The fourth episode of Disney’s Shop Class sees three teams of young builders, who are tasked with designing, building, and testing a bridge. In this episode, a panel of experts will evaluate and test their work based on design creativity, and build functionality, by loading up the bridges with over 2500 pounds of weight.

As with previous episodes, the majority of this episode is spent watching how the teams come up with their idea for a bridge and how they implement it.   With problems being highlighted along the way, just to add a little drama to the episode.

Shop Class is harmless and easy viewing, but it’s not must see TV, it’s something you can watch in an afternoon while doing something else.  I was very tempted to speed through the middle of the show to get to the testing part, which is one of my complaints about this series so far.  It just feels like the episodes are stretched out a little too much, the building process seems to take way too long and often isn’t that interesting.  The fun bit is how their builds are tested out and this episode is able to keep the tension building, especially with one of the bridges collapsing. Obviously the show’s creators can only spice up a simple problem so much, but that’s needed to keep me to keep watching.

I’m still not entirely convinced about this show, it’s a solid idea, but needs some tweaking, especially as the judges don’t seem to get that involved with the contestants and we don’t get too see much of their personality coming across the screen.  While the host, Justin Long is trying desperately to get some laughs, but they feel more like bad dad jokes and there seems to be no chemistry with the judges or contestants. Once again, I compare this show to others like “The Great British Bake Off”, which has a similar concept, but delivers much more personality to keep me engaged.  Other shows such as “LEGO Masters”, also don’t seem to limit teams to just being made up of children, so I’m hoping if this show comes back for a second season, this simple twist to not limit the teams to two children, could make it more interesting to adult viewers. While still keeping it family friendly.

This episode of Shop Class just felt average, the testing of the bridges was fun, though I was hoping they would all fail, since it would have been more interesting to watch.

Rating 2.5 out of 5.

Roger Palmer

Roger has been a Disney fan since he was a kid and this interest has grown over the years. He has visited Disney Parks around the globe and has a vast collection of Disney movies and collectibles. He is the owner of What's On Disney Plus & DisKingdom. Email: Roger@WhatsOnDisneyPlus.com Twitter: Twitter.com/RogPalmerUK Facebook: Facebook.com/rogpalmeruk

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