The premise doesn’t seem all that great. Bakers with limited skills and a ridiculously limited time try to complete difficult baking challenges and fail miserably. It seems like laughing along with this show is just kicking people when they’re down, which is a little more of a bummer than most of us would like, right?
Actually, wrong. Bakers making a mess of it works just fine in “Nailed It!” which invites competitors to laugh at themselves even as audiences groan at their fondant work. Host Nicole Byer and judge Jacques Torres are amiable and often helpful to the competitors, who battle for relatively low stakes (a golden chef’s hat, a prize that might be a blender or cookie pans, and finally $10,000 and a misshapen trophy as the grand prize). No one is expected to do a good job, mind you. The prize just goes to the baker of the least-offensive and least-awful-tasting cake.
Given the low stakes and the general, jovial mood, the bakers do their best but know that their best won’t come close to the professional cakes they’re meant to duplicate (and it seems that even a gifted baker wouldn’t be able to make anything as quickly as the competitors on this show are expected to). Their doomed attempts may be funny but are also relatable — there probably aren’t too many viewers watching imagining they can make a three-tiered cake that looks like a vampire or whatever the impossible last challenge might be.
The judge’s panel usually includes an actor or comedian whose reactions are either to crack jokes or get excited about sampling cake, bad or not. The winner gets cascaded with cash shot out of a money gun more commonly seen at bachelor parties. It’s just another ridiculous moment for a show that doesn’t take itself too seriously, and that’s just fine.
This article was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.
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Featured Image Credit: Netflix.
