Doing da Vinci, The Greatest Worst Show Ever

Cafe Society
1

Is anyone else watching this trainwreck?

The premise is simple; a group of engineers/machinists/carpenters build the structures from Leonardo’s notebooks with the help of an enthusiastic professor.

My God is this show wonderful.

Every person on the show, save for the professor, is an unlovable douchebag. In the first episode, the head engineer got the most screentime, and you could not stand him. He would sit up in this weird indoor tree house thing and play with Auto-Cad, stopping occasionally to talk to the professor on his wall mounted TV-phone or to go downstairs, offer to help the crew, and then break one of their tools.

The second episode gave the most screen time to what I assume is the second in command person, a guy who looks like a cross between Dana White and a jerk. He does nothing other than drive forklifts (da Vinci didn’t have forklifts you bastards) and yell at the carpenter. Also, and the end of the ep, we find out that the head engineer guy from the first episode is moving on to pursue other opportunities. After one show. Right. Peace

And while all of this is going, there is a guy named Flash working in the background. Flash is the carpenter, and he is a menace. His tool of choice is either a Sawz-All or, when he cant find a big enough blade for that, a chainsaw. His cuts are crooked, not even close to square, and he is completely unapologetic for it. They will bring him thousands of dollars worth of lumber, sets of plans for all the different parts, along with specific warnings that it needs to be cut perfectly to fit together, and old Flash will fire up his chainsaw, burn through the materials, and then freak the hell out at anyone who tells him he is the worst carpenter working right now. I predict that he moves on to pursue other opportunities within two more episodes.

There is one character that it is hard not to root for, though, and that would have to be the Professor. He is a geek in every sense of the word. He says things like “Storm that castle” or “We shall take your fort!” to rile up the crew. He may or may not be blind. I have decided that this man needs his own show wherein he has to go into bars and chat up attractive women. Once you see him onscreen, you know why this would be awesome.

All that being said, I cannot WAIT for the new episode. I don’t see this show lasting long, and it will be television at its funniest until it gets canceled or Flash kills everyone.

Anyone else watching?

2

I saw it last night. It was… interesting.

Oh, and Flash is probably the worst carpenter I’d ever seen on screen. he should be fired before he gets himself killed.

3

Yeah, it was OK, but I really wanted to take Flash and try to smack some sense into him. “Do you think those soldiers would have cared if it was cut straight?” Like one of the other guys said, it’s just cutting simple rectangles and he can’t even handle that.

4

But he’s Flash!

Ah-haaaaaaaa!

He’ll save every one of us!

5

We caught this as we were getting ready for bed. With about 20 minutes left in the show we were ready for bed and needed to decide whether to go right to bed or stay up and watch the rest.

We opted for sleep.
The annoying guy with the chainsaw was the motivating factor.

6

I think the show is actually an Office style faux-reality show. There is no way that these guys are as boring and inept as they are portrayed. It’s not possible; it can only be a joke.

If you watch it with this mindset, it becomes brilliant, brilliant television.

7

Sorry to hear that it’s a re-imagining of “American Hot Rod”.

I saw the commercials and thought it was an interesting idea. But it sounds like the producer and director thought it had to be “juiced up” by hiring people ranging from flawed to broken. I’m sure there were no competent carpenters available (funny, most the the carpenters I know are competent) and they had to get a meatball.

Nope, give me the equivalent of “Overhaulin” - skilled professionals creating something cool.

8

I don’t kinow why they feel the need to use huge trees. They could nail 4 pieces of lumber together to make strong supports without wiping out a forest. But I like the engineering of old world technologies. keep it up.

9

I gotta say, it’s one of the most boring shows of its type that I’ve ever seen.

They spend way too much time building, and not enough time showing the results. I mean, the tank; 55 minutes of squabbling builders, then “shoot”-“drive”-“cool!”. I blinked, and missed it.

What bugged me the most, though, is the siege bridge episode. I thought that one of the main reasons for going through the build in the first place was to prove if Leo’s creations could actually work. Ok, so the siege bridge “worked”, in that they were able to barely push it up to the castle, climb the stairs, and then run through the tunnel.

But as a practical means of attack, it totally failed. Never even mind the struggle to push it up to the castle. Never even mind that with a small push, the defenders could have prevented it from coming to rest as it was lowered to the castle wall.

The attacker’s got totally destroyed as they ran out of the tunnel! The guy was hit, like, twenty times with the paintballs, but everyone says “grab the flag, grab the flag”, so he keeps going, gets the flag, and is declared victorious. Even with weapons of the period, a few defenders could just sit quietly and pick off the attackers EASILY as they came through that silly tunnel. No one on the stupid show even bothered to mention that!

10

That would not have been the only attackers. They might not have been able to focus on it. Then they would have poured through the opening. Many would have gotten through.Couldn’t cross a moat though.

11

Sorry, but by the sounds of it, I worked there, though they didn’t give me a treehouse.

ETA: The tradeshow exhibit business is the KEWLEST, though it takes decades off your life. You want creativity? It’s there in spades. You want pressure? If it’s not installed when the show opens, you are dead. It’s as close as you can get to working for the Mafia, and the separation is not as great as civilians might assume.

12

Discovery Channel seems to have this problem where once they get a good show, they try to replicate it a hundreds times, and none of the duplicates are good. Mythbusters got Smash Lab and this show. DIrty Jobs got a ton of show where various hosts do unique jobs. And they all fail because Discovery doesn’t understand that it’s the PEOPLE that make the shows great.

13

Well, I understand that there are incompetent people everywhere, I just had hoped we hadn’t gotten to the point where even they had their own television shows. I stand corrected.

14

Don’t forget “Prototype This!” was the best of the Mythbusters followers.

15

Forgot that one. It was good because you got the feeling that all those guys were friends, not just thrown together for the show. Time Warp is sorta similar too, although it’s branched off in a different direction. Although I’m sure in a year they’ll have a show where they look at slow stuff super sped up.

16

For the last time, his name is not da Vinci. His name is Leonardo. If you want to be really respectful then Master Leonardo. I blame it on the bad novel.

17

I blame it on modern naming conventions. Dan Brown may be a hack, but he escapes the blame on this one.

The Professor on the show did refer to him as Leonardo.

18

I thought the tree house gimmick looked familiar…

19

:rolleyes: Get over it already.

20

As I started watching the second episode, my wife asked, “Haven’t you decided this show is crap yet?” I had to agree that it was totally flawed, but my interests in history and engineering gave me enough reason to keep watching. The basic idea of “try building the gadgets in da Vinci’s notebooks” is awesome. The Discovery Channel’s presentation of it with this craptacular MTV Real World-style dramafest blows goats. If they just had a crew of competent guys (the current crew minus Flash, with their “guest builder” subbed in would be fine) designing and building, it would be great. A more realistic approach to their “tests” would help too. Cut out all the whining and moaning segments, give me more of the building process and some more historic background for the piece in question.

And I think the build should be limited to reasonably accurate materials. I know time is a factor in TV production, so power tools and modern adhesives and fasteners are fine. But stop using plywood (especially in places where thicker timber is really mandated by its function as ARMOR). Maybe show one or two bits being crafted with period tools and methods to give an idea how long it would really take.