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Did anyone else catch the premiere of Master Blasters last night on SciFi?
Four word description of the show: Amateur Rocket Building Competition. One word description of the show: Duck.
Slightly longer description: The premise is one team of house rocket builders pairs off against another group during a challenge (Not too different in spirit than say Junkyard Wars). Said challenge involves propellent, explosives, and speed or altitude. Each week is a different challenge, and the teams have four days to prepare and compete. The first episode last night was a take on the Wizard of Oz, where the teams had to launch a childrens playhouse (you know the 5' tall ones that no adult can ever comfortably enter) off the ground, spin it as if it were in a tornado, and land it safely with a manaquein Dorthy and Toto intact.
Review: Love the concept of the show, and look forward to seeing how well it does over the season. This episode you could tell that not eveyone in front of the camera felt natural there, and occasionally glanced around to see where the cameras were hanging out. But aside from that, they managed to at least act like it could become normal in the not too distant future. If you've ever launched an Estes rocket, then you should at least catch one episode.
Preview: I'm pretty good friends with one of the guys who helped the idea along in its infancy and is behind the cameras for a majority of the first season. Next week's episode is supposed to be one of the two highlights of the season: World's Largest Lawn Darts (the other episode involves rocket sleds). The competition is to build lawn darts, and aim for a target 1,000 feet away. Each team has five shots, and accuracy counts. Not earth-shatteringly original television, but appearantly there was a fair amount of running, ducking, and screaming caught on film sometime in the first few shows.
After cursing at Sci-Fi for some black screens and bad logistics (who on earth thought a second season of Tripping the Rift was a good idea anyways?), I flipped over to FX to catch the pilot episode of Over There . That show is going to have some fun pushing what is and is not allowable on general cable television in terms of violence and profanity. While I'm sure this show will have fairly equal sized gatherings of fans and detractors, I thought it was very well done both as a drama as well as a look at war. How realisic it actually is will probably be discussed in detail, either here or other forums I'm sure.
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