DOES IT WORK? (#102)

EPISODE PREMIERE: September 21, 2005

Los Angeles, here they come! Five of the six finalist teams arrived at The Lab - their state of the art home for the competition, but noticeably absent were Alexi and Sara, the inventors of the Advanced Non-Chemical Highlights. The other five teams got the news that Alexi and Sara would not be continuing in the competition and that Scott and Doug Krentz, inventors of The Dirtworker, were going to replace them. The teams were shocked but ready to continue on the road to HSN!

The energy in The Lab quickly turned from excited to serious when "Does it work?" was revealed to be the theme of the episode. The inventors had all made some bold claims about their products in order to advance this far, so this episode would be the truest test of whether they could back up their claims. HSN Senior Vice President of Operations Bob Monti and his team of experts were on hand to put all of the inventions under the microscope. The inventors weren't thrilled to hand over their "babies" for scrutiny from the experts, and Joe and Lisa, Scott and Doug, Quintana and Jessica, and Justin and Josh were especially on the defensive.

After hearing Bob Monti's full report on each product, the teams expected to continue working on their products. However, there is so much more to becoming an inventor than simply working on one product, so the competitors were informed that each stage of the competition would also have an "Inventors Challenge" that was not specific to their products. The first such competition would be an "Egg Drop," one of the purest tests of basic ingenuity.

The teams were put to the task of designing a device that would enable an egg to survive a multiple story fall. Once their contraptions were ready to go, the teams traveled to a "secret" egg drop location where Lonnie Johnson, trained engineer and inventor of the SuperSoaker, oversaw the competition. Joe and Lisa put their problems with the quality assurance experts behind them, won the egg drop challenge, and were rewarded with a one-hour consultation with Lonnie. During the conversation, Lonnie stressed the importance of an inventor "sticking to their vision;" Unfortunately, a stubborn Joe and Lisa took to his advice a bit too much!

The next day, teams were given the opportunity to address the test results for their inventions. The teams presented their work to the judges, and in the end it came down to Joe and Lisa vs. Scott and Doug. Joe and Lisa were instructed to develop a new product, but instead, obstinately stuck to their original vision for the waterfall. Scott and Doug were given the task of making the weighty Dirtworker portable, so they chose to build a cart to tote it around. Despite the Judge's dissatisfaction with Doug and Scott's poorly conceived cart, Joe and Lisa were ultimately sent home for not having presented the judges with a new product possessing greater appeal than their "kitschy" waterfall.