Q&A Hollywood
Q: Is “When Calls the Heart” coming back to Netflix? It ended so abruptly and left us hanging.
A: There are a couple of different ways to read your question, but I suppose the answer would depend on whether you mean “come back” as in “release new episodes” or “come back to Netflix” specifically?
If your question is, “When will `When Calls the Heart' come back with new episodes,” I'm too late. The new, eighth season of the fervently beloved drama series debuted on the Hallmark Channel a couple of weeks ago (Feb. 21). That's its actual home. The show is produced by Hallmark for its own channel before selling the subsequent streaming rights to Netflix — some of them, at least.
This brings us to the other interpretation of your question. The first five seasons of “When Calls the Heart” were available on Netflix in the U.S. until the end of January, but they've since been removed. Meanwhile, in Canada (the show is a joint U.S. and Canadian production) the first four seasons are still available on Netflix, but not the others. As of right now, there is still no information available on when the show will return to Netflix in the U.S. (or indeed when the later seasons will appear on the Canadian version). There are other ways of streaming it, though.
Most notably, Hallmark has its own streaming service, Hallmark Movies Now, that offers the full run of the show up to date. That one's only available in the U.S., though (sorry, Canadians).
Q: Did the “MythBusters” guys really survive on a deserted island with nothing but duct tape, or was it faked
for the cameras? Most of their stuff is legit, but this one makes me wonder.
A: You have to take a lot of things with a grain of salt on “MythBusters,” starting with its definition of “myth.”
There is, in fact, no pervasive belief in our society that a person can survive on a deserted island as long as they have an unlimited supply of duct tape. That was not a myth that needed busting.
The long-running Discovery Inc. reality show became a victim of its own wild success, soon running out of myths to either prove or disprove. And so the show soon fell into the habit of constructing elaborate challenges to allow the hosts to impart some kind of scientific knowledge while doing something cool.
That's the lens through which you have to view “Duct Tape Island,” the first episode of Season 12. In this one, the challenge was to “survive” being “trapped” on a “deserted island” using just duct tape and what was available on the island.
There are a lot of quotes there because it's all hypothetical. The hosts had a whole TV crew with them — meaning they were never truly trapped — and therefore were never really at risk of death. And as for the island, it wasn't deserted — it was Oahu, Hawaii (you can even clearly see a hotel in the distance in one shot).
But the setup allowed “MythBusters” to design and complete a number of sub-challenges — creating a distress signal, catching food, finding fresh water and so on. And the hosts did, indeed, complete them all.
It's up to you whether the episode was still “legit” or not, but that's half the fun of “MythBusters.”