all? Well, I’m sure what he’s talking about is pretty cool, and
it’s very refreshing to see a show that isn’t afraid to tackle culturally
relevant and controversial subjects, but it’s delivered in such a way that it’s
hard for anyone to be engaged by it. The reason why Science Guy became such a classroom mainstay was because it
delivered knowledge in a way that was fun, with quick scene changes and fun
visual humour to keep kids interested in whatever subject Bill was talking
about. Here it’s just Bill either standing or sitting and rambling on and on
and on about climate change while you desperately try not to cringe at the
painful attempts at humour. And when the show decides to get more serious, it
actually becomes even worse! A massive chunk of the episode is Bill sitting at
a desk talking in a monotone voice with three science experts in boring grey
suits for what feels like decades. Once I realized this desk chat wasn’t going
to end anytime soon, I got up and went to bed, and I won’t be returning anytime
soon.
Bill
Nye Saves the World has no idea what kind of show it wants to be. It so
desperately wants to be taken seriously as an adult-oriented science show
taking on controversial topics, but it also wants to be a successor to Bill Nye the Science Guy by throwing in
lots of lame attempts at jokes and millennial references. While the show’s
heart is definitely in the right place, the cringe-worthy humour makes it hard
to focus on the message Bill’s trying to pass, and when the show decides to go
full serious it becomes so boring that it’s hard not to be tempted to switch to
something else. Maybe it gets better later on, but I’m not wasting more of my
precious time on it. At the end of the day, the most interesting scientific
experiment to come out of this show is how it can help cure insomnia.
FINAL SCORE
2/10
Awful
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