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I figured I’d start a thread to talk about the show. I’m not a reality show guy and I’m skeptical about how they craft the story lines based on the ads I’ve seen so far. However, I’m planning on watching just because I assume everyone will ask me about it.
So let’s all talk about it together. Whether we marvel at the creations, say Micah could do better, or talk about new techniques. This can be the thread to do it in.I’m stoked Jamie Berard is going to be on it.
I think it will be cool to have a celebrity guest each week.
I think Boone is going to win it. Beyond the brick posted a behind the scenes tour, and they were there the for the last recording. Boone was a host for beyond the brick. it’s a stretch, but I’m throwing it out there.
the harlequin lady team is not going to go away for many weeks for obvious reasons outside of actual talent.
Tyler should be able to do amazing things. @hacim probably knows if he won or not.
The one thing I learned from the first episode is Lego will 100% be releasing a new monorail set. It was the highlight of the entire episode. It was shown in detail multiple times, and even had the QR code take you to a video about the monorail.
Outside of the ferris wheel and almost working roller coaster, I wasn’t super impressed so far with any of the builds from the contestants. I’m hoping things change, because an entire episode of just failures isn’t going to be fun to watch.
Outside of the ferris wheel and almost working roller coaster, I wasn’t super impressed so far with any of the builds from the contestants.
I agree – the builds themselves were not that impressive. Even the Ferris wheel, which was the highlight of the show, was a fairly straightforward build. As the one judge told one of the contestants, they want to see more than just “stacking bricks”. I did see a small sphere on top of a food stand, but otherwise, saw very basic building techniques. I was anticipating being blown away by some really great stuff and came out feeling “meh”. Hopefully, this was first day jitters and the quality of the builds will improve. Micah and Frost would have CRUSHED this. 🙂
I agree about the monorail – how could they feature a product that has been out of production for decades and NOT make it available for sale? The general viewing public probably assumes that they can go out to Wal-Mart today and buy the monorail. Oops. That would have been an awesome retail tie-in: “Starting tomorrow, go to your local Lego Store or Lego.com and order this monorail!”
I’m going to be watching this on Thursdays with my girls, so I’ll avoid spoilers until after watching it.
I called they wouldn’t kick anyone off by seeing how “standard” the builds were. For 15 hours, with those side room interviews, lunch breaks etc, I think those are pretty hard. I wouldn’t be surprised if they actually have people getting parts for them off camera or like people working the power up settings for them. Maybe it’s just from my own experience, but fears are always trial and error. No time for details with coming up with movement.
I too was a little surprised at how “standard” all of the builds were. Seems like the contestants weren’t really prepared to show off for Jamie Berard and Amy Corbett. I wonder how they were selected for the show?
Below are my photos of creations that Jamie Berard brought to Brickfest in 2005, before he secured a position as a LEGO designer.
LEGO had a suggestion box in the technic area. I placed a note in the box that LEGO should make amusement park rides, like the roller coasters being made by k’nex.
Tom Frost is a better builder.
Than Jamie Berard? Or the contestants?
Either way, irrelevant, because Tom Frost didn’t get on the show. 😉
(What would Jonah and Penelope have done whilst their dad was off in LA for 12 weeks winning $100,000? Or would Jonah have been his partner… hmm…)
OK.
My take: no builder (not many, anyway) is an expert in all forms of creativity. One example: Tyler Clites is a fantastic brick artist, but he clearly wasn’t at his best with the egg drop (the overall Funny Farm theme, though, showed some of his skills… and I can’t say for sure, but I’m not entirely convinced his wife is a lifelong LEGO nerd / builder… the teams that showed the best in Ep1 were the ones where both parties were equally talented and they could work together.) The lumberjacks clearly are skilled, but I think they jarred something loose when moving their build. And the team that won the golden brick were pretty darn solid. That said, they might be mediocre in a more artistic build, whereas Tyler might blow everyone away in that type of challenge.
Of course, none of the contestants built Space Pants, so your statement still holds true despite my pontificating…
I think we will see the builds improve over the course of the show as the builders get used to the time constraints, pressure, and we see different themes bring out different builder’s strengths.
They really didn’t give Tylers build enough screen time…
He said:
“There was multiple things they didn’t show in the episode.
1) We were in the top 2 with Aaron and Christian
2) Our ride initially went up at 50% speed and down at 100% speed. However, the motor wasn’t able to do that for long. Ended up having to gear down the motors and run it 100% up and down.”And yeah, regarding what Matt said, his wife isn’t a Lego fan at all 😛
(or at least she wasn’t before she married Tyler. She might be somewhat of a fan now, but still kinda a noob when it comes to building mocs).Oh really? They didn’t even make it clear that there *was* a Top 2. But I am not surprised that Tyler and Mrs. Tyler were right up there, especially once the lumberjacks’ build didn’t work.
Man, you guys are a tough crowd.
I agree with Matt, that nobody excels at everything, and even more so I agree with Josh: 15 hours is really not a lot of time. I know some people (and by some people I mean ‘Micah’) are good at coming up with excellent results under pressure like that, but the majority of the best stuff we see – at conventions and LUG events, and online on Flickr and YouTube – are made by people who picked their own projects and took as long as they wanted to finish them, and without the stress of being on a televised contest and the brutal schedule that goes with it. The show isn’t going to ever be able to directly compete with that. Despite the fact that they don’t have the time to build those ‘every last little detail perfectly in place’ builds, I found that there was a remarkable amount of creativity and fun in how the contestants met the challenges, and much like our own quarterly build challenge, it was neat seeing how many different ideas people could come up with from the same starting point. I did think they did a lot better in week 2, but I also know as a GBC guy that if you don’t have experience working with Lego motors, there’s a steep learning curve, especially in ensuring reliability on an ambitious project. I agree with Josh that it really cut into what they were able to do in terms of detailed building in week 1.
I had not actually planned to watch, since I have always had a serious dislike of this kind of reality show, but I didn’t wanna be left out when people talk about it, and so far I’ve actually enjoyed it quite a bit, certainly much more than I’d expected. They’re obviously playing it similar to other shows with the excessively dramatic music, the cheesy humor, the unnecessary celebrity cameos, and the shamelessly sentimental moments – all of which I could live without – but it’s still fun, and I’m in suspense as to who is gonna win. At Q3, Josh tried to trick Micah into admitting he knows who it is, but Micah either didn’t fall for it, or really doesn’t know.
I also agree that the inclusion of the monorail was bizarre. Lego’s made it abundantly clear that the old monorail is never ever gonna return, and so with no other context, I had interpreted Donley’s comment to mean that Lego had revealed an upcoming monorail set powered by a new system. So disappointing. We also rolled our eyes a little bit when Arnett said “You guys are the best of the best.” Somebody said to me “More like ‘You guys are the best of the people who were available to fly to LA for eleven weeks’.”
“For the record, I do not approve of damaging LEGO.”
Jamie’s the all star on this show, but man, Tyler and Amy’s build SLAYED it this week. beautiful. executed flawlessly.
I thought the pick to send the ladies home was interested and not expected by me…but then I saw the sense of it…I was looking at it solely on the destruction in THIS challenge alone, but I think they’re just thinking “who is the better builder in general, because we don’t want people getting through by the skin of their teeth each time.
also, how my brain works, specific and limited to the context of that challenge, I was wondering if Chris was thinking to use the golden brick, because they weren’t listening to Jamie and didn’t look like it was going to explode well…and then when they were overly selling the effectiveness of the explosion, I could tell – these guys are not to be trusted. They’re smart. They were smart enough to try to add persuasion with their reactions…that made me think they’re smart enough to know, they weren’t going home because 1)they won last week and the show needs their talent around for the story and 2)the competitors are that bad, they weren’t worried about being the worst and could just do what they wanted without worry anyway.
When is the LUG doing an explosion challenge? I will quit my job to be at that quarterly meeting and challenge!
It is interesting reading the comments here. With 3.5M bricks at your disposal maybe you could do something better in 11 hours….but it would take me 11 hours just to decide what day it was and what theme I wanted to try. They come up with a build, a story, gather bricks out of inventory (yes with help if you watch the Beyond The Brick behind the scenes….they have part binders and runners to warehouse storage), and build the dang thing! Phew! My brain is tired just thinking about that! I commend them all for their participation! Whether they stack bricks or create alien, tentacled masterpieces!
Lego on!
This week’s challenge was a train wreck. Spoiler alert for the rest of this post.
I noticed that Boone and Tyler got to have their builds stop motion animated at the end. Did the previous weeks do that? Pretty cool to see Tyler’s do that since it wasn’t minifig scale.
I was surprised Aaron and Christian used their brick. They should have known they’re build skill would carry them through. It’s still a TV show.
Also found out that judge Amy was a back up singer in elevation worship. It’s a Christian worship band, if you didn’t know. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6899300/
I was not sold with the “call your wife” moment on the show. Seemed forced and exposed that these people are basically rats in cages for weeks for this show. Strange.
Hahahah, I just tried to find a clip of Amy Corbett singing in the band, and it’s not the same Amy Corbett! Seems IMDb.com merged accounts that shouldn’t have been.
Oh, 2 more things:
1). If I were on the show, this would have been the week I quit. I don’t do back stories like that. I’m too pragmatic
2). Yinz notice the light up kit in the cinema modular behind Jamie in the little clip? Right up there with monorail.
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