Lego Masters

[The Chronicler]

Just a few hours ago, I watched the first episode of a new show called "Lego Masters". Basically, it's a show where groups of people compete to build all kinds of creations out of Lego bricks and pieces, with different challenges for each episode. Oh, and it's hosted by Will Arnett (the voice of Lego Batman).

Is anyone here interested in this show? If you happened to watch this week's episode, what did you like about it?

[Mumbling]

Hmm! I'd be interested, but sadly there doesn't seem to be a streaming service here that has picked it up (only a commercial television station, but I wouldn't be able to watch at the times they air the show). How are you liking it so far?

[The Chronicler]

I guess I should've specified that I was referring specifically to the American version. There are apparently different versions of this show for certain countries, but they all mostly follow the same premise. There's already been one for UK and one for Australia, and I've heard plans are already underway for one in Germany.

As a Lego enthusiast, I'm definitely liking this show a lot already. Even after just one episode, I'm quite impressed by what some of these teams have been able to create (though other teams definitely have much to improve on). (I guess one thing I forgot to mention is that the competitors for this show consist of teams of two, with a total of ten teams at the start that are eliminated one at a time until the last one standing is the winner.) The challenge for the first episode was to build a section of a theme park, with a requirement of at least one moving component. I'd rather not give out spoilers, so I won't bother going into details on who did better than others and what exactly they all built.

[The Chronicler]

Second episode was on a couple days ago, and this week's challenge was a space-themed build with the intention of being destroyed in a spectacular way. The three methods of destruction were to be smacked by a "spaceball bat", to be dropped from a balcony, or to simply be blown up. Quite an interesting challenge, with some rather neat creations made by many of the teams.

[The Chronicler]

Watched the third episode last night, and this week's challenge was to take an item that had been cut in half (such as a bicycle, a guitar, a diving helmet, or a laptop computer, among other things) and build something creative for its missing half. While many of the creations looked pretty interesting, a few others were clearly lacking. A rather interesting challenge, I have to say.

[The Chronicler]

For the fourth episode, the challenge was to build a scene based around a movie genre that's selected at random. Halfway through the build, a twist was thrown at the competitors where they suddenly had to include a second genre chosen for them to go with what they had already built. Definitely proved to be quite a difficult build for many of the teams, though at least some managed to do quite well.

[The Chronicler]

Fifth episode was on this week, where the challenge was to build a mega structure for a city block. But just when everyone thinks their work is done, another twist is suddenly thrown at the teams, where then then had to add on something to show their city block being under attack in some way. That sudden twist allowed some teams who did poorly in the first build to greatly improve their model, while other teams who seemed to do well in the first part ended up struggling in the second part.

Spoiler: ShowHide

There was a particularly horrifying moment when one team's tower toppled over in the final minutes of build time while transporting it to the display room, but thankfully that was in the first part of the build, so they were able to repair the damage and be much more careful when transporting it the second time.

[The Chronicler]

The sixth episode consisted of two separate builds. First, the teams had only half an hour to build a racecar to race down a ramp, with the finishing order determining which teams would be given more building time in the second build. The second challenge was to build a six-foot long bridge to support as much weight as possible. While some bridges failed rather quickly, others turned out to be so strong that they actually ran out of weights and eventually had to max out at 1000lbs for safety reasons.

[The Chronicler]

In the seventh episode, a group of kids were brought in to complete one of those fill-in-the-blanks stories, and the challenge for the teams was to build a portrayal of that story. But just when they thought they were done came the twist of a second part to the story, with the kids finishing that story in a different way for each team. I have to say, with those kids being involved, there were all kinds of wacky and nonsensical ideas being thrown around for the whole challenge.

[The Chronicler]

Eighth episode had the four remaining teams pick from a collection of minifigures to be assigned the roles of either super heroes or super villains, and then build either a heroes' hide-out or a villains' lair for those minifigures. In addition, the teams were paired-up to also build a scene of an epic battle of good vs evil between their separate builds. Quite interesting to see teams that would normally compete against each other now had to collaborate for part of this build.

[The Chronicler]

After taking last week off, the ninth episode this week was all about the Star Wars theme. The first challenge was to build a droid, with whichever team with the better builds getting first pick in the second challenge, which was to recreate a famous scene (from a choice of ten) from across all nine movies. Loved the creative ideas they came up with in the first part, and the big builds of the second part were all quite epic.

Spoiler: ShowHide

Also, no teams were eliminated this time, so the final episode next week will have three teams competing for the ultimate prize.

[The Chronicler]

Final episode of the season, and the three final teams are challenged to build... whatever they want, with one hour to create a small mock-up, and twenty-four hours to build the whole thing (the longest time limit of any build this season). All three teams definitely took this opportunity to build some really epic creations.