Quiet group lately. I've lurked here a while, but last night's
episode has me needing to vent...
steamer <steamer@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
: --Of all the episodes of JW that I've watched never before have I
: seen two teams paddle so far up **** creek in their designs; what a
: complete hoot! I'm a big fan of Col. Dick but really! :-) A very fun
: episode, cosidering the format limitations imposed on the US version.
Heh.
Ugh, I found myself thinking what a complete abyss the American show has
fallen into. It's been a slow but steady decline. I thought the first
American series (The one the farm brothers won-- 'Long Brothers' team
or some-such) was quite well done. I really enjoyed the car cru****ng
episode at the end of that series. The next year with the wall-ramming
vehicle finale was a sign of things to come. The next two seasons were
a fit of poor s****tsman****p and mediocre builds. The two series just
prior
to the mega-wars debacle had me hoping they were getting on a more even
keel,
but then the bowser/crash debacle followed by yesterday's thing
shows just how at sea this American production crew is. I can only
hope that this series pulls in worse ratings than the previous
scrapheap series that just completed. Then maybe they'll start putting
back components that made me start watching it and encouraging my kids
to watch it in the first place. I only want my kids to watch
the scrapheap shows and the 3 decent American series. No sense
letting them waste their time on the other American series.
Good Junk (My Opinion Anyway)
-----------------------------
Hosts that treat builders with respect, admiration, and sometimes awe.
Hosts that appear interested in what the builders are building.
A knowledgeable Judge (I like the Disney guy they've used in the last
couple Mega-wars series. He should be a host though, with
another expert specific to the task as his judge each week)
Animated drawings of 'the plan'. I like the traditional chalk-board
drawings, but the new refined illustrations used in yesterday's
show was a refre****ng change.
Tension caused by uncertainty of a design decision.
Lots of footage of actual fabrication in process.
Team members with inventiveness, and real experience. Ability to
make hydrolics work a major plus. Best teams in my mind are
the Brothers Long, Mulewrights, Cats, Barley Pickers (oh how
I wish that Trebuchet would have launched just one car), and
the Megalomaniacs. A tournament of champions is a series just
waiting to happen.
Challenges:
The challenge is best when you get two machines that are actually
able to complete the challenge and at least one of the machines can
do it well. Spectacular failures are good (car-flingers) too though.
The show is always better when the machine performs better than
anticipated. I loved the Barley Picker's back-hoe for example on
the excavating challenge. I was amazed at how well the machine
performed.
Bad Junk
--------
Hosts that compete with the builders for the camera's attention.
Interviews where the host seems to think himself as im****tant as
the person being interviewed.
Hosts that are Manic all the time.
Hosts that do *very* little other than pose ***-illy.
Slow-Strumming guitar. (A huge annoyance of the Scrapheap series)
*way* too many minutes of some guy walking through the scrap heap,
searching and finding nothing (Another Scrapheap series annoyance).
Misleading editing for tension. You can just tell while
watching a show when they're editing a sub-plot into the show that
never really existed. I've read confirmation that such has happened
from a couple quotes from show participants. Show us what really
happened, not what some sequence of film can imply might have happened.
The senseless electric bolt zap as the team members don their colors.
The need for the team to open the build area.
Having a team captain complain about 'this must violate some laws
of physics or something'. Have *someone* on the team who can
crunch some numbers and know if an axle is likely to snap or not.
Shots that look obviously posed.
Camera special effects and whoo****ng sound effects.
Loud heavy-metal theme music.
Challenges:
Nothing is worse than awarding the trophy to the team whose machine
failed the least. Snowmobiles and yesterday's sand slalom were the
two most abysmal challenges I recall.
---------
I'll agree though, it was somewhat entertaining to see exactly
how badly these two machines were going to do. Both had to
be considered failures as neither was able to hit all the gates.
Had we all not see the complete failure coming 15 minutes into
the show, it would have been more entertaining I think.
All in all, I thought the show was a waste. Aside from radical
production changes in the rest of the episodes (which I'm sure won't
happen), the only thing I can think of that will redeem the
series will be a string of innovative challenges and machines that
perform well-- in other words, the exact opposite of last night.
One show like that for entertainment is OK, but an entire series
of this would be even more unbearable than the Crash/Bowser series.
Even the that had one redeeming rock climbing episode and a
couple of other episodes where the machines performed admirably.
--
Craig S
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