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Junkyard Wars Nominated For Emmy
abh writes " CNN is reporting on the Emmy nominations, apparently there is a new category for reality-based TV (such as Survivor), and none other than Junkyard Wars got a nomination." Junkyard Wars rocks - excellent recognition of good stuff. The Daily Show was nominated as well, and deserves it, IMHO.
That so-called "junk" can love, man.
Hey, there's this new concept - not all replies are in direct opposition to your point of view. I knew you weren't saying the outcome is rigged, I just disputed your term "fixed"... it was very misleading.
Experts, Leaders, The Guys Showing The Team How To Build The Device. Does it really matter?
Yes, since the "experts" are the non-team members brought in for one show, and the "leader" is one of the people on the team. The expert provides specialized knowledge, and the leader organizes the construction.
It's a bit like looking at a car and saying: "Engineer, mechanic, the guy who puts the car together. Does it really matter?". I've seen experts that don't get their hands dirty, or come up with great *theoretical* ideas, and a good team leader will just ignore their plan and go with a simple, direct design.
Realistically, there are three experts - the Judge also makes comments, and the hosts will wander down and try to subtly warn teams of grevious potential problems.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
I would decidedly not used the word fixed. The outcome is not predetermined.
the team leaders who built the crafts on Junkyard Wars.
Not quite. Unless that particular show was an extreme abberation, the team *experts* are the ones who stock the junkyard. In some cases (the underwater diver episodes, for example), there was no stocking whatsoever. In others (the rocket and steam engine episodes), the junkyard is stocked with pristine, new, tested parts. In both those cases, the reason should be obvious. I would seriously question the common sense of someone who is slapping together a high pressure steam engine in 10 hours and letting people ride in it. Safety is a concern. In the case of rockets, they were focusing on the body construction, not the propulsion, which are almost completely seperate aspects.
And yes, the corner of the junkyard that is the set is *very* "rich". Lots of working engines, lots of unpunctured batteries. Basically, it's real junk from the rest of the much larger junkyard tossed into the corner.
Also, in addition to the two days of filming, they used a 3rd day off-camera to finish up their hovercrafts.
Again, unless it was a very abberant episode, the had 10 hours in one filming day. The next day, they make sure the damn things work. In some cases, they just pull them out and play. In other cases, which they very clearly mention (something along the lines of: "We given both teams some extra time to make sure their /foo/s are up to the task"), they give up to a few hours. Almost always, it is at this point that they get some spray paint and paint their device in team colors.
It's important to remember that the point of the show is education, not competition. The prize is a wad of welded metal. The experts are generally chosen to present two very different ways of solving the problem and have had time to research the situation. The teams are thrown in with no knowledge of what they are going to build, and have to do the construction themselves. There is (in the British set, and presumably also on the American set) a large facility filled with stuff that you'd get from a Home Depot (a large warehouse style building supply store here in the states). It's behind the vehicle weighstation that's filmed in some of the episodes. That's where the paint, glue, screws, blades, etc all come from. They *have* run out of supplies, and the 10 hours ticked by.
Incidently, a few more details: they have an hour for lunch, tools down, debate on the blackboard encouraged. The clock stops when the host asks the people to explain what they are doing (as a result, the ten working hours often end at different times for the two teams).
I have almost all the episodes on tape, have interviewed Robert Llewellen for my radio show, and have exchanged emails with a few prior players. I am putting together rules for a micro version of the game for SF Conventions. It's one of the only television shows that have every caught my attention.
Sure, it's spun to be entertaining. They selectively edit and try to make sure things work; the point is to show how things work. But is it "fixed". No. The teams are genuinely out there trying to win.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
Fortunately, the Emmy's (and Oscar's) are not always the popularity contest that the Billboard, MTV, People's Choice, etc. awards are. There is a chance (albeit slim) that Scrapheap Challenge could pull this off.
But, to be fair, isn't Road Rules the only original show in the bunch? Junkyard Wars (as I implied) is a re-edit of Scrapheap Challenge. Can't remember the geneology of Survivor, but that may be original as well. And shouldn't 'The Real World' have been included before Road Rules?
Still, it's nice to see a new category. I only wish they had never invented the animated series category. The Simpsons should have been up against comedies. Why separate it because it's animated? Of course, it probably never would have won, but it certainly contributes to the public's low opinion of animated shows.
A few other comments:
WB, why push a show that you are not going to have any more? Of course, UPN would love it, but it doesn't make sense to complain. Oh, and BTW, the reason you didn't get any nominations is because your network is full of repetitive drivel. Please don't tell me you think a 'very special episode of Seventh Heaven' is deserving of an award (and BTW, I watched it for several years, and have nothing wrong with the show. Nice, moralistic family 'drama'. But it doesn't do or say anything. It certainly doesn't push any boundaries or do anything in an exemplary manner.)
And yes, 'Catcher in the Rye' IS a dime-store paperback. Even at 16, I thought this kid was a whining sniveller. I don't know about anyone else, but even as a geeky teen, I didn't have that much time to be doing a bunch of navel gazing like good old Holden Caufield. Get over yourself, man.
(And let's not even talk about his 'odd' relationship and thoughts about his sister. I think I saw that on Jerry Springer a few weeks ago.)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Wish I had mentioned this in my earlier rant (message 30). Why the hell isn't this show reliably captioned? Why, why, why? It seems that the last British season is, but not the first US season (and the world series also was not captioned).
Battlebots is captioned. (Robot Wars UK is not). Are You Being Served is captioned. Fawlty Towers is not. Half the weird stuff on Sci-Fi is captioned (and what the hell is up with that show they put on at 8:00???) Why can't current episodes of Junkyard Wars be captioned?
Now, before anyone gets the idea that I'm one of those Deaf Community, ADA nuts, I'm not. My wife is hearing impaired, with a cochlear implant, effectively shutting us out of the 'Deaf community'. (Not to mention that she married a hearing man). And she watches JYW sometimes. Like... When it is captioned!! And she truly get's a kick out of it, but not enough to make time for it.
More important than my wife is the schools. If TLC wants to be in more, they are going to have to caption more stuff. Some school districts have requirements that captioning is available. And as others have pointed out, JYW is a not bad science/applied engineering problem.
Finally, that giant sledgehammer the Americans made was cool as shit. I really liked the British team (Hey, all those bikers? Can't go wrong) and I bet Nosh would have had a helluva good time bashing his own machine with the Americans killer sledge.
There's no problem a big enough hammer won't solve.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I discovered Junk Yard Wars earlier this year, and it has since become a family favorite. Such a favorite, in fact, that my children (a boy, almost 7, and a girl, almost 10) both insisted that I set the VCR to record the JYW 4th of July US vs. UK challenge. Then when we began watching over at my folks' house and realized it was a *two* hour special edition, all plans for watching fireworks went right out the window, and we stayed put to see who could smash that Jetta the flattest.
The show is very well-done, and I think it's not only entertaining and funny, but one of the most educational shows on TV, teching basic physical and mechnical principles and reasoning seamlessly as an adjunct to the competition. Sure, the yard is occasionally seeded with stuff that would not typically be in a junkyard (propellers and a surprising number of running engines, for example), but that really doesn't detract from the incredible feat of inventing and fabricating a usable machine in only 10 hours. More incredible to me is how often very different approaches turn out to be quite closely matched when they compete.
This is truly one of the best shows on TV, and the only one my family watches on a regular basis! If you haven't checked it out, you owe it to yourself to do so, especially if you've ever harbored any leanings to be a mech hacker..
"The future's good and the present is nothing to sneeze at." - Roblimo's last
As I said in a previous post, both machines ALWAYS works, so I'm not surprised.
They do? Have you been watching the same show I have?
The shows have devices ranging from the functional but pathetic (Bowser's rugby ball crossbow, 2 sail land yacht) to the almost pathologically broken (Both the blimp and the plane on the radio-controlled bomber episode) to the so-bad-it's-embarrassing-to-watch (the Navy's amphib, which couldn't steer, float or move across water or land without the humans pushing/paddling.)
Eric
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
Creativity with junk will be competing with crap.
What are the odds that the presenters will "vote off" the losers in the category?
For those of you who haven't activated the Sci-Fi news Slashbox, a complete list of Emmy nominations in all categories is available here.
- W. Blaine Dowler
http://www.bureau42.com
That's the point though, not everyone can. The expert comes up with a base idea, and it's then up to the team to try and make it happen, given the limited and rusty materials available. And then to keep whatever it is alive long enough to beat the opposition! :-)
:-) There's any number of wrong ways of doing stuff like that, and when they involve ppl standing around them, riding on them or operating them, you'd damn well better have an expert on hand to make sure everyone survives! And the time limit (regardless of if they get "tinkering time" allowed the next day) is restrictive enough without the extra hassle of having to experiment to find a way of doing something. For the more dramatic programs (the gliders and rockets, for instance), there is literally no way they could have done it without experts on hand; they would have had to have given them a less technical task, and the programme would have been poorer for it.
Be practical here - no-one knows enough about tractor pulls, drag racing, hang-gliders, high-pressure pumps, steam engines and rocketry to be able to design one of each successfully in a day. It isn't possible. You could maybe find two teams in the world who knew about all those subjects, and then they'd be blown out bcos none of them knew anything about balloons...
Grab.
Grab.
Who cares if key components are planted in the junkyard? The contestants do not win any money. They do not have dreams of becoming reality TV celebrities. They take time off work, fly off to who knows where and spend a full day welding and getting sweaty and dirty. They compete "for the glory." I relate to these people more than any of the 'pretty faces' on Big Brother or Real World.
I was under the impression that the (original) UK version was known as "Scrapheap Challenge".
For those of you actually wondering about the difference between Junkyard Wars (US, with US guys) and ScrapHeads (UK with UK guys), well, there isn't any. It is just the same show, with two different names for each border of the big pond.
TLC basically broadcasts both (they even had a super finale US vs UK (US won) for the Fourth of July). Sure they change the male anchors between the two.
I'm basically thinking that they shoot each "sequence with an anchor" twice, once saying "ScrapHeads", once saying "JunkYard Wars".
Nobox: Only simple products.
Sure, Junkyard Wars is cool, but the new season of Battlebots is cooler.
All of the arena hazards got a 5x (yes, five times) improvement in motor power (they didn't look all that wimpy last year, but they're positively rocking this year), and the saws and hammer were improved to increase destruction capability.
The contestants have clearly been improving their bots, too. They're heavier and stronger.
And when the saws or one of the bots flips a 300-lb contestant 10 feet into the air, it's massively cool.
I give it 10, maybe 20 years before the show turns into a live-action MechWarrior. Probably with a tie-in to Junkyard Wars, if everyone's smart.
The only degradation year-to-year: they changed spokesmodels and now it's that plastic-surgery disaster, Tracy Bingham. Hey! She weighs maybe 100 lbs, she's half-lexan, and she's got the brains of a remote-controlled car; maybe the plan is she should get in the arena! See how far she'd fly off the kill-saw...
--Blair
"Claimer: I'm not connected to the show in any way except via my eyeballs."
Yes, the British show "Scrapheap Challenge" is relabeled by TLC as "Junkyard Wars." Until the recent all-US version, that's all Junkyard Wars was. But TLC's ratings for the relabeled Scrapheap Challenge have been terrific, so they contracted with RDF Media and Cathy Rogers to produce an all-US version of the show.
And yes, Robert Llewellyn (the British host) is much better than George Gray (the American host). I find it amusing that two cast members from Red Dwarf have jobs as gameshow hosts. Craig Charles (who plays Lister) hosts the British show Robot Wars while Robert Llewellyn (Kryten) hosts Scrapheap Challenge/Junkyard Wars UK.
Apparently, British viewers got to see the US vs. UK championship back in December 2000. I'd discovered that website months back and studiously avoided reading too much on there because I wanted to be surprised by the outcomes of the shows.
By the way, the first season of the all-US version of the show was shot in England at the same junkyard as the British version. The second US season will be shot at an American junkyard in California (and is probably being filmed right now).
Check out:8 :w ww.the-nerds.org/on-seeding.html+&hl=en
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:3Sa9bLOTFk
Here is the text of the article:
Seeding the scrapheap
People have noticed that this junkyard is pretty unique in the breadth of its contents. The usual cry is "its fake". Here is a discussion from someone that has climed the Canning Town piles, in search all sorts of things. The short answer: It is part of a real scrap yard, and its contents are tailored by adding and removing items, to the particular challenge. This tailoring doesn't decrease the challenge significantly.
First off: it helps to understand the purpose of the show -- its stealth science education - tricking 10 year old kids into watching an explanation of how a wing works. They sit thru the mini-lectures bcause they get rewarded afterwards with a shot of someone making precision adjustments with sledgehammers. When chosing challenges, its the education that drives the choice. The competition is partly to make it addicting, and partly to give the kids the idea that actually designing and building something might be a lot of fun.
Yes, this is a "rich" junkyard. There are all sorts of neat things to find. And unlike some, there is a lot of stuff that isn't metallic. (usually its construction debris -- the plywood we found had clearly been a concrete form in a prior life) -- Its mostly what you get, when you don't have the yard workers picking over the good bits. The set was a corner of a real working scrap yard. On the other side of the wall, there are cockneys in hydraulic claw loaders, tossing cars thru the air. You have to wear a hard hat when you go to the bathroom. (its out by the truck scales). When stocking the yard between episodes, the random lumps of steel plate are just dumped over the wall from what they have sitting around. But yes, they will add extra stuff to make it possible to complete building a machine.
The basic rule for seeding: If its not possible to safely improvise a part with the time and tools provided, they will provide something that can be pressed into service. It will require some ingenuity to make it work, it will never "just bolt on". If there are specific safety regulations, the relavant parts will always be provided. For example, things like safety valves, regulators, and gas tanks will be planted, and will have their certification paperwork sitting in the directors briefcase. (and if we happen to find such a part that isn't one of the known good ones, they don't let us use it) A good example: The propellor that the navy crew hacked up was provided. Any propellor they could make in the time they had (no time for glue to dry to laminate) would not have been safe to run up to speed. Another example was the tank and regulator used by the Dipsticks submarine - The tank had a current hydro test, and the regulators used were new.
But: Just because they give you a part, that doesn't mean its clear sailing. For example the wheels in the tractor pull. Sure they were there, but none of the differentials in the yard came close to fitting the bolt circle. If you wanted to use them, you had to make it work.
And this brings up another point: That same helpfull crew that hides essential parts, can just as easily remove them. They made sure that there wern't matching differentials for those wheels. In the fire fighting boat episode, there wasn't a pump to be had. Both teams had to make a pump. And not just a wimpy one, the burning shed was supposed to be 50 feet away.
*** Where are we going? And what's with this handbasket?
to accept an Emmy, weld it into an obscene gesture, and spray the audience with oil. For an old A-team addict, the show is my crack cocaine.
"Get them before they get....
Yes, the show is fixed. Not too long ago, they built a couple of hovercraft on Junkyard Wars. I am building a hovercraft of my own (a real one, not made out of junk) and have spoken with both of the team leaders who built the crafts on Junkyard Wars. Basically, they submitted a list of necessary parts to the producers, who then stocked the yunkyard. Also, in addition to the two days of filming, they used a 3rd day off-camera to finish up their hovercrafts.
:)
If you'll recall, one of the guys carved a prop out of a piece of "old" burnt wood - yes, he really did carve that prop from scratch! But the wood wasn't old. It was a brand new piece of wood specifically selected for the purpose, and the Junkyard Wars crew burnt it for them beforehand.
So yes, the show is rigged, but you have to give them some credit: How could you possibly have entertainment otherwise? They certainly wouldn't be able to build most of what they do if the junkyard wasn't stocked. What isn't rigged is the outcome: It's a real competition with real winners and losers.
-Ryan, with the unoriginal sig