Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Blown Away’ Season 3 on Netflix, Where Glassblowers Get Crazy With The Blowpipe To Create Art And Win Big

Blown Away returns to Netflix for its third ten-episode season with a slate of new glassblower contestants and a host of new challenges. Science YouTuber and former Big Brother contestant Nick Uhas returns as host, alongside resident evaluator Katherine Gray, and each episode also includes a guest evaluator. Up for grabs? A prize purse worth $60,000, which includes cash and a residency at the prestigious Corning Museum of Glass.  

BLOWN AWAY: SEASON 3: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Combine sand, lime, and soda into a furnace humming at 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, and you get liquid glass. In “North America’s largest hot shop,” there are ten of those furnaces, plus workspaces, yokes, blowpipes, kilns, and annealers – all the equipment glassblowers require to conjure artistic forms from molten glass. And those glassblowers are entering the arena.

The Gist: There’s Rob, 53, who confidently refers to himself as the “big dog” of the new contestants. Brenna, 34, is a mom and “hot shop force.” There’s Trenton, 31, and Claire, 46. There are two Johns, Sharvin and Moran. Grace, 26, identifies as non-binary and is proud of her mullet. Dan Friday, 45, is a noted glass artist who’s worked with Dale Chihuly, and Maddy, 29, and Manhi, 33, each see being underestimated as a source of inspiration. The glassblowers will compete in ten challenges that combine technical acumen with conceptual vision, and work alongside one another on the Blown Away set that itself is a vast “hot box” – the glassblower’s production space, which for this show’s purposes has been increased tenfold. Ten furnaces cranking out thousands of degrees? That’ll turn up the reality show heat.

As the contestants prepare for their first challenge, host Nick Uhas introduces the experts who will evaluate and judge their work. Katherine Gray is a glass artist and professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and for the first episode she’s joined by artist and Blown Away season one champion Deborah Czeresko, who the contestants all clearly revere. For the first round, they’re tasked with making a piece of glass inspired by their own artistic evolution, which they’ll have five hours to design, create, and present. The winner logs an advantage for the next challenge. The loser walks. Let’s hit the hot shop.

Some contestants sketch their designs, while others use chalk on the slate floor, and still others employ markers on glass panels. Their concepts come from their cultural identity, vocational background, or perspective on life; Maddy says it’s “like a gumball machine, you never know what you’re gonna get.” After design, creation begins. Torches are fired, and color bars are heated in kilns. Then there’s “the strip,” which allows excess glass to drip off the raw shapes emerging from the fire. A “glory hole” – yep – is a reheating chamber set at 1800 degrees Fahrenheit. And the contestants show off their personal techniques for shaping, with Rob pushing air down a long blowpipe, Dan forming an elegant bowling pin shape with two deft flicks of his trowel, and Brenna pinwheeling a glowing glass globule like a ninja with a bo staff.

After creation, it’s time for presentation, and the evaluators do not pull their punches. “This piece is didactic,” “conceptually, it’s too simplistic,” “they don’t coalesce into a strong narrative,” and “they had five hours, I feel like she has the potential to have done so much more” – Gray and Czeresko are a tough, tough room. Which glass maker’s Blown Away hopes will shatter?

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The format is familiar. Contestants must design, create, and present their work, all while working alongside one another and adhering to a time limit. Imagine Top Chef, if the food was made of glass. But Blown Away has some company in its particular Netflix niche: the streamer also has Forged in Fire, where bladesmiths build metal weapons from the pages of history; and Metal Shop Masters, featuring artists welding and cutting steel into wild artistic creations.

Our Take: On Blown Away, it’s the creation that’s the thing. In their hot shop environment that’s refreshingly free of ego or catty reality show squabbling, the contestants are seen bringing their sketches to life in three molten dimensions, and helping each other along the way. It doesn’t take any real knowledge of glassmaking to understand how difficult it is. Figure in hours of work in a searing hot environment, and the sequences here that see the contestants’ design vision come to fruition are often fascinating. Every time a glassblower uses their shears to snip away at the little vestigial bits their pieces don’t require, the clinking sound is an auditory trigger to expect disaster. But the piece doesn’t shatter, and is instead plunged into the cooling zone of an annealer, often with an assist and even more often with a punctuating high-five. It’s “Concentration from beginning to end,” as Rob describes it. “You can’t stop in the middle.” And it’s that sense of artistry being created on the constant verge of disaster that adds a healthy dose of respect for the process, which Blown Away accentuates with on screen glossaries and technical definitions. For the contestants, the competition is real. They want glass world bragging rights, cash money, and museum recognition. But for viewers – most of us who are on the outside of glass looking in –  it’s the visualization of their craft that makes Blown Away the most compelling.

Sex and Skin: None.

Parting Shot: After barely withstanding the intense heat of their first critique from Katherine Gray and guest evaluator Deborah Czeresko, the nine glass blowers still standing have a much better understanding of just what they’re up against. John Sharvin states it plainly. “I need to step it up.”

Sleeper Star: Grace’s artistic statement for the first Blown Away challenge is particularly well-realized. “Glass is a non-binary material, meaning it’s neither solid nor liquid,” she says. “I identify as non-binary. These are physicalized sculptures of glass as a gay specimen. I’m excited.”

Most Pilot-y Line: “Best in blow,” “best in glass,” “consider the heat officially cranked” – Blown Away absolutely loves to put familiar puns in kilns and watch them expand, contract, and form new shapes.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The competitive reality beats of Blown Away will be familiar to any viewers of Top Chef and Project Runway. But there’s wonderful alchemy on display, too, as artistry is shaped from sheer heat and physical process.

Johnny Loftus is an independent writer and editor living at large in Chicagoland. His work has appeared in The Village Voice, All Music Guide, Pitchfork Media, and Nicki Swift. Follow him on Twitter: @glennganges