Good Morning Glass Blowers! - Blown Away: The Netflix Art Reality Show

I want the eggs for my house.

i want those potatoes! and janusz's hairbrush and alex's terrarium.

watched a few episodes and I like it but I'm very frustrated by the minuscule amount of time given over to the actual judging conversation. in fact the whole thing is too rushed but particularly that aspect. also, in the british shows you get to know a lot more about the competitors so you care more.

I think the brief 25-ish minute length is due to how it was originally broadcast on a Canadian channel that I hadn't heard of myself until... yesterday and so, budget and all that.

SPOILER BELOW

Also, between her bangs, the binary way she speaks about gender, and her final presentation, there's no way Deborah isn't a TERF, right?

Enjoy the show, but Momo was wildly underestimated -- head judge had no idea of what she was doing and a real ignorance of Japanese glass and art culture.

It's funny because I was always surprised she hung around so long. I did like her razor but the rest of her stuff always looked clunky/80s knickknack.

she was okay but seemed unseasoned to me

Oh boy the ep where they didn't cut anyone was SO RIGGED. Kudos to Deborah and Patrick for playing it so that the show was going to have to cut Janusz, who was CLEARLY the most skilled, which they really really didn't want to do. I mean it was a huge cop-out and not the contestants' fault but it kind of pulled the curtain back on the machinations.

Also by the last 4 contestants they were just KILLING IT in how tough they looked all lined up for the judging. A solid wall of workboots and determination and excellent posture.

I loved watching Deborah's face every time the judges complimented Janusz.

i watched the first episode of this show expecting it to be basically the great british bake off but the cakes are made of glass and thus was alarmed and disgusted to see contestants actually say out loud that they thought their work was best and that they should win

how dreadfully gauche

Wait until Deborah starts sub-tweeting every other artist in her camera moments. "It's not my style to just pick up a bunch of cane just to show that I can. I don't do that."

Two episodes later: Does that iirc.

I thought Deborah was robbed in a couple of challenges but boy, was that last challenge bad. They both were but... sausages and eggs?

nah i'm not cut out for that kinda cutthroat competition, i want my contestants to be cloyingly supportive of each other every step of the way

FYI ulysses, I don't know if this is up your strasse but Portrait Artist of the Year on UK TV is great.

Why not sausages and eggs?

But yeah Deborah was the queen of shade, can't remember when - one of the last few eps - but she gave one HUGE eyeroll when one of the other contestants was talking.

I loved her skillet. and that one beautiful large egg. I saw she has made that egg into a vase too. (not into her sausage chandelier)

i will look for portrait artist; don't think it's available in the US but i think i have channels

Deborah's breakfast was great and also a recreation of the most prominent project on her website.

FYI ulysses, I don't know if this is up your strasse but Portrait Artist of the Year on UK TV is great.

Whatever you do don't watch the BBC's Big Painting Challenge by mistake, which last year was embarrassingly bad and pretty much a masterclass in how not to paint.

just grabbed the first two eps of this year's PAotY; will report back here.

the ep where they didn't cut anyone was SO RIGGED

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/tv/story/2019-07-31/netflix-blown-away-deborah-czeresko

It was my goal to become a maestro. There were no women maestros, historically, and that was something really important to me — to do something that wasn’t yet done by women. Glass never had women in it, except for packing it, or putting labels on it, or painting it. I went to Murano about 30 years ago for the first time and I entered a factory. I got introduced to the factory where Jeff Koons was producing some of his work... and when I walked in, they wanted me to blow a glass, and I said I would blow a goblet. The whole entire factory came running to watch me do it, because they had never seen a woman blowing glass before. It was frightening to me on some level, because there was such a division of activities. But also motivating to me, to become that person that could do it.

anyways, i continue to hold out hope that great pottery throwdown gets picked up for an american/canadian audience on the back of this for netflix

If they have another season they should let Deborah do the glassblowing info segments every episode.

perhaps side by side with kid mero

They also need to get a different host than whoever that non-entity is.

He's kind of sinister! And clearly allied with power ie the series judge and positioned as a confidante to the judging, which is insane unless he's actually knowledgeable about glass?!? Like who the f cares, kid.

I had to look him up. He was on Big Brother.

He looks a bit like Adam Scott when he plays evil characters

thanks for the heads up on Portrait Artist; it's spot on what I want out of a reality show. Very amused that after two episodes, I haven't the slightest who any of the "celebrity guests" are.

I’m really sad Alex and Momo didn’t get to go head-to-head with Deborah. Thet struck me as really inventive, and better matches than anybody else. Whereas Deborah’s whole “I’m a Creative woman, not just mechanical,” refrain, which got picked up by the judges, did her as many favors as her actual art. Obviously she’s insane levels of talented, but posturing herself as a creative feminist force - and then making a pan with a hole in it - struck me as first-year art student pandering.

There are some people coming up in the next episodes that I imagine you will know. xp

agreed, soda but she was robbed in the potato challenge, I thought.

well it wasn't a potato challenge but you know what I mean.

Steve Mannion, the presenter of PAotY, is surprisingly charming.

oh, it's Mangan, not Mannion.

This show is hilarious, simultaneously almost a straight parody but also proof that just about anything can make a good competition show. I love being immersed in a world I know literally nothing about, especially something this relatively exotic, which is amusingly squeezed into a generically dumb TV competition template totally at odds with the almost magical craft on display.

Where did they get this Dunkleman host?

I love that on Netflix they cut out the coming-ups and before-the breaks filler that ruins many reality shows.

This show is hilarious, simultaneously almost a straight parody but also proof that just about anything can make a good competition show. I love being immersed in a world I know literally nothing about, especially something this relatively exotic, which is amusingly squeezed into a generically dumb TV competition template totally at odds with the almost magical craft on display.

― Josh in Chicago, Monday, August 12, 2019

Ink Master is the OG of this. It dropped off hard once they stopped focusing on craft to amp up "interpersonal drama" but the first couple of seasons are gold. With the added pathos of permanent work done under intense time pressure and out of the artist's wheelhouse.

I am looking forward to whichever ilxor first takes a glassblowing class.

I'd be scared shitless! TS: molten glass vs. broken glass.

i applied for a scholarship! doubt it'll happen though.

I would never be able to do the blowing part, my lung capacity is shit.

Looks like there's not nearly as much of that as I might have expected. At least from my limited exposure to glass blowing at Colonial Williamsburg. Just a little toot here and there.

Looked like that was mostly the interns' job. :)

WTF at that rigged ass shit?! Janusz ass should have been gone for making shitty bubbles in that team contest !! i watch a ton of these contest shows and there have been plenty of times the "favorite" to win tanks a challenge and they're booted like they should be, that was such a transparent fix. So glad he at least didn't win .

i mean pour one out for all solid Top Chef contestants that went down in the restaurant challenge for being shitty at working the front of the house.

I agree. Just watched the final episode last night, and while that dude is technically accomplished, the bubbles should have taken him out. I also think Patrick sort of lucked into the final three, whereas Alex was not only more technically adept imo, but remarkably consistent and thoughtful. And, like Patrick I guess, seems like a pretty chill dude. Def. felt if not rigged then certainly shaped to lead to those final two.

where is season two is what i wanna know.

Surprise, season 2 is up! We're almost done already, some good stuff. Plus, weirdly, one really talented jerk who keeps ignoring the theme or even specific instructions of each challenge, yet somehow keeps getting by.

it's great, knocked it out in like two days

I'm not sure the one contestant admitting they were virtually blind, and the suggestion they had kept it from the production team, was quite as heart warming as they thought it was on a show where people swing round 2000 degree bits of melted sand in close proximity to other contestants and support staff.

one really talented jerk who keeps ignoring the theme or even specific instructions of each challenge

this guy! 'make a cartoon character' 'ok i'm gonna do the charlie hebdo attack'. 'make a centrepiece for a special occasion' 'not all special occasions are happy'. the arrogance from him and some of other contestants is hilarious, it's like the anti bake off.

also there's no way they're given the challenges on the spot like they suggest, they definitely get some pre-planning time.

That guy was a jerk, but FRENCH WRAP?! That was dope.

these show moves at such a nice quick pace! not too much back story filler or BS

I love when the streaming versions of reality show are either created or edited to remove the commercial breaks. I hate the typical "coming up" before the ad break and the "here's where we are" afterward.

Finished both seasons in a week recently. I do enjoy the fast pace and it makes it so easily watchable, but I still wish there was a little more factual stuff about glass-blowing. And fuck, I so want to try it (I would be terrible at it but OMG FIRE I LOVE IT).

My favourite from the first season was definitely Alex, with his elegant goth work. Not sure I had such an obvious favourite in the second season - the final two had both produced brilliant pieces, the asshole guy was clearly exceptionally talented, and I did think that, despite being wildly inconsistent, when Nao hit it she was great.

I think they do so much tinkering around with the outcomes in this show, more than I've ever noticed before on a competition show. Like in season 1 when they made the artists pair up, and then one pair clearly did worse but that pair contained the most talented person, so they couldn't eliminate the best artist just because of the bad partner, so--surprise!--they eliminated no one in what was supposed to be an elimination challenge.

They did the same thing in season 2 at least once, also they let Christ get away with NEVER MEETING THE BRIEF even though they eliminated other people for "not meeting the brief" presumably because Chris is so insanely good. I thought it was a little facile to eliminate him from the final after working so hard to keep him in until then!

I've seen the thing of nobody going home in elimination rounds loads (I think it regularly happens in Masterchef), so it didn't piss me off too much. If they said that each round the judging considers past work too then it'd be completely reasonable.

That said, the "never meeting the brief" thing did fuck me off. He did some really egregious examples, and I think he should have been kicked off for the cartoon character one (especially as CH are actually a bunch of racists, sad as it is that people died). I will stand up for the sad dinner table piece: nobody ever said the dinner wasn't a wake, or for goths, or anything like that.

Also I feel like either him or the producers really tried to manipulate his story to reveal the sob stories at just the right time, but it never really worked because he was just too arrogant and cruel to the other contestants.

But FRENCH WRAP!

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2021 season is nominated in the ILX TV poll, with voting ending this weekend:

ILX's Best Television of 2021 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends After January 31, 2022

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (3 minimum, 25 maximum, ranked by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail. It'll take five minutes; get to it!