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By Diane Werts McClatchy-Tribune News Service
The Paducah Sun
Aug 18, 2011 | 239 views | 0

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n Reason to watch: A Long Island junkyard becomes a laboratory for “enginerds” inventing crazy somethings out of nothing.
n What it’s about: If you’ve ever wanted to “get that feeling of deviance out,” then “JUNKies” may be the show for you. That’s what metal artist Doyle S. Huge promises in the show’s premiere, when he walks into Freeport Auto Parts and Wrecking to ask junkyard owner Jimmy Ruocco for components to build an “interactive fire sculpture.” It involves flamethrowers and leaf blowers, for a “5 g centrifuge with a homemade pulse jet rocket on it.” You know, “like a jet engine on a stick.”
Which is why this show is on Science, not any of myriad other channels hosting unscripted guy-aimed mayhem. There’s a level of expertise involved. It’s also from the creators of Science’s existing Saturday hit “Oddities,” exploring strange stuff in a Lower East Side secondhand shop.
n My say: “JUNKies” follows a familiar formula, but adds a buoyant burst of adrenaline when the guys spontaneously react to the inventions and their makers. (Billy goes bonkers riding Doyle’s centrifuge after losing a bet.) And though locals won’t be impressed, mainlanders will likely get a bonus kick just hearing the guys’ “exotic” Lawn Guyland accents.
They make for a fun hour paired with 10:30 p.m.’s “real Macgyver” series “Stuck With Hackett,” where a survivalist finds primitive ways to build a working locomotive from wreckage.
n Bottom line: Gotta love a show that assumes the viewer has the smarts to know what a Tesla coil is. (Or at least trusts you to look it up.)