FIRST on "The Fosters" - Monday Nights on FreeForm 8e/5p Starting Tonight!

[Ryan Dognaux]

So... fears confirmed right? That episode absolutely painted engineering mentors in the worst light possible. Specifically a Boeing engineer / Boeing sponsored team. As a Boeing mentor, that was fun to see, I guess (not really.)

Things I thought the episode did well -

- Showed what an FRC competition is and what a typical match looks like.

- Showed the difficulty teams go through to pass inspection and even had the team dead for an entire match - pretty realistic.

- Showcasing an all girl drive team and the empowerment that can hold. I thought that was pretty cool.

Things that didn't go so well -

- The antagonist mentor guy. If I were thinking of starting an FRC team and watched that episode, I might not now because of how that character was portrayed. What a jerk! I really hope that's not how FIRST or anyone involved with this show sees mentors who help teams - specifically some of the most competitive teams.

- The drive team stopping and hugging every time they scored a boulder. The match is still going! Why did you stop?!

- While the all-girl piece was cool, I didn't think "$@#$@#$@#$@#$@#es Get Things Done" was the most inspiring motto. But maybe that's just me?

All in all, a lot of potential but I think more could have been done to show what gracious professionalism is really like in FIRST. Time and time again we see teams call their own time outs during the finals to let teams fix their robots - and it would have been so cool to see something of that nature occur on the show. But it didn't. Big opportunity missed there.