LEGO Masters USA Season 4 Episode 2 Recap

October 22, 2023 | 1

This year’s season of LEGO Masters USA is setting up to be something extraordinary. Not only did we get a great challenge in the first episode with Brick Lake’s amazing builds, but it is only getting wilder and wackier.

For Season 4 Episode 2, we’re going cuter! For this challenge, teams were once again fighting for their place in the competition and this time there was also the iconic Golden Brick up for grabs.

To help with covering this season, and with episode recaps and exit interviews, I’ve enlisted the help of Miller Keys, who you might remember as a contestant from LEGO Masters Australia Season 1!

For those outside the US, if you want to watch LEGO Masters on FOX, you can stream it on FOX, and use a VPN to access the episodes. I personally use NordVPN, which works reasonably well. [affiliate link]

Special thanks to LEGO and FOX for facilitating these interviews.

For the second build of Season 4, ‘Catropolis’, had the teams creating homes for a bunch of adorable kittens Will brought in to roam the studio.

Each team had one kitten to look after and build for in a time frame of ten hours. Importantly, the cats came with bios that included their personalities and interests that the competitors needed to cater for. Does this mean the kittens count as guest judges?

The builds in this episode were definitely impressive in terms of scale, but I feel like we haven’t seen anything overly impressive yet technically, except for one team. Sam and Neena seem to be ahead of the curve when it comes to technical ability and continued their high-quality building skills from the last episode with their laser-pointer-themed home for their furry friend, Kitty Pants.

What I appreciated was what they did with their kitten’s personality – Kitty Pants loves laser pointers, which is difficult to create out of LEGO bricks, so they actually used LEGO’s spring shooter darts in transparent-red to mimic the laser beam. Not only this, they also managed to create alternating flashing lights on the roof!

Jordan and Chris built one of the biggest models in the challenge but missed the brief from a safety point of view which Brickmaster Jamie was quick to point out. Unfortunately, due to their lack of structure in the taller parts of the build, their kitten wasn’t allowed to explore the full model. This was a shame to see as it looked like it could have been a much more successful build if they considered these features earlier but that’s just how it panned out.

Unfortunately, grandmothers Karen and Amie were sent home with their tree fort built for the hunter-explorer cat, Felix. I spoke to them after the episode and they had some pretty juicy things to say about what happened behind the scenes, and how the edit didn’t do them any favours.

Throughout the challenge, there were many setbacks to the duo, including Karen falling more and more ill as the episode went on. She mentioned this early in the interview and later mentioned she wasn’t overly excited about the cats roaming around, which felt like a “sucker punch”.

Could she have been allergic? Amie felt that another setback was the team’s height, which stopped them from reaching certain bricks in the brick pit, as well as making it difficult to build throughout the show. The tables were at “armpit height” for them so Amie often resorted to sitting on the table to build but was asked to stop as it was blocking the cameras.

However, perhaps the biggest setback was the judging. As we have seen time again, LEGO Masters loves a big “wow” moment, and if a build doesn’t bring scale to the table, it probably won’t do well. As I mentioned earlier, many of the teams are bringing scale, but don’t seem to be doing as well technically so far in this season. So what happens if a build fits the brief, but doesn’t go big?

“We had probably the best interaction with the kitten out of anyone who was there and that didn’t get shown on TV”, claimed Karen, who was disappointed that their build was so glossed over, including their motorised parts which were never shown.

To further highlight their demise, the show even added cricket sounds when their model was shown, which Amie wasn’t pleased with.

It’s often important that while shows like LEGO Masters aren’t scripted, a lot can be done in the edit and you never get to experience or see everything that happened in any of the challenges.

I personally am disappointed this team went home so early, but they said the experience has been great and has wildly changed the way they build for the better.

“Everybody has different strengths and weaknesses… And so I think I learned something from every other team”, Karen said her time was full of constant feedback and suggestions which all made her a better builder, while Amie the Iron Man athlete was excited to finally have a hobby where she could sit down.

To end the interview on a lighter note, I asked if the cat’s got to take the builds home. Of course they didn’t, but I did find out something even nicer – one of the makeup crew members actually adopted two of the cats, so there was still a happy ending after all.

In the meantime, I can’t wait for the next episode. If you haven’t watched the trailer, it looks like the teams will be building erupting volcanoes and if my eyes tell me the truth, one of them might be BIONICLE themed!

Check out all the builds from Catropolis below!

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