Welcome back friends to our ongoing coverage of LEGO®️ Masters USA, Season 3. After a tense finale last week, we’re back with our Top 6 teams for another SMASH THOSE BRICKS!! type challenge. Go tall was the crux of this week’s brief. Build as tall as you can, but also as strong as you can AND as stylish as you can. Wrecking Balls To The Walls (that title….) gave our teams a few criteria to meet in the challenge. And naturally, after all that hard work, it would get destroyed. This time around it was a massive wrecking ball that swung into the towers and shattered them to bits. Points to the show for continuously coming up with inventive ways to destroy LEGO®️. Let’s swing on in to see what happened.
Previous Episodes:
Let Us Say Thanks
Before getting into the builds, I just want to give a shout out and thanks to probably the unsung heroes of this show: The cleaners. And it’s not just the cleaning. What about all that sorting? Once a build is done it most likely gets disassembled. I can’t even stand sorting my tiny pile of bricks. Imagine millions of ’em?! How big is that team of brick sorters and cleaners? They must find pieces for days after a challenge like this. So to them let’s all give a round of applause. And hopefully some kind of good overtime pay.
The Sorting Crown
Now the overall theme of the episodes is Castles, but with a skyscraper style twist. Instead of picking their own thematic inspiration, each team got to pick a minifigure out of a crown. That minifig would then inform each pair on what direction to take. I like when there’s randomized selection like this. It’s a fun bit of surprise and it should help the teams get straight into their builds without struggling to find inspiration (at least not too much). Each fig is a nice medieval character with classic elements to bring to the design. With 9 hours on the clock, it was time to build their character a house. OH, and just to make it extra tough, no technic elements allowed! Savage.
1: Race to the sky
Wrecking Balls To The Walls was primarily a height challenge. And to incentivize the risk of building upwards, the team with the tallest finished structure would win immunity for this challenge. But it was a risk as height alone would mean sacrificing time on other areas. Two teams took on this particular goal in hopes of immunity. Nick & Stacey and Dave & Emily built high and relatively strong right away. It was a classic race with quite the ending. At the final moment Nick & Stacey placed a star at the top that just eked out the Canadian siblings. Just when it looked like they had it, the star fell off while moving the model into place. Total bummer. Dave & Emily win that very helpful immunity spot with over 5 feet of castle goodness.
2: Go For Broke
Our resident fire fighters took a different approach this week. They made it their mission to build as sturdy as possible in the hopes of beating, breaking or stopping the wrecking ball. A bold tactic to be sure. Their character was the Troll Giant, the only big fig style character. And their build, ‘Troy’s Troll Bridge’ actually did it! Kudos to them for building a ROCK solid base that actually caused bounce and stalling in the wrecking ball. Everyone was impressed. The build itself was wonderfully detailed. Building a bridge castle was very clever and they really delivered on their promise. It wasn’t enough for top 2 but it was still an amazing build.
Joining them in the safe zone were Emily & Liam and their ‘The Cursed Keep’ build. Centred around the Troll Queen minifigure, they crafted a story of a cursed queen-turned-troll at the hands of evil magic. I just want to give their build a shout out. The colours and brick work that easily read as a black corruptive force overtaking the bright pink walls was wonderful. Amazing work from the mom/son duo.
Or 3: Make ’em laugh
Wrecking Balls To The Walls also had storyline criteria requirement. Although to be fair, most challenges do. Building this tall castle also meant creating a unique and creative ‘home’ for the chosen minifigure. Brandon & Greg picked the Jester minifigure. At first they seemed rather uninspired. But once they just went all in on the concept and ‘let loose’ so-to-speak, they really knocked it out of the park with ‘Jolly Ol’ Jester’s’. No major attempt at height, just a really cohesive, colourful and fun build. It even had some strength as it broke into large chunks once that wrecking ball hit it. All this paid off for the brothers as they secured another top 2 spot.
TOP 2
Joining the brothers this week in the top 2 were the already safe Dave & Emily. Great week for the Canadian siblings with their second top 2 spot in a row. Their ‘Forest Haven’ build for their Forest Maiden minifig was not only the tallest, but one of the more impressive visually. They really pulled all their details and aesthetics together. It really read as a castle and it exploded fabulously! I could see this as a set quite honestly. In the end it was Brandon & Greg that secured the win – their THIRD win at that. The brothers are the leading the pack with victories and the team to beat at this point. They also have the golden brick still, having opted not to use it. Pretty good position to be in.
Bottom 2
The wrecking ball took out more than just bricks this week. Nick & Stacey found themselves at risk of going home for the third week in a row. They have really struggled with their time management and concepts of late. They got the Snow Guardian minifigure (a recent CMF character fyi) and quickly got to building ‘The Arctic Fortress’. As I already described, they went for pure height. Sadly this meant little time to create a very much needed lava monster to really sell the story of an attacking enemy. What DID sell the story though was an EPIC explosion once that wrecking ball hit. WOW. They filled their white castle with tons of loose red, yellow and orange bricks to show the interior flooded with lava. It probably saved them this week.
The second team in the bottom this week were last week’s winners Austin & Justin. They selected the Wizard minifigure, a really classic character. Their build ‘The Wizard’s Duel’ started out rocky. The Brick Masters were skeptical of their approach as they weren’t making his castle. Smartly, the doctors pivoted away from that and reconceptualized. But like many before them, the sudden change meant a lot of time had been used up and the build never came together. Great looking wizard hat, but sadly that wasn’t enough. They became the latest team to leave the competition.
Final Thoughts
Wrecking Balls To The Walls was a fun episode overall. But I am getting nervous for Nick & Stacey. I’ve been rooting for them all season. But their momentum was utterly vanished after 3 bottom placements in a row! But ya know what? They’re hanging on and making some wild statistics for themselves. I don’t think any other team has this track-record. If they end up winning, that will be a true redemption story.
- Will was savage this episode. They really wanted him in full demolition mode
- On today’s LEGO®️ Learn segment – PSYCH – Will smash! So great
- The return of Evil Will was silly and amazing and I’m here for it
- Greg walking around talking to everyone while drinking a Gatorade was what? A power move?
- Hat’s off to Greg’s build intro for all that energy – probably all that Gatorade
- “I don’t know how the evil math works on this one”
- Oh golden brick, when will you ever make a difference?
- “Eww, there’s beard hair in this.”
- Seriously though, cleaning all those smashed bricks must suuuuucckkk.
OVERALL SCORE: 7.5 / 10
And that’s another episode in the bag. Although I’m not big on the destruction eps, I did like the different approach to it. The builds were pretty great too. I do think Dave & Emily could have won this one though. They did go higher AND make a perfectly castley castle. There’s always next week right? What was your favourite build? Did you agree with the results? Comment below and let me know. Thanks for reading and until next time, keep on brickin’.
-Frank
LEGO® Masters USA airs Wednesdays at 9:00 PM ET/PT on FOX in the US, and on CTV, CTV.CA and the CTV app in Canada. Follow our full coverage here.
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