LEGO Masters week 8 exit interview
Posted by MeganL,
After a doubleheader the week prior, last week we were back to a normal broadcast schedule. Not for long, though - this week there will be two episodes, on Wednesday and Thursday nights, though watching the latter will mean sacrificing watching part of the last (U.S.) football game of the day. As these are being broadcast on a holiday weekend, exit interviews from these two episodes will be delayed.
We're past the halfway point of the season, and heading into the homestretch. What teams will be around for the next episode, and who went home this week? Of course, we'll have pictures of all the final builds as well after the break.
This week's challenge was to create a mini-golf hole! Teams had to create something that told a story, and incorporated motion - all in nine hours. The final test was having Will Arnett putt through the course.
There were some inventive creations, but at the end of the episode Austin and Justin won the week with their mini-golf hole showing the baking process, with a special surprise at the end.
One team had to go home, and this week it was Ethan and Dom, the TikTok team that was introduced at the end of Episode 3. It was quite a swing for the duo, considering they won last week's challenge.
What has the fan response been to your time on LEGO Masters?
Dom: People on Reddit hate our guts. [laughs]
Ethan: Oh yeah! [laughs]
Dom: In my opinion, we do not deserve it at all. But none of this hate, backlash, and negativity affects our actual social media. I haven’t seen negative stuff on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube, which are the only social media that matter to me. You get used to it because we already make content, so we’ve dealt with haters before. I’ve received threats. It’s nothing, it’s water under the bridge. It doesn’t really affect me. Our moms, on the other hand, they do not take it lightly. It definitely wasn’t what we wanted to be depicted as. But it’s a show. It is what it is.
Ethan: It teaches you as a person to focus on yourself, stick with what you do, and what you believe in. Don’t worry about what other people think about you. I guess that is a positive aspect with that. I mean, it’s affected me a little through the comments. But usually, the negative comments are people who don’t even follow me.
How did you feel when you arrived after the third episode?
Ethan: One word: overwhelmed. Within15 minutes of that (first) challenge. I was so tense that I felt like I just ran a marathon because we did nine days of nothing. And then I was sprinting. I was like, “Oh, I should have been stretching.”
Dom: After that first challenge our legs were so sore because we didn't stretch, we didn't prepare. We should have ran some miles on a treadmill. But my goodness that was a contact sport.
Ethan: This is more than a LEGO building challenge, this is actually a workout.
What was the most challenging aspect of being on LEGO Masters?
Dom: Putting up with Will Arnett’s sh*t [laughs]. I’m kidding, we love Will. He’s hilarious. In all honesty, I think it was really just time management. We missed out on the first three challenges. Having that first week of not doing challenges, I would give that up to go back to episode one and get into the competition right away. That wasn’t an option for us, unfortunately. In my opinion, I definitely feel like we would have done better had we had those first three challenges to learn off of and get that experience.
Ethan: I agree with that. Imagination is a mix of your previous weeks and using everything you’ve seen. We were inside of a hotel room. It doesn’t leave much room for imagination and your mental state. But it is what it is. I believe me and Dom made the best of the situation we were placed in. In our first challenge, we really felt behind the whole time with not knowing the brick pit. We felt three episodes behind [laughs]. I think those challenges would have helped. The first two would have been fun. But, you know, I’m from Texas. It would have been awesome to have a bull riding challenge. That one would have been fun as well. Overall, we did the best in our situation.
How did you approach this last challenge?
Dom: We had a good couple of ideas. But we landed on the Jungle Temple because we wanted our build to stand out. And that was the height. But I feel like we focused a lot too much time on the temple aspect than the second build. I wish I prioritised that second build a bit more, for obvious reasons, of course. I focused on the mechanisms and the story aspects. Essentially, I was like, “Ethan, build me a temple. Here's how we're going to do it.” I first built the conveyor belt structure to basically get up to that height, and then decorated it with a bunch of leaves to make it look overgrown and stuff. And then once the mechanisms are done, we just started building stuff like animals, flowers, to kind of add some colour in there.
Ethan: One thing that I do wish we would have done with that build was add a river. I wish I would have looked around the room. A lot of people built the whole green. We focused on height when everyone else focused on spreading things out. If we were able to add a river or some sort of rocky path where they couldn't just hit it around, that would have been super cool. But honestly, I'm super happy with how our build turned out. I mean we had nine hours. We built a huge temple in nine hours.
Dom: Both of us having very little experience in Powered Up, we were definitely happy with what we built.
What are some details from some of your builds that might not have been seen on the show?
Dom: First one that comes to mind is in Monster Camp and the porta potties. One of the doors had monster toes creeping out, which I thought was pretty funny. I was hoping it would make it in. Another one was I wish we got to see more of the monkey stories on Monkey Mutiny, because there were a lot of just funny monkeys doing funny things. I really posed the ever-living crap out of those things to really convey that there was a lot of chaos going on. I managed to sneak a monkey into our last build, but I don't think we got to see the monkey.
Ethan: For me, it was definitely Monster Camp. I mean, I love that build. It was debatable of what is the top two because the doctors had an amazing build. But I do wish we got a closer look at the haunted house that was in the back. That was something that I was really proud of. I really like the little monster doors and also there's a full on interior there. Also with the overall images of the camp that we got - the pictures were very low. If you raised the camera a foot or two, you can see inside, which would have been really nice. But overall, I mean, I was really happy with our builds. Monkeys was kind of a theme with us. Dom found a 1999 Luke Skywalker head in the bin of the heads, so he placed a yellow Luke Skywalker in monster camp.
Dom: It was a Luke Skywalker lookalike Monster Hunter. That was not Luke Skywalker. It just so happened to kind of look like him. He didn't have a lightsabre at all, it was a space dagger. But yeah, there's a lot in Monster Camp that we didn't get to see. One of the training dummies for the target practice was also built in the style of the monkey.
What were your favourite moments on the set?
Ethan: Everything that made us likeable, especially in the first couple of episodes, was just cut. Especially with Brendan and Greg, we were really close with them. They're like our older brothers. I mean, we spent a lot of time with everyone. They call it a Lego Masters family for a reason. We were very close. And to this day, we're still friends and hopefully it's friends for life which is really cool. But it was so cool how all the teams are unique and different, but they're all amazing people. I'm proud to call them my friends, which is really cool.
Dom: One of my favourite moments is just Jamie and Amy. They were very proud of our Monster Camp build. I mean they said a lot more that got cut, but just hearing that come from them was really cool. And then just some of the goofing off that we had with like Stevens and the docs and Nick and Stacy and just everyone.
Ethan: One moment that was pretty funny that they didn't show was when we got eliminated. Jamie went in for a handshake and I just hugged him. (laughs)
If you had extra time on any of the challenges, what would it be and what would you do?
Ethan: That pirate ship. If we had an extra two hours, I would have loved that. The previous challenge was a dog challenge. We struggled with the stability (with the dog), so with that ship, we're like, “We got to make it strong. We're not building in reddish brown.” So I was really happy with the actual boat, but I look around like everyone has all these big sails. And I was like, “Oh, we should have done sails.”
Dom: One of our one of our concerns was if we built them too big, they might block the story elements. Then we saw some of the other teams take the sails off and putting them back on. We were like “Why didn’t we think of that?” Oh, well.
What are you going to do with the 90,000 bricks you won on Episode 7?
Dom: I have some projects that I don't feel like talking about right now. Because I have big plans with them. But I'm gonna build some stuff with them. It's gonna be cool.
Ethan: For me, with the 90k I really would like to refresh my parts that I'm low on especially like SNOT bricks and reddish brown parts. Because I tend to break a lot of reddish brown parts while I'm building. Also just restore my collection. I've been wanting to build a steampunk ship. Kind of inspired from Treasure Planet - it's been on my mind for a while to do a build with that theme. But hopefully, I will get the parts and it will inspire a lot of ideas. A lot of times I don't really have an idea, I dig through parts and I find one particular part, and that one piece can be the inspiration to a whole model, which is really cool.
You said that you wanted to represent the younger generation. How do you feel you did?
Ethan: For me, my goal with my content (on TikTok) is to be a light. I want to be positive. If you watch my videos, I want people don't forget about whatever's going on and embrace positivity. Now with the show, we were edited in a very villainous way. I wish it would have gone in a different direction with the editing, but I totally understand why it happened. It’s reality TV, it's totally understandable. But with my content that I post, it's my goal is to be a positive light. With the show it kind of has that negativity when you watch us so it's definitely different.
Dom: I think we managed to still have that light-hearted and that funny entertainment aspect to us. My goal making content is just to be entertaining and try to goof off of doing Lego stuff. And I think we did that fairly well. Especially with the whole bricks before chicks thing (in the last episode) and that made it in. I think we represented the younger generation. We definitely don't take ourselves too seriously because at the end of the day, it is a children's building toy and it's fun to play with.
When you were eliminated, you said the best part about the whole experience was the community and the LEGO Masters family. Can you talk a little bit more about that?
Dom: Everyone accepted us with open arms immediately when we came back. Which is really, really nice. I wasn't expecting that kind of reaction. I was expecting a lot of more animosity, but everyone was super nice to us. We definitely gained some really cool mentors and learned some life lessons from these people. They took us under their wings, and it is very much a family. If I need something I can call any of these people. They got me.
Ethan: Exactly what Dom said. I mean, it's a LEGO Masters family, which is amazing. The best part about that entire experience were the relationships that I made. Honestly with me and Dom It made our relationship stronger, and we got to meet so many amazing people along the way.
What advice do you have for people who are just getting into the LEGO hobby?
Dom: For financial reasons, don’t [laughs]. Start small, work your way up. It can be very overwhelming with all these huge MOCs and creations. If you’re getting into MOC building, start small. My biggest advice is just take a Creator 3-in-1 set, and build the three models. Then try to create a completely new model out of that set just using those parts. That’s something I did a few times while prepping for LEGO Masters. Also, make sure you have a space for your LEGO building and collection. It takes up quite a bit [laughs].
Ethan: If you work hard, and you have a passion, you can accomplish a lot. Whether it’s art, whether it’s music, whether it’s LEGO building. That’s really my advice, it’s short and simple. Work hard and have a passion for it. Look at what other people built. Take what works with them, take their style, and kind of bring it and twist it to be your own. Find your own style. Look at other builds through social media and find what you want and work hard for it.
This week's final builds:
Many thanks to our friends at True North Bricks for their collaboration on this interview.
All photo credits: FOX
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8 comments on this article
Okay, remember what I said about the repetitiveness and restrictions of this show after seeing last week's builds? I gotta admit that this week has blown me away in that regard. There's so much more diversity, originality and creativity with these golf course things than with the dogs or boats or any of the previous results (that I can remember from these articles) this season. Good job to the builders!
And sad to see that this week's leaving duo got such poor treatment from the editing people, that's really not how you want to participate in a game show. I hope they'll do well with their solo projects (and holy crap 90k free bricks is already a massive prize, if that was all they'd compete for in this show it'd not even seem unreasonable to me).
Has anyone explained how they got there to begin with?
Obviously someone planned to bring them in, why put them in a hotel room for the first three episodes then bring them in?
Australia is having their LEGO masters "Bricksmas" special at the moment. Do we get anything on brickset with that?
@ozbrickcreator said:
"Australia is having their LEGO masters "Bricksmas" special at the moment. Do we get anything on brickset with that?"
Probably not. It's more to do with Brickset not having anyone local who has access to teams. The only reason NZ got any coverage was because Flags_NZ is an editor here and had contact with the NZ producers.
The mini golf challenge was so interesting. The ideas they all come up with and the things they make are amazing. I was very surprised that Ethan & Dom were the team to be eliminated. It was a fun show to watch. Looking forward to this week shows, thanks for mentioning them.
@WesterBricks said:
"Has anyone explained how they got there to begin with?
Obviously someone planned to bring them in, why put them in a hotel room for the first three episodes then bring them in?"
It was just meant to be a twist for the season, something unexpected and different. I don’t think it really made the show more interesting or exciting necessarily, and just felt poorly implemented. But there is no other reason/explanation.
@monkyby87 said:
" @WesterBricks said:
"Has anyone explained how they got there to begin with?
Obviously someone planned to bring them in, why put them in a hotel room for the first three episodes then bring them in?"
It was just meant to be a twist for the season, something unexpected and different. I don’t think it really made the show more interesting or exciting necessarily, and just felt poorly implemented. But there is no other reason/explanation.
"
My prediction was that they were brought in as a gimmick, that they had no chance at winning (reality shows are scripted, despite what people might try to tell you), and this was always the plan (to eliminate them after a few weeks to add to the drama).
Even though these shows are scripted, the US does have a lot of laws regarding competitions (even subjective competitions) and I am not sure it would even be legal for that team to win.
I disliked the way they were added. The way things were edited they came off as aragant snotty teenagers which is unfortunate for them and the hobby. I think if they had started with 13 teams they would have been much more "likeable" and would have bounced from high to low less. This season feals way more "reality tv" than the other seasons.