There are many things people do as children that are less acceptable once they become adults. Throwing themselves on the floor of a grocery store and yelling, for example, or having an imaginary friend.
Play is also something that's normally associated with children, and adults who "play" are usually playing things marketed to their demographic — team sports and video games — instead of with toys, as children do. However just because adults playing with toys marketed to children is frowned upon, doesn't mean that there aren't some incredibly cool people who go ahead and do it anyway. Those people end up on shows like Lego Masters.
Lego Masters is an American competition series based on an Australian competition series of the same name. In both shows, pairs of skilled Lego builders compete in a series of themed elimination challenges until one team wins a prize of $100,000 and the title of Lego Masters.
The builders on this show aren't dealing with your typical childhood Lego sets; they are freehand builders who take themes like "parade float," "roller coaster," and "cool guy walking away from explosions" and create original art from the millions of Lego bricks available to them in the competition studio.
Lego Batman himself, Will Arnett, hosts Lego Masters, and he might be having more fun than all of the contestants combined. (And considering their building is time-constrained and, you know, for money, there are times where he’s definitely having more fun than them.)
As a host, Arnett takes the art of Lego building seriously enough to validate the competition element of the show but he’s also playful as hell. He’s frequently meta about his role on the show, alluding to only saying things so he can lead into a commercial break and giving contestants advice on how to make compelling TV, and that winky humor is pulled straight from The Lego Movie and The Lego Batman Movie comedy playbook.
As for the builders themselves, these people make awe-inspiring Lego builds that seem impossible — you haven’t lived until you’ve seen a Lego griffin with working articulated wings do battle atop a three foot fantasy tower in a Lego forest — but the second coolest part of the show for me is the fact that it exists at all. Before Lego Masters, I had no idea there was a thriving Lego builder community of like-minded individuals who never gave up on the fun and magic of Lego, and I certainly didn’t think I’d see Will Arnett and a host of celebrity guest stars talk about how much fun Lego can be for grown-ups.
I loved Lego when I was a kid. I loved how a pile of chaotic bricks could transform into a castle, a spaceship, the Taj Mahal, or anything you could think of. The clear and demonstrative instructions were also appealing to me, as each snap of a connecting brick was a tangible victory that slowly became one huge, impressive triumph. I remember zoning out for hours, fully immersed in the straightforward microtasks of Lego building, and know that nothing in my adult life comes close to the calm focus I experienced as a kid playing with a box of plastic bricks.
Lego Masters makes me want to pick up where I left off. The contestants are parents and children, married couples, siblings, best friends, and build partners, and if they can un–self consciously enjoy Lego amidst their adult responsibilities, then so can I.
I definitely don't have the skills to free-build apartment towers, kaiju, and roller coasters, but I do have fine motor skills and a strong desire to follow instructions until I own a scale model of the Chrysler Building. More importantly, however, I have a childhood love of Lego that was waiting for permission to come out and play.
Lego Masters Seasons 1 and 2 are streaming on Hulu.
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