LEGO Masters is back for a second time and this time it’s got something historically proven to improve anything – Celebrities. Ugh.
Look I’m gonna be upfront and say that I am not looking forward to this. What I love about LEGO Masters is seeing LEGO fans create cool things. I don’t really want to see a bunch of channel nine contracted personalities fighting for attention.
The iconic LEGO Masters roller door opens and in come our four celebrities. Scott Cam, Brooke Boney, Wippa, Sophie Monk.
Each of the four celebs will be given a former LEGO Masters contestant to build with. I am looking forward to seeing some more builds from these four.
Brooke is partnered with Michael from season 3. I think Michael was a pretty decent builder.
Scott is teamed up with Jay from season 2.
Wippa gets Stani, Jay’s former teammate.
Sophie gets former LEGO Masters winner Henry. Getting a past winner is obviously a good psychological advantage.
Tonight’s build is for an advantage in the next episode/final (this is just a two episode series). This is a charity season so the prize is $20k worth of LEGO to the Kmart wishing tree regardless of who wins. The real take home for the celebs is bragging rights and a LEGO trophy.
The first build challenge is revealed to be a series of fake shop windows. Each team will build a Christmas window display with each team getting a different theme. The themes will be determined with a standard minifigure pick. The celebs act like they don’t know what this is which is either a bit or shows that none of them did any research after their agents signed them up for this.
The four themes are: The night before Christmas, Santa’s workshop, White Christmas and Aussie Christmas.
Sophie picks first and gets Australian Christmas with a surfing Santa minifigure.
Wippa gets the night before Christmas.
Brooke gets white Christmas leaving Santa’s workshop for Scott. This is the one Scott wanted. It’s a Bricksmas Miracle.
Brickman gives the team a bit of advice – this is all about story telling and meeting the theme. Play up the stereotypes he says.
The teams have 15 hours for this build.
There is one final twist for today’s build – each team gets to build with Brickman for one hour.
We are back to the brick pit and it’s great to see it again. There’s something fun about seeing people just frantically grabbing fistfuls of LEGO.
Brooke gives us a bit of an intro to herself. The most revealing part is that she didn’t play with LEGO as a kid.
Brooke and Michael are doing a classic santa on the roof scene for their white Christmas build. My immediate concern is that this is going to cross over into night before Christmas too much.
Michael is getting Brooke working on honeycombing to bulk out their build.
Scott is building walls.
Wippa and Stani have night before Christmas and they are going for a living room with santa’s legs dangling at the bottom of a chimney. This sounds like it will be a good scale for the space they have.
Next we get our drama for the season… Hamish finished building the Saturn V with Wippa’s kids last year, denying Wippa the chance to do it. There’s bad blood there.
Hamish makes a “Stools down” joke and I think it’s a Block reference? I don’t watch the block.
Wippa is questioning Brickman’s qualifications. I mean there is a point to be made about the fact that Brickman has a team of like 20 people that do all of the builds on the show and don’t really get much credit but that is probably a discussion for another day.
I am not really enjoying Wippa’s “bits”. I think he’s trying too hard.
Henry and Sophie are doing an Aussie Christmas BBQ. The elves that they’ve been working on are looking great. They are going to add technic to get their elves moving.
Scott used to have LEGO as a kid. Could this be the end of his dark ages? Welcome to the world of AFOLs Scotty.
Henry and Sophie are the first to call Brickman over for an hour of build time support. Henry sets him the task of building a koala and kangaroo. It’ll be good to see some character work from Brickman.
He get’s a koala built and added to a tree but the kangaroo doesn’t quite get done in time. Honestly don’t love the koala.
Wippa’s plan is to try and catch out Brickman not knowing what year LEGO was founded. Please just build stuff.
Brooke and Michael call up Brickman to work on a sleigh for their build. Not sure he’ll be able to get this done in an hour.
Sophie and Henry get their elves moving and they look very cool.
Meanwhile Brooke is continuing to work on a Christmas tree build.
Sophie decides to switch up their build and make it Gangster Aussie Christmas which seems dumb. Brickman said pretty clearly to play up stereotypes and Australia isn’t known for it’s gang culture.
Brickman has pulled off a really great looking sleigh. The scale works well with the brickbuilt santa.
Brickman knows when LEGO started. What a shocking development and hopefully the conclusion of the “wippa tries to catch out Brickman” gimmick.
It’s time for a Brickman and Hamish chat about how the builds are progressing.
Brickman is impressed by Sophie and Henry’s teamwork. Less so with Wippa’s contribution to his team.
Scott and Jay are really getting in to their build.
Michael and Brooke are another team working really well. Brooke is really taking to this and her tree is looking really good.
Scott and Jay bring Brickman over for their hour of building support. He is put to work on a big Santa.
Wippa is not doing well on this. He spent hours making a Die Hard poster for their wall. He’s asking for velcro.
Brickman’s santa is looking great but the time runs out before he gets the head done.
Henry and Sophie have built an open safe to help sell their gangster story. Brickman comes around and points out that they aren’t going to use up a lot of their window space with their build. Compared to the other builds it’s just not going to stand out.
Wippa has also busted out a Die Hard 2 poster.
They finally claim their hour of Brickman build time and set him to work on a lounge chair.
Henry and Sophie are adding in some sky behind their build. It’s honestly not going to help that much.
Brickman has finished the leather chair for Wippa and Stani and it looks fantastic. Wippa is starting to come around on Brickman’s skills.
Brickman suggests that Wippa and Stani need some stockings for their fireplace and Wippa is given the task.
Michael and Brooke are trying to get Santa’s sleigh attached to the roof of their build. After a carefully timed break we see that they get it.
Wippa is finally starting to feel the pressure with very little time left.
Time is up and Scott gets to do a “bricks down” call.
Now let’s check out the final builds…
Scott and Jay
The santa’s workshop look great. There are heaps of moving parts, lots of colour and great brick built character work. The only thing I personally don’t really like is the ute rather than a sleigh, but that’s just my opinion. There’s lots of story and details. The only fault Brickman can find is that it could be higher. I agree with that.
Sophie and Henry
I am a big fan of Henry but he and Sophie have not done well here. They got sidetracked by an idea that didn’t really fit the theme and ended up with a build that doesn’t come close to filling out the area they were given to fill out. There are some great elements in there on their own but as an overall scene I don’t care for it.
Brickman is being very diplomatic in his criticism.
Wippa and Stani
I think they have done well with the overall build taking up enough of the space. I think there are a lot of great elements to this one but there are some weak parts. They hit the brief and overall it’s a good build. Not sure it will win it but it’s solid.
Brooke and Michael
I think this is the build that best uses the space. One disadvantage is that this build does not have power functions compared to the others. There are some great parts of this one. My only question would be if it was snowy enough. Yeah it’s got the snowman but the tree doesn’t look very snowy. Brickman seems really happy with this one and I think it will be the winner today.
The top two builds are… Scott and Jay, as well as Brooke and Michael.
Brooke and Michael win it!
I didn’t have high expectations going in to this being a “celebrity” edition of the show but for the most part I actually really enjoyed that. It was great seeing Brooke take to the building so well. She was shown the basics and was able to expand on what she was shown.
I also enjoyed seeing Scott really get in to his build. LEGO is all about play and fun and it really seemed like he was having fun.
Sophie seemed to be getting in to the story telling part of it and I’m interested to see how she goes in the next build.
My biggest complaint would be Wippa. He was just “on” for the whole episode and I don’t want the gimmicks and the bits. If you are going to do celebs at least show them getting in to LEGO rather than forced jokes. Hamish provides enough comic relief.
Have to wonder at what point the producers realised the selection of this Whippa character was a mistake, and didn’t fit the feel of the show.
If they try this again , hopefully they can find some actual half known celebrities that have an interest in lego. There must be a few out there.
I don’t think you even need celebs who like LEGO. Brooke did really well and she had no experience. You need people who will take the concept seriously. Brooke, Scott and Sophie all respected the skill of their partner and made an effort to contribute. Wippa just wanted to be funny.