Domino Masters - General Discussion

[blackwing]

Is anyone watching this?  Like “Lego Masters” but with dominoes.  Lots of similar production elements so perhaps from the same producers.  Hosted by Eric Stonestreet with Danica McKellar, Vernon Davis and some domino expert named Steve.

I watched the first episode, and I don’t think I found it very entertaining.  The teams get like 18 hours to build but we see very little in the way of mechanics or design, just a bunch of talking about how it’s not working, there’s not enough time etc.  And then suddenly, there’s one hour left and everyone is magically almost done.

I think I would just want to fast forward to the end to watch the “topples”.  Why can’t they spend more time with focusing on the build and saying exactly what should happen?   Move the camera and zoom in on each element as the teams are explaining it. They didn’t do a good job with this.

Eric Stonestreet is nowhere near as funny as he thinks he is.  I hate his “it’s Topple Time” catchphrase.

Joe Buck as play by play announcer.  I hate Joe Buck.

The “domino expert” Steve?  Truly a black hole of charisma.  The monotone voice is awful.  The teams seemed to know who he is so maybe there aren’t too many experts to choose from.  

[Taeolas]

Yeah watched both episodes. It seems to want to be a Lego Masters spinoff, but the charisma is severely lacking. The "Domino Master" judge has no charisma or emotion at all which makes him painful to watch. He's probably a great domino engineer, but he should be a behind the scenes advisor for someone else. 

 

As for last night's Holiday episode, the winners were obvious. Having complete runs will almost certainly always get you through, and while the July 4th topple was good, it didn't seem as strong as the other two. 

The New Years one was a hot mess; I'm not sure if the team wasn't as experienced or just bad time management and they got hooked up on their plans or what. But one of the things the show keeps going on about is how important the Story of the Topple is, and the New Years team messed that up big time. 

 

New Years is all about the Countdown followed by the events after it. But their countdown was near the end (ignoring the collapse of the 1). Were I planning their topple, I would probably have done something like:

• "Taxi drive to get to the party"
• Pop and pour the champagne to get ready for the drop
• Do the Countdown.
• Drop the ball
• Trigger the Happy New Year tight topple, maybe with reveal dominos like we saw with the Jackolantern the other team did
• Finish off with a wall Topple that reveals "2021" (or 2022) to show the "New" year. 

The other builds I had no real quibbles with as far as their story went (and admired their work in general). 

 

And yes, like with Lego Masters, I want to see more time spent on the actual build; have the teams explain what they are doing and then maybe a Fast-Timelapse of that particular aspect coming together. When they encounter a problem like dominos out of place, pop up a CG example of what they are seeing and what it would look like if they don't fix it. 

 

And really they should have a camera on every engineer at all times, and multiple cameras filming each platform. When the 1 collapsed for the NYE team, we should have had footage of the collapse. Instead all they seemed to have is the engineer's reaction after the fact. I could understand if something fell early on a different corner of the platform where no one was working on it; but this was where someone was active; cameras should have been on him at all times and have caught the 1 collapsing.

 

[roughing it]

Re: New Years. The team was really in over their heads. I expected the ball drop to be similar to Times Square, with the ball slowly dropping downward, not flung like a wrecking ball.  Also, their Happy NY should have been spelled out, because to me it looked like Happy New York.

I think some teams, from last week and this week, saw a casting call for dominoes builders and thought, hey we can do this and get on teevee, even though they have zero experience (this goes for some of the teams on Lego Masters as well).

Edited March 17, 2022 by roughing it

[blackwing]

I'd still like to see more of the process of building.  They get 18 hours, all of a sudden BAM there's 12 hours left and nobody has really built anything.  Then all of a sudden, dominoes are all in place.  Fancy sets are constructed.  There's all these props.

I know the teams get access to the prop room, but I would like to see the process of the teams going into the room and choosing pieces to incorporate into their builds.  For Week 1, the sports builds, the Dominators found a teapot (that I thought was plastic, but it actually broke and shattered) to use.  The team that did football found a statue of a football player.

4 hours ago, Taeolas said:

Yeah watched both episodes. It seems to want to be a Lego Masters spinoff, but the charisma is severely lacking. The "Domino Master" judge has no charisma or emotion at all which makes him painful to watch. He's probably a great domino engineer, but he should be a behind the scenes advisor for someone else. 

This guy is the worst.  I get that he's some expert but I agree that it's painful to watch him.  Danica McKellar apparently has become some kind of math expert and I like her energy and enthusiasm.  Vernon Davis said he has a love of art and I think he is good.  I don't think either of them know anything about dominoes but they are both infinitely more engaging and interesting than both Steve and Eric Stonestreet.  Why couldn't Danica have hosted the show?

[Taeolas]

One thing I wonder, and this applies to Lego Masters as well and I've never seen a clear answer. An 18 hour build is a LONG time. And when you add in mandatory Talking Head pauses and other breaks, you're probably looking at 20-hours of production, followed by the actual time to set up for the Topple and judging. 

So they CAN'T be doing this all in one day right? It's probably 2 9-hour chunks of building or something right? (Which also leaves the unscheduled 12ish hours for Magic Elves in production to make the props and backdrops that the dominos guys design/request)

If that's the case it would be nice if the show actually included that break; it would make more sense, and could give more talking head opportunities. "After we broke for the day, I slept on it and realized we could do this trick THIS way instead and it would look a lot better..."

Top Chef and other shows acknowledge multiday challenges often and to me it just makes more sense. 

[hiisa]

I know I dont want to sit and watch people do math or whatever but I have questions! Im watching the holidays ep now and one team had stones or pebbles or whatever falling into something else to trigger a reaction--how did they know how many to use? This is my question about all of these chain reactions. They cant practice it. Are they guessing? Is math secretly interesting? I get they dont want to show people systematically placing thousands of dominos but it would be cool to talk about how some of this stuff happens. Maybe some small scale dry runs or however the heck they figure stuff out. 

I felt bad for the New Years team though. Especially the woman. Her team wasnt listening when she was trying to get them on task and she didnt seem to have a forceful enough personality to make them hear her. 

[Taeolas]

It's a matter of experience and practice to know how things fall and how much they need to make sure it will continue the reaction. Each event is isolated so they can test it somewhat (some things are more testable than others), and the last hour or so is spent weaving the domino trails to link events together. That's what we saw with the New Years Eve build; they spent too much time practicing the ball drop event (which left them no time to set up other events and prevented them from building under the ball drop area). It also kept them from building the trails to link them together as reliably. 

[Taeolas]

OK a better group of teams for the Time Travel challenge this week. More fails during the build and during the topple. 

Considering the Dominerds topple went almost flawlessly, and all their chain reactions worked and they just had so much stuff on their platform, I'm not surprised they won. I'm surprised after the cliffhanger of the bridge (will it /won't it fall) they didn't finish following it down the river for the final aspect of their story, even if it literally just trickled off. 

The other three were a toss up. The Bearded dudes had failed elements, but didn't need a restart; but their platform looked very sparse, even before the loss of the Treble Clef. 

Charlie's Angles had a good build, even if it got stuck and needed a poke. I wonder if they had a choice on where they restarted or if the rules said they HAVE to restart at the next bridge element. Since it seems the better restart would have been to knock the red bricks under the skull to activate that event. Despite needing the poker, I still rank them higher than the Bearded ones because they had so much more stuff on their platform; even if the mountains didn't fall either. 

The Future dudes IMO were borderline equal to Charlie's Angles. Their build didn't stop, even if some of the falls failed. I think in the end they edged out CAs for the second spot due to having more stuff that ultimately worked. 

 

As for the Dominos themselves, in the little 'background' sections, would it kill them to show more about HOW you build them? And maybe a bit about WHY they tumble the way they do. Those buildings and towers are built in a specific way so they can topple; but it's useless to just show them build and then knock them down. They could show their Dominos Expert stacking the first few rows/layers to show how they are built that way, and then use a CGI model to show how knocking one down pulls the rest down (ideally) 

[GaT]

7 hours ago, Taeolas said:

As for the Dominos themselves, in the little 'background' sections, would it kill them to show more about HOW you build them? And maybe a bit about WHY they tumble the way they do. Those buildings and towers are built in a specific way so they can topple; but it's useless to just show them build and then knock them down. They could show their Dominos Expert stacking the first few rows/layers to show how they are built that way, and then use a CGI model to show how knocking one down pulls the rest down (ideally) 

I agree, it would nice if the rest of us could have a clue about what was going on, like why exactly the skull didn't fall, or how the buildings are set up. Also, not loving the host. At all.

[LittleIggy]

I’m a Lego Masters viewer. I only just noticed this show because there were no new “Chicago shows.” Watched it. I apologize, Will Arnett. Your comedy shtick is pure gold compared to this host’s stuff. 

[Darian]

I'm in agreement with most of the comments here. I like the vibe from contestants that do something they genuinely love and probably never thought would get them on a network series, like Lego Masters. And they all cheer for each other. So far, I've agreed with the judges and I like them, but I agree we don't get enough of the whys and hows. As someone said, you don't necessarily want to watch someone do a bunch of math but there is so much room to explain the physics better. A show that has the same vibe of everyone cheering for everyone, I think one of the best balances I've seen is on Baking Impossible on Netflix, where they paired a baker with an engineer to make things like edible boats that had to sail, etc. The judges were a baker who did this type of thing (had been on GBBO), a regular baker, and an engineer. You got to see just enough of the competitors talking about making the two parts work together, and the engineer was incredible at explaining in a clear manner who something would or wouldn't/did or didn't work. If they used a bit more of that format, and imo they easily could, I think this would be much more enjoyable.  

[mertensia]

What exactly did the teenage girl bring to the team? 

[Taeolas]

Decentish to really good builds tonight, and I agree with the choices.

Clearly there were more criteria to the designs than what we were told, including the need for Movie Theatre treats (Popcorn mainly) and the need for a "movie poster" topple.

First, the weakest build, Wonder Women's Fantasy build. I didn't really get their gimmick, but it's been a long time since I watched any of the Pirates movie. But they had the least dominos and least stuff in general (and at least 2 failed topples), so they were an easy elimination. 

The other three though were a much tougher call. Had the Teenager's SciFi gimmicks succeeded I'm pretty sure they would have made it. They had the most stuff in general, and felt like the biggest platform. But the spoons failed, and the Hex wall only partly fell. If the spoons succeeded, I'd hate to be the judges because I don't know which of the three I would have eliminated at that point. 

The Mechanical team's romance theme was great. It had a good story, and the electronics were novelties compared to previous builds, and it fully succeeded. The Iceberg topple was probably one of the biggest ones we've seen to date I think, taking up a good quarter of the corner of the platform.

And finally the Back Breaker's Horror theme was great; a good story that touched on the various horror themes, And the final jump scare after the topple finished with the spider coming down was great timing. (I'd forgotten we'd seen them setting up the spider ahead of time). A well deserved win.

[JenLily]

On 3/17/2022 at 1:33 PM, Taeolas said:

So they CAN'T be doing this all in one day right? It's probably 2 9-hour chunks of building or something right? (Which also leaves the unscheduled 12ish hours for Magic Elves in production to make the props and backdrops that the dominos guys design/request)

It is broken up into a couple of days. Eric Stonestreet was on Ellen a few weeks ago promoting the show and all I remember of the interview was him saying that in addition to the regular stress of worrying about accidents during the build, that the actual building where they're at is near-ish to an airport and when they'd come in the next day they'd all be worried that the natural noise/movement that comes from planes flying nearby might have knocked something down overnight.

[blackwing]

On 3/24/2022 at 11:29 PM, LittleIggy said:

I’m a Lego Masters viewer. I only just noticed this show because there were no new “Chicago shows.” Watched it. I apologize, Will Arnett. Your comedy shtick is pure gold compared to this host’s stuff. 

Yup, Will is a veritable comedy legend compared to Eric Stonestreet.  Eric Stonestreet is awful.  I stand by my assertion that they should have had Danica McKellar be the host.

I just caught up on the past three episodes.  It goes really quick when you fast forward through the first half of the show and just start at the Topples.  I don't really care about who these people are, I don't care what they do for a living, I don't care how they know each other, I don't care what their message is, whether they want to show that buff guys are smart too or whether they want to be strong women to inspire other girls to pursue careers in STEM, etc.  I don't need to see them explain their concept because I'm going to see it anyways.  I don't need to see them trying and failing at some chain reaction test and then talking about how it failed, and then seeing the failed test again after the commercial.

At least Lego Masters occasionally will explain some kind of building technique.  Here, the expert Steve talks about how some teams used the most varied amount of domino techniques.  What exactly are those techniques?  I have no clue.  To me, it's 1) set up dominoes, 2) dominoes hit each other and fall.  The show doesn't explain anything at all.

Therefore, fastforward to Topple Time and you don't miss anything, since there was nothing to miss in the first place.

[GaT]

On 3/31/2022 at 3:32 AM, mertensia said:

What exactly did the teenage girl bring to the team? 

She yelled YAY when they first came out.

[blackwing]

On 3/31/2022 at 5:32 AM, mertensia said:

What exactly did the teenage girl bring to the team? 

 

1 hour ago, GaT said:

She yelled YAY when they first came out.

She was also the one who started the topple.  Probably her only real contribution.

[hiisa]

I really love how excited the teams are to watch everyone else's topples.  They all seem SO in to it. Jumping around pointing at stuff, groaning when things don't, commiserating with one another when tricks don't pan out. It's just plain fun.  I think these last two eps have no done a better job of showing teams practicing or talking through. 

Eric Stonestreet doesn't bother me. Mainly because I'm doing other things when he's on!

[appositival]

On 3/17/2022 at 9:58 AM, Taeolas said:

maybe a Fast-Timelapse of that particular aspect coming together.

I think this would be a fun addition. I would like to see time-lapse of all of the builds. The builders could talk while the time-lapse is shown to kill two birds with less of my time wasted.

On 3/31/2022 at 6:32 AM, mertensia said:

What exactly did the teenage girl bring to the team?

I assume that she can stack dominoes very quickly and accurately. Since they don't show that aspect, she got little screen time.

Do domino tournaments exist? I'm wondering if these teams have ever had to deal with time limits before.

[Taeolas]

I didn't realize there was only one elimination last night and spent a lot of time trying to decide who the second team to go would be.

The old guys had the best build, a perfect topple and a nice story all in all; they're probably a good pick to get 1st or 2nd overall.

The middle two had elements that didn't go off, but the overall topple finished and everything more or less worked. I think the failed topple wall might have sent a team home if there was a second elimination. 

For the last team, they had a major failure with the RG Machine not working on the first pool (and even when the boat moved it still didn't trigger a topple), so they were an easy elimination ultimately. 

[mertensia]

Does anyone else marvel at their storylines? I would be all "um. Fish. Showing them off. That's our storyline." 

I admit they got me with the will the cue ball work or not? I had no idea.

[GaT]

What was the point of the Baywatch/Carmen Electra crap? This show needs a whole lot more of explaining how things work & a whole lot less schtick.

[Taeolas]

We see it on Lego Masters as well. Sometimes they snag a D-List celebrity to help pad out the time and do 'skits' along the way, but usually they are only there for 1 day so midway through the build the "celebrity" has to leave. 

They're only there for cross-promotion/name dropping and otherwise have no impact on anything. 

[ketchuplover]

and cue another premature topple zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

[GaT]

On 4/21/2022 at 11:41 AM, ketchuplover said:

and cue another premature topple zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I thought the Back Breakers were a lock, you would think that people would know enough to watch what they're doing when they're on the platform.

[appositival]

S1 E9 · Semi Final: Hot Wheels.

I thought that the Dominerds were better than Brains and Brawn. That said, all of the topples were impressive.

I've found that I can do things around the house during the first half of the show and then just watch the topple. This eliminates most of the annoyances.

[roughing it]

I agree, the Dominerds dominated the dominoes this week.  They are the team to beat.  The older gentlemen, can't remember their team name, while some of the stunts are impressive, it was definitely their time to go. 

Which team had the Romeo and Juliet hot wheels theme?  That story was a Hot Mess and made absolutely no sense.  How in the world does Romeo/Juliet = Hot wheels?

Edited May 5, 2022 by roughing it

[GaT]

3 hours ago, roughing it said:

The older gentlemen, can't remember their team name, while some of the stunts are impressive, it was definitely their time to go. 

OG Topplers. I really liked them, & was hoping they would make it through the end. ☹️

This show desperately needs a different host & a lot less schtick.

[GaT]

Well, that's done. Too much drama for a domino show, & what was that stupid twist with them hanging in the air?

[roughing it]

The show was entertaining, but I agree that they tried to infuse too much drama.  The placement order at the end was on point, the Dominerds were the best team every week.  I would watch a second season.