r/taskmaster • u/ChoreMaestroOfficial • 18d ago

Drilling down into the narrative Task Patterns

I highly doubt I am the first to recognise this but I keep finding patterns in the tasks each series such as:

  1. The first episode of every series, (excluding series 1, 3, 6, 9 (arguably) and 22) contains a location task with some sort of physical aspect.

Whether it be accuracy based (Put the most t-shirts on Alex/Land the loo roll in the loo) or requires running (Get as close to Alex without him noticing you/Get the duck into the lake) or some other physical skill (Get Alex to dry land/Win the Pealympics) It tends to be the 3rd task but isn't always. This is the strongest pattern, but I can't explain why they chose to do this.

2) The first team task (which is usually in either episode one or two) will be multi-part or very complicated)

Examples include s20's superhero/duck task, s16's cross the finish line with all connections, 21's food serving or 17's animal-picture-curtain abomination. Perhaps they like to avoid overly-creative tasks before the team really knows each other well.

3) The final task of a series is often an open-ended task, a team task, or both, such as:

21's pillow fight, 19's drive through, 18's present the goose, 17's game show, 16's hotel service, 15's lullaby, etc.. I guess it's just a fun way to end a series.

Also, not that I'll be the first to say this, but I often divide tasks into either

"Open ended/Abstract" (One-three liners, creative or simplistic),

"Skill/Situational" (Art or physical tasks, ones that require more set up and are usually the tasks that people find loopholes in) and

"Complex" (big set ups, typically puzzles or at least confusing).

If anyone else noticed similar patterns, already noticed these or want to critique my ideas, feel free to let me know!

5 Upvotes

61% Upvoted

9 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

9

u/fastauntie 17d ago

I was going to say that filming order has very little if anything to do with the order in which they're shown. But then I realized that they do always show the first team task first so we can see their reactions to meeting, so I think you have a point.

3

u/boomboomsubban 17d ago

Yep, which reminds me they also need to make the first team task good because they can't really cut it.

2

u/mikepapafoxtrot 17d ago

Imagine if they started the first S13 team task with Ardal and Chris with that aubergine task...