Fail Lab

So episode 1 of the new show I told you about, Fail Lab, is live!

And now I can tell you what it is about.

I think the core concept is a nice idea. You know all those “fail videos” that are so popular online? It’s all about laughing at people who’ve been filmed with something going wrong… they’ve been trying a trick that fails and they get hurt, or an accident happens, or something like that. Well, rather than just laugh about it and make fun of the people in the video, Tosh.0 style, the show is (in a fun, and yes, decidedly edgy, way) built around trying to find a bit of science in the fail video. In fact, the idea is that at the end of the segment, presenter Crystal Dilworth (a smart young scientist on the neuroscience PhD program at Caltech) discusses (and in some instances, argues) with the guest scientist presenter about whether the video is a success or a fail, and sometimes it is a success for showing science! Each week on Discovery’s new(ish) TestTube Channel (excellent name) there’ll be a new episode (Tuesdays around 9:00am) coming up, so stay tuned.

It’s fun (with puppets, dancing, music, and a great eccentric set for the lab!), and will be definitely playing on the edge for some (perhaps too much for those who are skittish about mixing sexuality with science), but from what I’ve seen, the show looks to be on the right side of things with regards showcasing science as fun (without making it all “for the kids” in a tediously dumbed-down way), interesting, and accessible to all, and that short online films of this kind can be done at a pretty high level of smarts and sophistication, production-wise. In short, it shows that just because its online it does not have to look like stupid crap. Episode 1 is here.

Well done filmmaker Patrick Scott and the Zoochosis team! Looking forward to more.

Oh, as I said before, I was in the pilot, and will appear in a few episodes later in the series, so look out if that interests you. See earlier posts about that here and here.

And I just found that I can do an embed of episode one from YouTube:

-cvj