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Beerdeer posted:The more I think of it, the more I want Tina Fey as the American Taskmaster. This is the single best person I have ever heard to be taskmaster in the US.
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May 14, 2022 00:18
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thebardyspoon posted:It's also kinda important to remember there are gonna be tasks that just don't work for you, it's kinda the nature of the tasks being kind of a grab bag. Personally I find the musical ones really awkward usually because I'm utterly tone deaf and most comedians aren't great at improvising a tune but obviously I'd never suggest they stop doing them since they clearly are a lot of peoples favourites. NZ season 2 David rap got me to laugh harder than anything else on any season of this show has.
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May 17, 2022 00:28
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redreader posted:I honestly thought Bridget was doing really badly. She's coming second? How? I thought she was coming last or second-last! She’s very feast or famine. Usually 5 points or 1 point.
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Jun 4, 2022 19:50
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Paladinus posted:Ooh, is that a cheeky little... tiramisu? I felt exactly the same way about the first 2 eps of NZ season 2. So I have high hopes here.
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Jul 6, 2022 23:03
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eke out posted:I really thought with the handwritten stuff/lack of seal, there was some fundamental twist -- like that the taskmaster's assistant had overstepped his bounds within the fiction and you weren't supposed to give him money, or there'd be other followup nonsense along those lines I wonder if that was the original plan, or something else, but because no one really figured it out they just went with it as an actual task?
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Aug 18, 2022 18:27
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Absolutely excellent EP. All of them have been great so far. That team task was so good, and Alex getting angry about throwing was funny as hell. Banter was really really good too.
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Oct 14, 2022 16:13
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stev posted:I hope he has to do the exact same thing in all of them. That would be absolutely incredible.
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Oct 14, 2022 19:01
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thehustler posted:can someone answer my Q from before? I’m very confused with the sand task about all the cutting to a wide and not seeing the camera that was obviously *right next to them* They use a ton of mounted cameras. There was one mounted to the shopping cart, and there was likely others around. That could explain it.
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Oct 14, 2022 19:38
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eke out posted:yeah John is an absolute fuckup in some truly weird ways and seems to be genuinely delighted to be made fun of by everyone, that's exactly what I want in a contestant that's bad at taskmaster I was dying at him just standing there. He just stood there for a full 25% of the task, than moved slowly until Alex started counting down from 30 seconds. All the songs were excellent. Sarah's was my least favorite, and I feel like she got the points over the story.
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Oct 21, 2022 16:03
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That was an all timer. John was incredible all EP. Agreed on the pleasure line but him during the live task had me crying.
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Oct 28, 2022 17:07
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Sudden Loud Noise posted:I competely disagree. But I will say that Alex's personality plays a large part in why it needed to be changed. He's got too many seasons of being devious to be trusted. Paul is a completely trustworthy sadboy. I think the 30 second leeway was much better. The NZ one they had no time to come up with anything clever. Here they had a genuine chance to not gently caress up once they opened the task. The fuckup of ripping the task quick is funny, but it’s even funnier when they double gently caress up by not using the 30 seconds wisely. It also gives the chance for significantly more variety than “who can hold heavy things longer.” I think it feels worse or the same because no one did anything clever wit the time, but it woulda been really fun if someone had done something clever with the 30 seconds. I mean look at the reaction Sarah got for pouring out the milk. Wouldn’t it have been hilarious watching someone scramble to rip the lids off the jugs and dump the milk as quickly as possible? On some entirely side notes… John has grown on me every episode. I think it may have been a comfort thing in the first EPs of the studio, but he’s much looser. Plus it feels the rest of the cast has figured out how to banter with him proper. Dara is a genius for prepping that wait what line on the paint task. He knew it was coming and it landed 100% perfect. Fern is just perfect. I love everything about her, and it’s really kinda cool to see some neurodiversity on the show. She approaches stuff so differently sometimes, and when she can’t the anger is really fun. And her weird rear end energy is so unique from the typical taskmaster archetypes of smart/wise/clever goofball, odd older person, weirdly athletic with too much energy, young naive person, loud an obnoxious, and the person who just doesn’t understand how the show works. I don’t mean to say I hate those archetypes at all. I think the show early on found what works best and the casting is generally excellent. Those personalities work really really well for the show, and they blend them in each season well. It’s just nice to have someone who feels like they’re breaking the casting mold. There’s been a few people like that (Rhod Gilbert and Mike Woz are the 2 that come to mind), but no one is like Fern. We were blessed this year with taskmaster. OG Season 13 > NZ season 3 > OG Season 14 with like a 2 week break between each was great, but now we’re gonna have a long, taskmasterless gap and I’m sad. nerox posted:Yeah if Alex started asking me a lot of weird questions, while also telling me I can open a task but he recommends not opening it, I would be very suspicious of it. This was a packed EP. I bet that he did and it was cut. That’s the genius of Alex’s deviousness. He’s very clever, and does it in so many different ways, that it’s very very hard to pregame a task. Sometimes it’s exactly as it seems, and sometimes they purposely make you think you figured out how to game it, but attempting to game it sets you up for failure. The task could have very easily been “most milk in the jugs wins” or “the time ends when the microwave dings, shortest time wins” or whatever. They do it the opposite all the time like “the time started when you entered the room” and then he purposely delays you from opening the task. Pilfered Pallbearers fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Nov 4, 2022 |
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Nov 4, 2022 16:25
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Insurrectionist posted:For the mirroring task I wonder if any contestants did what came to my mind which was to put Alex on the moving walkway and tell him to stand still. Could then put some music on and match the pace with Alex and memorize moves to go with music. Would make the second pass on the walkway a ton easier. The only real challenge then would be not going overboard on the choreography and accidentally ending up doing it non-mirrored, Munya-style. Or just forgetting the whole routine I guess. 10 minute timer makes this very difficult when you need 2 full minutes to complete the task itself.
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Nov 4, 2022 17:34
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Insurrectionist posted:The only drawback is you can't speed up each attempt, but that is well worth it I would say - besides I thought he said it took 1:25 and not 2 minutes? Don't think any of them did it faster than ~45 seconds anyway so you're at let's say half as many attempts, but you don't have to worry about matching pace at all. 10 mins is pretty strict to try and memorize anything that isn't simple enough to successfully choreograph in a couple attempts anyway. You could pick another idea for timing the choreography, I just picked music as an easy one to memorize along with. 1 min per walk maximum, so 1 minute per side. Plus reset time between each side. Plus they need to plan the movement and figure out a sync system. I dunno, there’s certainly ways to game the task like you’ve suggested, but it was simple enough that it wasn’t necessitated. Just like counting out the beats should have been enough.
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Nov 4, 2022 17:43
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thebardyspoon posted:I was surprised none of them tried just riding on the rubber bannister thing, (though maybe safety protocols or physical reality stopped them, dunno how much power they have) cause it was "get to the end of the lanes" right and not walk? There was a camera strapped to it. I suspect they wouldn’t have been able to. Also the task is walk. Knowing the show Greg woulda 100% pulled points for riding that.
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Nov 4, 2022 17:55
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Pablo Bluth posted:The prize tasks on the UK TM has been a weak point for a long time. It seems every other country does a better job. I think they’re very adverse to having any prize tasks be similar to previous, and after 14 seasons their pool is very very small. On the flip side, the contestants themselves seem to put MUCH less effort than earlier seasons.
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Nov 6, 2022 00:56
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Someone was surprised at kerns 3rd place up thread. Kerns is feast or famine. He either runs 4 and 5s or 1s. Contestants that are like that tend to usually run 2nd or 3rd place. He’s just so poo poo sometimes it clouds when he’s good. Those are always my absolute favorite contestants because when they fail it’s purely on them. You know they’re smart enough to not fail, and something about it is just hilarious. Victoria Mitchell above is a great example of it.
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Nov 15, 2022 19:50
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Sudden Loud Noise posted:John recognizes that he’s on a comedy show and ties a towel around his neck as tight as he can. Dara wraps it around his foot and thinks he’s “won” the task. This feels like such an accurate read of how Dara’s been this entire season. Tries too hard to win and barely tries to be funny, except when the only way to win a task is to be funny.
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Nov 26, 2022 08:31
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Paladinus posted:He's also got the best (or at least the most consistently good) studio banter. I don't know why people dislike him just for being competent. It’s not that I dislike him. I quite like his studio work (he’s the best of this bunch at it by far), but my issue with him is he’s way too cautious. I think I phrased it wrong when I simply said he’s trying to hard. What I should have said is he plays it too safe and it’s often not fun. IMO for most of the tasks, he hedges into the middle to make sure he can succeed. It’s part of why he’s not running away and Sarah is so close to him. He never just loving goes for it, which is what makes the show so great. Watching people just go all out with their idea and embrace the craziness. When someone does that, it’s incredibly fun watching them fail, and extremely exciting watching them succeed. Little hedges are fun (Sarah’s hand idea is a good example), but it’d be boring if she tried to game every single task like that. David Correos is an excellent example of it. I don’t wanna watch Dara half heartedly tie the scarf around his ankle, then easily win if his guess was right or do middle of the pack if he’s wrong. I wanna see stuff like Kerns tie it balls to the wall around his neck and look like a psycho trying to take it off. It would have been even more satisfying if his crazy idea won him the task.
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Nov 26, 2022 18:39
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Der Kyhe posted:Didn't Alex already nix the idea of "Best of the Worst" or such, because they don't want to encourage the contestants to purposefully do badly. New years treat would be amazing like that.
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Nov 26, 2022 21:41
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Spek posted:I was talking to an american friend of mine who has never watched it yesterday about whether she thinks an american version would work and the prize task / whole idea of a competition that doesnt really have a prize seemed to just absolutely confuse her. There’s plenty of US shows in a similar vein without a prize. Unless your friend is especially obtuse, I don’t think that’s it. Not that these are good shows, but stuff like “to tell the truth” doesn’t have a prize and functions similar to taskmaster. IMO part of the reason taskmaster has trouble catching on here is a few things. 1. The chat bits. American TV doesn’t really do that, and doesn’t really have the talk show format. There are talk shows, but they’re drivel aimed at people with no brains who are only interested in the specific person. Because of this, talk shows tend to get a bad rap, especially for a show that would be prime time. There are some late night shows, but it’s not really the same thing. 2. The silliness. American TV doesn’t really do silly. Anything silly is typically relegated to cartoons or extremely dumb formats like wipeout. Taskmaster is clearly very silly, but much of its charm relies on cleverness and clever people getting stuck in silly situations. US TV just doesn’t ever really mix the two. 3. Talent options. Because the US doesn’t have a large talk show circuit, most mid to low level comedians aren’t known by large swaths of the population. And for the talk shows we do have (the late night shows, day time garbage) there’s almost 0 focus on comedy and all on celebrity. Due to this, a network would have to spend huge huge money to get recognizable faces that would be big enough to pull people in. Anyone within a reasonable budget wouldn’t be enough of a draw. Edit: Just saw above. Who’s line is an interesting example. People love who’s line, but it’s significantly sillier and more rapid fire than taskmaster. I didn’t touch on it above, but standard taskmaster is probably considered to slow moving (jokes per minute) for American TV for most viewers. Additionally, who’s line got really popular only towards the end of its initial run, and IIRC a lot of the initial popularity push was the host, Drew Carey. They brought the show back a few years ago, with all of the same funny cast that everyone loved and raves about, but with a different host and people just don’t seem to care. I don’t know if it’s the new host, or that US TV has moved on from shows like that. Pilfered Pallbearers fucked around with this message at 17:22 on Dec 22, 2022 |
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Dec 22, 2022 17:18
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Superrodan posted:I don't think the charity idea is all that bad honestly. It could be a really good start. If you could convince a few "real" celebrities or even two and fill out the rest of the cast with some higher profile SNL alumni (or other improv comics), then do a limited five episode thing where you split some large amount of money amongst different charities by points earned across the season (so its not so much about winning as opposed to just doing your best), you might be able to take the same path as UK, where it starts small and grows as people get used to the format. IMO the show shines much better on a full season. You need time to build the character and having one offs doesn’t really do it. Even for a known quantity the show is so zany you can’t really know how people will handle it. The celebrity game night poo poo requires one day of filming with 0 prep from the celebs, and they usually film 2 or more eps. This means one day of filming can get like 2-5 episodes. This makes it super low commitment and cheap as hell as you only gotta pay the celeb for one day. This isn’t really possible with taskmaster because there’s so much setup for each task, which means multiple days of on location filming + multiple days of live show filming. All of this is a uniquely American problem.
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Dec 22, 2022 18:29
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I nominate Joel McHale as the taskmaster.
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Dec 22, 2022 20:05
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Carol leaning was excellent. That was a great task. Other tasks were just ok. Live task was good with all of them cursing and getting angry. Rebecca was so drat into it. She would have been really really fun on a whole season.
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Jan 3, 2023 16:12
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Paladinus posted:The live task was great, but I feel it could be improved by revealing what's on the paddle after the performance. And the contestants random drawing the prompt, not getting to choose.
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Feb 18, 2023 18:10
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I haven’t seen the live task, but this entire episode is incredible. Every single task is wonderful and the cast is shining so hard. Every single one had a moment. This EP has big NZ S2 energy. So excited for the rest of the season considering this is only EP 4.
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Feb 23, 2023 20:35
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Rose task was perfect. Team of 3 is so much fun.
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Mar 3, 2023 08:14
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SirSamVimes posted:Greater Tom being filled with malicious glee works well, I think. There's no sense in trying to emulate Greg's specific balance because you can't out-Greg Greg so instead being a spiteful goblin king is a fun spin on it. It also goes well with Lesser Tom being the first assistant who takes visible pleasure in the failings of the contestants. You know, I wasn't sold on lesser Tom because he's just so drat happy all the time. But this point turned it around for me. Greater Tom is excellent IMO. Perfectly mean, doesn't punish them when they make jokes about the taskmaster, rewards creativity, and while he isn't Greg, it just works well with the format. And now that I think on it, lesser tom works much better with that kind of taskmaster than an Alex style wimpy, "dumb", and ultra serious one would.
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Mar 4, 2023 17:22
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Dr. Fraiser Chain posted:Just repeat old tasks then toss them another envelope mid task and completely gently caress anyone who watched a previous season in preparation. That’s an excellent idea. OG task good enough on its own, and you also get such a great reaction to the smug “I got this one”.
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Mar 4, 2023 23:41
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Creature posted:Julia Morris annoyed me back in the Full Frontal days so I didn’t have much hope of anything different in TMAU, but her complete lack of shame is kind of endearing. Her aging task effort was amazing. Danielle has an insane mix of chaos energy, intelligent clever solutions, AND an inability to comprehend random tasks. She’s like every best taskmaster archetype all mixed together, and it’s incredible.
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Mar 11, 2023 19:58
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Paladinus posted:That pizza task was hilarious. Kind of hoped fake Tom's name was also Tom so Nina could win. Nina had me dying. Really excellent. Studio task was so simple but was so perfect and worked so well. This season is already an all time great. It’s so good.
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Mar 17, 2023 05:30
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Boxturret posted:Any time a contestant has some sort of personal link with the taskmaster or assistant is great. Love this line of conversation considering the final AU task this ep. Overall episode was the weakest so far, but Julia’s version of said task was excellent.
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Mar 30, 2023 16:38
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Superrodan posted:I thought the dancing task was brilliant and that the lack of music was the best part. They've already done a "dance to royalty free music" task before (the ringtones), which was pretty good, and I thought this was a fun way to differentiate from that. That said, I thought that the "wedding" aspect didn't really play into the task as much as I'd hoped. IMO task on back is no different than the 2nd envelope tasks, other than the fact that it’s slightly more fair because they have a chance at noticing it.
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Apr 3, 2023 23:39
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CatstropheWaitress posted:The second *everyone*, including the audience, leaned in to go "yeah that doesn't count does it?", knew Greg would give it to them. Had there been a more muted reaction, he might have disqualified it, but you can tell he takes glee in going against the grain. It's what makes him the best of the Taskmasters. Absolutely this. If the audience or other contestants didn’t make any fuss they would have been disqualified.
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Apr 22, 2023 20:37
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The Cheshire Cat posted:Something I've always been curious about with TM is if they deliberately design tasks around the (known) skills of the contestants to try to avoid anything that would give one person a big advantage over the others (i.e. avoiding musical tasks if one of them is a musician). Alex has said in the past that they do deliberately aim for a wide range of skills in the task design so that say, the most athletically inclined person on the show doesn't just dominate the whole thing, but I don't know if this is just a general thing or if they do specifically tailor things to the cast of each series. I don’t see why they would bother doing that. The points don’t actually matter. On top of that, outside of rare tasks scored by feats of strength/explicit skill, the person who is most skillful in that area doesn’t often win. Using the music tasks as an example, the overall task winner often isn’t the most musically inclined, because they’re scored on some arbitrary poo poo or just Greg’s whims. Another good example are the crafting tasks. They’ve had some excellent crafters, but in those tasks they tend to score around the middle because while well executed they’re often less creative because they don’t have to work around the lack of skill.
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May 1, 2023 23:54
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I didn’t understand why Kiel (can’t spell, not looking it up) didn’t just keep rolling the green carpet up until he got close to the bell. He started with that and it was working! I’m also surprised no one tried to trick Alex into coming near them. In these tasks at least one person usually attempts to. Also I don’t think anyone asked Alex to get the ball or move the bell?
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May 5, 2023 15:38
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RickRogers posted:There is something a little off this season about the tasks, or perhaps just how predictable the way they are carried out is. I am struggling to put my finger on it. I think it’s that none of the contestants are very creative OR good at most of the tasks. The best parts of the show are - someone does something perfectly or first try or finds the gimmick - someone does something really creative outside the box - someone does something insane because they think it’s creative and fail miserably. None of them do the above, almost ever. Mae occasionally comes close to doing things well, but they’re so uncharismatic about it and it’s too rare that it doesn’t feel fun. No one is off the rails. No one really thinks differently. In fact, there seems to be a large number of tasks this season where they all do the exact same thing. I can’t think of a single other season of UK Taskmaster where “most poignant imaginary friend scene” would result in 4/5 being death, with 3/5 being so similar Greg had to score on how well they wailed at the death rather than the scene. The studio banter is so excellent that it makes the season fun enough to enjoy, but I think it’s the only thing holding it up.
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May 5, 2023 22:04
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PhazonLink posted:I think Series 1, episode 1, Eat Watermelon is probably one the best pilots ever. Eat watermelon is one of the ones I show people.
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May 7, 2023 23:52
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Paladinus posted:I was in hysterics over Frankie's frightened chimpanzee comment, but it is now very apparent to me that tasks are not the strongest part of this series. He’s overall awful during the tasks where he’s not being a dick to Ivo, but I don’t think I’ve ever laughed more at someone’s studio banter than his.
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May 12, 2023 20:22
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Yuran M. Bazil posted:it makes sense to me. Taskmaster is already very popular with kids for a panel show. the format clearly appeals to them. Why not try and make an actual kids show? My daughter (7) loves tuning into the tasks sometimes, but gets lost with the banter and dry humor. I think a kids taskmaster will go over with her extremely well. Also rose & mike are the absolutely perfect hosts. I was lukewarm but knowing they’re hosting I’m 110% in. I do expect it to be not very mean with the 2 of them hosting though. They both come off as very gentle.
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May 16, 2023 16:14
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Banter is better this season then just about any other.
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May 19, 2023 16:59
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