Stream It Or Skip It?

LEGO Masters Jr., hosted by Kelly Osbourne, is essentially the same as LEGO Masters, but with kids being the contestants. The five teams of two range in age from 8 to 14. They’re tasked in each episode to use LEGO bricks to create an elaborate themed display, usually with movement and other mechanical elements. The team that wins the competition gets $50,000.

Opening Shot: As the set of LEGO Masters Jr. lights up, host Kelly Osbourne welcomes people to the show, saying, “the builds are epic, the challenges are wild, and the builders are… little.”

The Gist: Along with Osbourne, there are two “Brick Masters” who are there to advise and judge the contestants’ creations, both of whom work for LEGO. Amy Corbett is a judge on the adult version of the show, and Boone Langston was a contestant on the first season of the US version of the series. Each team gets an adult celebrity helper, who stays with them throughout their time in the competition: Andy Richter, Porsha Williams, Alison Sweeney, Jordin Sparks and Ravi Patel.

In the first task, the groups have 7 hours to do a “Disney train ride”-themed display, where different worlds are created based on the two characters each team chooses: Minnie and Mickey, Ana and Elsa, Ariel and Ursula, Peter Pan and Tinkerbell and Woody and Buzz.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? LEGO Masters, adult version. Both shows have a Great British Baking Show format.

Our Take: We’re in the camp that thought that LEGO Masters should have always been a kids’ competition. Yes, plenty of adults build with LEGOs (or, as the kids point out, the proper term “LEGO bricks”). But all of those adults started their love of LEGO when they were the age of the contestants on LEGO Masters Jr., and it made a heck of a lot more sense that this show should be built around kids rather than adults.

We do get some of the concessions the show has to make because the contestants are kids, though. There are half the number of teams, and they are given less time for builds than the adults get; the ten-hour builds on the adult version would probably run afoul of child labor laws. The scope and scale of the kids’ builds are smaller than what the adults are supposed to do, mainly because of the time constraints.

We even get the use of the celebrity helpers. Relying on kids, even ones as bright and funny as the contestants on this show, to be the main source of entertainment on a primetime network reality competition is a dicey proposition and puts too much pressure on them. Having the celebrities takes that pressure off. Some are parental, like Sweeney, and some are just flat-out funny, like Richter and Patel. They are all encouraging, of course, and the idea that they stick with the same team until the team is eliminated encourages everyone to bond and become a brick-laying machine as the contest progresses.

Kelly Osbourne, who was a celebrity contestant of the original series, has a sense of whimsy that fits in well with the kid contestants, and the addition of Langston as a “Brick Master” works because the contestants know that he was in the same position as they were only a few years ago.

What Age Group Is This For?: LEGO Masters Jr. is definitely for all ages.

Parting Shot: Osbourne tells the teams to “hit the bricks.”

Sleeper Star: All the teams are great, but we find that taekwondo buddies Vincent and Hudson and siblings Max and Zoe as the most interesting.

Most Pilot-y Line: As usual, we’re seeing a highly edited depiction of the builds, so even though it looks like some teams barely had anything done when there were only a couple of hours left, the fact that they all had completed and working displays by the end tells us that the time depicted wasn’t actually when a particular scene occurred.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Every aspect of LEGO Masters Jr. shows that everyone is having lots of fun, from the kid contestants to Osbourne to the guest helpers. And isn’t that what we want to see from a show where people are playing with toys?

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.