Mysteries at the Museum

This is a great show. It is amazing what fascinating little nuggets of history they dig up. Some of the stories are so compelling I am continually amazed that they aren't more well known. Some of them would make great films. I will very often research the stories on my own to get more information. Usually, the portrayals are fairly accurate, although they do emphasize certain aspects and play down (or ignore) others for dramatic purposes.

I usually DVR the show and watch it in bed, preparing to go to sleep. As fascinating as it is, conversely,it has a somnolent affect on me, and I usually have to re watch 2 or even 3 times to get through all of the stories. I think it is partly due to the reliable and unchanging rhythm of the show. they start out each entry the same way: setting the scene with the museum that holds the artifact that will introduce the related story, first mentioning some of the other museum holdings, then describing the physicality of the artifact in question. Then they tell the story with silent actors pantomiming the narration.

The narration itself has its own certain conceits: then never use one word when three will do, and adjectives abound. They never use a simple word, when a fancy one exists. (It's never a book, It's and "ancient tome" . People don't die, they "succumb to injuries"). Another little conceit is the rhetorical question and the use of puns. For example, In the story of the Double Eagle balloon crossing of the Atlantic: "Will their "lofty" ambitions be fulfilled? Will the balloon rise to the occasion? Will a slave that worked as a seamstress trying to get confederate plans to the Union be able to "thread the needle" and sneak past guards? How did a brassiere "boost" a young mother's bank account?" I love it. It's amusing.

Don Wildman, the host, is superb. He has a great tone, and conveys a sense of urgency, when called for, without getting all worked up. And always has this kind of amused inflection. Plus he is very easy on the eyes.

Another thing that is part of the predictable comfortable rhythm is timing and flow. When they finish one story, they immediately start the next one, saving the commercial break until a crucial cliffhanger. After the commercial break, they briefly recap the story and proceed. This is good for fast forwarding through the commercials, or if you doze off during the story, you can get up to speed without having to rewind. I swear, it's the same pattern over and over. It's like waves crashing on a beach. Two other shows that are just as good are Mysteries of the Monument and Mysteries of the Castle.

This is definitely my favorite show by far, and has been for years. I seriously hope they never end this show (otherwise I probably wouldn't even watch the Travel Channel), and hope they keep coming up with great stories.

This show is interesting but it is often misleading. They will show an "artifact" like a bullet but the story will be about a Demon Cat. The two have nothing to do with each other!

My dream is to have a job in one of my summary's listed professions. As you can probably tell, I freaking love history. I love everything about it, and what seems to make the present even more closely tied to the past are the artifacts: The clothing, the pieces of wreckage, the bullets, the bones, the letters, manuscripts, paraphernalia... All preserved so that we all may hold a physical remnant of what has occurred before us so that we may study it and perhaps learn from it, or as the show loves to say, "to serve as a reminder..."

That all being said, this show does have a few tiny bumps that I frown at: The one that I find a little grating is the fact that the show sometimes posits a useless question to the audience before commercial break on the possible outcome of some life or death situation in history, when many of us know what happened: I'm not sure if this segment occurred (I haven't seen every episode) but an example that would suffice in paralleling this phenomenon would be Reagan's armored car. He got shot in the chest by a stray bullet that ricocheted off the bullet-proof car from would-be assassin John Hinckley Jr. Most of us who have dabbled in American history, even a quick run-through of the presidents would know that he survived the assassination attempt and was discharged from the hospital after having the bullet removed. But the show, after setting the scene of what was to occur, would ask the audience something like "Will Reagan successfully pull through, or will this assassin accomplish his mission?", or whatever.

These questions at times do help propel the intrigue but for us who know what has already happened, they're kind of moot. But hey, maybe that's a sign that we're more knowledgeable than we realize, ha.

Overall this is a good show to watch late at night. When they have mini- marathons of three, four, five episodes back-to-back-to-back it makes for an entertaining evening. And the experts that are called to showcase the artifacts know their stuff. I recommend this show for any and all American history fanatics, or just a general history fanatic, like me.

I love this show, but as others have stated, one of its biggest flaws is how repetitive it is. From the way they describe the objects, to the adjectives used to describe the "sinister" plots or "daring" plans, to the way they film dramatizations of events.

But my BIGGEST problem with the show is that 90% of the time the artifact shown has NOTHING to do with the story told other than being the same object. For example, the story might be about a treasure found at sea, but the artefact will be some random coin in a currency museum that wasn't in that treasure and wasn't even involved at all. It's just a coin similar to what was found. I just finished watching the episode about wine bottles etched with the president's initials using a dentists drill. But the artifact that they use was some random dentist drill from some museum that has never had anything to do with the story. Like this would be interesting if it was the actual drill used, but instead it's just some random drill that happens to be similar to the one used. The show is called "Mysteries at the Museum", not "Mysteries Told with Random Objects at the Museum"