Lego Masters TV competition on Fox.

dehnehsu

From the show...     "Actor and producer Will Arnett will host new unscripted competition series LEGO MASTERS, premiering Wednesday, Feb. 5 (9:00-10:00 PM ET/PT) on FOX. The series will feature pairs of LEGO enthusiasts facing off in unbelievable brick-building challenges. Throughout the competition, Arnett, alongside expert judges, will encourage the builders, introduce incredible challenges and put the creations to the test until one duo is crowned LEGO MASTERS."

https://www.fox.com/lego-masters/

The_Rancor

I hope this gets broadcast in the UK on our version of Fox. I think Will Arnett will be hilarious with the format, in a different way to Melvin Odoom here in the UK. I hope after all this international expansion of the format they make another UK series sometime too though! It’s been over a year here and no sign of another series.

GeordiePaul

Lego Batman himself. I hope they get other voice actors from the Lego movies on there too as guest judges. I wonder who the regular non-celebrity judges will be?

Switchfoot55

I'm super excited for this series to start. I was able to watch the first season of the UK version a couple years back after it aired. I'd love to catch season 2. Are there others? 

Will Arnett will bring a lot of the series I think. 

The_Rancor

^ There have been 2 full series/seasons of Lego Masters in the UK with the ‘real people’ teams (all adults, all kids or one of both) plus a Christmas special last year where one celebrity (mostly comedians) joined one kid to make each team. Got quite controversial in the latter when a celebrity knocked over one of the kid’s designs at the last second before judging.

That Fox info page doesn’t say anything about the judges. I wonder if Matthew Ashton or someone similar might appear to judge?

pxchris

I'm very excited to check it out! I even know one of the pairs of contestants, so it will be very cool to see how they do!

SumoLego

To quote my lovely wife:  'Uuuuuuuuugh.  This is a show?'

Snizzlebutts

SumoLego said:

To quote my lovely wife:  'Uuuuuuuuugh.  This is a show?'

My wife was actually impressed by the Aussie version. Opened her eyes to the existence of AFOL, which she honestly didn’t know was a thing.

daewoo

I'll be watching just out of curiosity.  We've got some really talented builders in my area so i get to see cool stuff all the time.

MCNwakeboard

I’m planning to tune in to see how it goes, especially after seeing that Jamie Berard is one of the judges. 

red237

Excited to watch, BUT My heart will sink when they pound them down. I mean really? Donate them to a children’s place or library or something. Geesh.

benbacardi

Pound them down?

bandit778

The_Rancor said:

That Fox info page doesn’t say anything about the judges. I wonder if Matthew Ashton or someone similar might appear to judge?

According to the main page interview it's Jamie Berard and Amy Corbett who are the judges on the USA show.

https://brickset.com/article/48353

red237

benbacardi said:

Pound them down?

The preview shows them whacking the builds with a sledgehammer or something!

benbacardi

red237 said:

The preview shows them whacking the builds with a sledgehammer or something!

Probably just for show. The interview on Brickset started that all the bricks will go into storage after the series until the next one. 

Ian_S

benbacardi said:

Probably just for show. The interview on Brickset started that all the bricks will go into storage after the series until the next one. 

The Australian show had them build models intended to be destroyed in various ways and meant to look good when filmed at high-speed and then shown as a slow-mo "explosion".  So perhaps this show will have a similar stage?

andhe

Yes the UK show had a 'drop test'. Teams had to build something that was sturdy enough to handle, yet 'exploded' the furthest when dropped from a set height.

lee1980

Does anyone know if coming to UK or does one have to do a VPN etc to watch?

Tkatt

^I would assume you'd be able to watch it on Fox.com? Or is that website localized for the U.K.? 

Huw

You can watch at fox.com with a VPN. I'll be using TunnelBear.

daewoo

I must say that I wasn't that impressed with the editing.  Hopefully it gets better.

benbacardi

Huw said:

You can watch at fox.com with a VPN. I'll be using TunnelBear.

Ah, that explains the tweet! https://twitter.com/brickset/status/1225143572959244288

pxchris

Anybody want to discuss the first episode? Should we get a new thread going that is spoiler friendly and leave this one spoiler free?

Gooker1

Definitely excited to finally be able to watch this show and have a US version here.  It's fun.  I'd love to see more behind the scenes stuff.  An hour makes sense, but am i the only one who felt that an hour isn't enough?  Or do i just want more Lego in my life. lol

Bumblepants

Gooker1 said:

Definitely excited to finally be able to watch this show and have a US version here.  It's fun.  I'd love to see more behind the scenes stuff.  An hour makes sense, but am i the only one who felt that an hour isn't enough?  Or do i just want more Lego in my life. lol

Once they eliminate a few teams it will fit better.

I was annoyed they made such a big deal about the failings of the elaborate, complex machines some groups tried like the beard guys when no one called out the hair ladies for just having a crappy spaceship spinning in a circle. Even the duo with the attempt at bumpercars that didn't hold together at least tried to make something interesting move compared to some of the weak efforts like the sign that just rotated. Should the complex stuff work? Absolutely. But call out the low-effort stuff because that is even worse. 

daewoo

I could live without the animations and would have loved to see more detail of the builds.  Additionally, we hardly saw some of the teams at all.  As the field shrinks this will level out, but I found it distracting.

pxchris

I actually loved the animations and thought they added a lot to the watching experience.

Lyichir

Bumblepants said:

Gooker1 said:

Definitely excited to finally be able to watch this show and have a US version here.  It's fun.  I'd love to see more behind the scenes stuff.  An hour makes sense, but am i the only one who felt that an hour isn't enough?  Or do i just want more Lego in my life. lol

Once they eliminate a few teams it will fit better.

I was annoyed they made such a big deal about the failings of the elaborate, complex machines some groups tried like the beard guys when no one called out the hair ladies for just having a crappy spaceship spinning in a circle. Even the duo with the attempt at bumpercars that didn't hold together at least tried to make something interesting move compared to some of the weak efforts like the sign that just rotated. Should the complex stuff work? Absolutely. But call out the low-effort stuff because that is even worse. 

I don't know about that. Being able to know your strengths and your limits is a pretty important part of building. Ultimately on a finished model, a fairly simple function that works reliably is more impressive than an overambitious one that breaks down.

I think the requirement that at least part of the ride move was intentionally made as a low bar to clear, since obviously not all builders would be experts on engineering functional mechanisms. The very ambitious ideas that some of the teams tried were high-risk, high reward—they could very easily have won them the round if they'd worked as intended, but having them fail does indeed reflect badly on them. The good news is that none of the builders were sent home this round so hopefully next week's challenge will play more to some of their strengths.

The_Rancor

If you don’t know much about someone yet in a reality competition, it usually means they a.) didn’t do something remarkable enough yet or b.) their bio is being saved for a future week because they’ll stay in for longer. Either way it should mean they’re not leaving the competition in that week, when it’s a prerecorded competition. If a team does get featured quite heavily, it’s more edgy because they’re either being lined up for a fall, or they were one of the best that week. As you can tell, I watch too many reality competition formats...

I love the hilarious team names though. In contrast the UK team names were simply the first names of the 2 people in them. They probably should’ve only allowed one team name relating to marriage though, makes it seem like someone didn’t have enough imagination

Lyichir

Aaron, whose team won the first round of the competition, posted a little more detail on their winning model on his website: https://www.aaronbrickdesigner.com/blog/2020/2/7/behind-the-build-spaceland?fbclid=IwAR3LewroFpom3YdqSjRrpQQRq0rsLxCAnWjvK9ner5Pa28hFwA3k9yH5z4Y

panchox1

Finally got to watch it last night. Thought it was great. made me want to build something. Can't wait for the next one.

Huw

Those outside the US can watch it, probably illicitly, and without ads, at https://hdmo.tv/tvshows/lego-masters/.

I've just so without issue.

bandit778

Just watched it (thanks for the link @Huw).
Really enjoyed it for a first episode. Seemed a bit rushed towards the last quarter of the show but there were some nice builds and interesting personalities on the show. 
Hopefully get to see the rest of them as well.

gelkster

"Interesting personalities" 🤣🤣🤣

Lyichir

gelkster said:

"Interesting personalities" 🤣🤣🤣

Don't. Don't bring that onto the forums. You've made enough whiny and intolerant comments on the front page. Some of us actually want to discuss the show in earnest instead of just insulting and demeaning the participants for who they are or what they look like.

Modeltrainman

That was really silly, and actually very interesting. It was 'boring', in the best way, I thought.

Fauch

some impressive builds, especially the winners, to pull that off in just 15h

LegoDad42

Too many quick cuts and not enough on the builds but I'm gonna stick with it. It's friggin' Lego.

I guess once they pair down the contestants, we'll get more into the builds.

Glad my Puerto Rican brethren are representing. Very sweet the father and son team. Their build wasn't very impressive and they squeaked by, so I hope they pick up their game. The clark kent bro's and Bearded bro's and Tyler/Amy teams are the ones to beat.

Amy the Brick Master is quite fetching. Didn't know she is the force behind the Friends line. Great stuff.

Jamie is one helluva' designer but they dressed him awful. His glasses too big. You don't see his expressive face enough.
Arnett's best was the awkward moment when Tyler and wife make out in front of him...LOL.

The_Rancor

gelkster said:

"Interesting personalities" 🤣🤣🤣

Doesn’t this describe the front page commenters? 

bandit778

Just to be clear, I meant "interesting personalities" as just that, in reference to how the teams work/ build together and how they tackle the problems at hand as different types of LEGO builders.
IMHO if your looking at the participants in any other way, you're watching the wrong show.

I would personally have liked to have seen a pre-show (even if it was just a web based) for the bio/introductions of the teams in their own building environments to get an idea of how they engage in the hobby so that more time could be given on the show to the tasks and thought processes when they are out of their building comfort zone.

ReesesPieces

Maybe showing their home Lego setup and some of their previous MOCs might have been fun to see what they are capable of.  
My personal favorite was the logger theme park.  Thought it was fun and unique to these guys.  It's just too bad the lift didn't work.
Also, nothing wrong with their personalities.  Much more fun to see them build than to watch myself.

MrShinyAndNew

My first impressions, having watched the AU version of the show:
1. The AU version seemed to have more charm, both the host, and the contestants, but I'm willing to reserve judgement on the contestants until we get to know them more
2. The show so far is very very similar to the AU one, so if you've seen both, there will be few surprises. To me this signals that this format of show won't have a long lifespan if they can't come up with new and interesting contests.
3. I think starting with a motorized build is a bad way to start. Motorizing is hard, and I don't know that it's a good thing to throw out there in the first contest. In every season of every version of Lego Masters that I've seen, not all teams are good at motorizing, and so it doesn't let them showcase what they ARE good at.
4. The show didn't spend enough time on the builds themselves, and I found the animations cheesy.
5. The models didn't impress me that much, but I think that's because of #3. But in the first few rounds of Lego Masters AU I remember seeing several models that I considered show-worthy, which is impressive considering how quickly they were slapped together.

Astrobricks

I liked how they poked fun at the reality show format instead of being super serious about it. I wasn’t super impressed with Will Arnett’s humor so far otherwise.

Jern92

Was it just me or did they skip one team’s intro entirely? I hope it’s coming in episode 2.

datsunrobbie

@MrShinyAndNew maybe they went with motorized builds in the first episode because nobody was actually at risk of being sent home. The teams apparently did not know that, so they had to really work at motorizing the build, and they will start thinking more about motorized builds for future episodes when the stakes are actually higher. 

datsunrobbie

One thing I'm wondering about is the bricks used on the show. Do they take apart all those MOCs and sort the bricks back into the bins, or does Lego just bring in new parts for each episode? If the former, how many people are on the sorting team? If the latter, what happens with the used bricks?

benbacardi

datsunrobbie said:

One thing I'm wondering about is the bricks used on the show. Do they take apart all those MOCs and sort the bricks back into the bins, or does Lego just bring in new parts for each episode? If the former, how many people are on the sorting team? If the latter, what happens with the used bricks?

This is mentioned in the behind the scenes post on Brickset:

We were curious what happened to the LEGO creations after the contestants had finished and were judged, as we didn’t see much evidence of anything that had been already built. (As we’ve seen in some of the trailers, some of the builds meet a rather violent end by being dropped from the balcony, hit by a baseball bat, or even blown up with explosives!) The creations that didn’t meet a destructive end and weren’t saved for marketing purposes headed to the “Brick Separators.” Brent showed us a tent outside where a team of a dozen people would work 12-hour days, sometimes 5-6 days a week, tearing apart builds, sorting through the brick and then replenishing the Brick Pit.

The tent wasn’t nearly as glamourous as the set, with large LEGO sorting heads used for a quick first pass, then hard manual labour to sort the rest into plastic containers before being run back to the drawers and hoppers on the set. We noticed several dozen pieces scattered throughout the dusty parking lot that had escaped the Brick Separators and silently mourned their loss as they were eventually swept up and tossed out.

gelkster

Looks like I was right about Sam. No need for apologies folks.

A weirdo AND an @$$hole.

GrannyLEGO

gelkster said:

Looks like I was right about Sam. No need for apologies folks.

A weirdo AND an @$$hole.

Got to agree with you @gelkster ... no matter his preferences or whatever, he was a dipshit, rude and unpleasant to his partner who didn't seem too bright but then she paired up with Sam. I'd like to see more about building and techniques and less garbage and yak yak.

Pyrobug

Astrobricks said:

I liked how they poked fun at the reality show format instead of being super serious about it. I wasn’t super impressed with Will Arnett’s humor so far otherwise.

 Yes Will, we get it, you're Batman!

panchox1

Really digging this show so far. I would love to see a bit more about the building techniques used along with the design process. Some of that stuff was mind blowing to me.