Is Netflix’s Blue Ribbon Baking Championship a worthy Bake Off copy? – Reality Blurred

For all its warmth and charm, and although it really bounced back last season, The great British baking competition is ripe for disruption. It features judges who are baffled by spices and rarely disagree, and who, before Allison Hammond’s performance, were often more interested in bites than baking.

Therefore, it does not bother me that Netflix is ​​obviously doing the same thing, The great British baking competition that it is done with other common formats: create your own version. While Done! was completely new, Sell ​​sunset Is Million dollar listing, Love is blind Is Married at first sightand so forth.

Baking Championship with Blue Ribbon brings together 10 bakers who have won cooking competitions at state fairs and gathers them in a barn to compete. One person goes home on each episode, but everyone is very nice and competent and smiles even when they’re not there.

It’s a pretty good baking competition, although there’s nothing new here – it’s just a mostly successful version of something we’ve seen before.

Sandra Lee is the main judge and it’s great to see her back on TV – her Food Network show ended in 2016 and she has struggled with cancer and divorce since then. “I needed some peace and quiet and to think about what would really help people,” she said Closer.

It’s a great tongue-in-cheek joke to have actor Jason Biggs, perhaps best known for fucking a pie, as host, although it’s louder than a wink. “Take it from someone who knows: That’s a very attractive pie. Heh heh,” he says in the premiere, while in the second episode he says, “…just like the No. American cake Joke clause that I had included in my contract.”

His non-cake-fucking-related jokes are much better, and he loosens up to create the levity the show really needs. In the premiere, Biggs looks like he’s falling asleep next to Sandra Lee as she introduces the first challenge or explains things to him. Perhaps, like me, he was captivated by her bling, especially the jeweled green necklace that made me wonder how she can swallow everything she tastes.

Sandra Lee and Jason Biggs walk around the barn to chat with the bakers, and then two others come by to judge: former White House pastry chef Bill Yosses and cookbook author Bryan Ford.

The fact that they are looking for “America’s Best Baker” makes this very close to Baking competitions search for ‘Britain’s best amateur baker’. The prize is a big blue ribbon – but also $100,000 instead of £0, a notable difference.

Baking Championship with Blue Ribbon takes its name and theme from existing competitions such as those held at state fairs. Outside the bakery there is a small fair, basically a street carnival, but the nicest I have ever seen, with fresh paint and bright lights and no parts of rides flying into the crowd.

In keeping with this theme, there are two challenges in each of the eight episodes: the Fast Fair and the Blue Ribbon Bake. Some challenges have a direct connection to fairground food (the opening challenge involving stick food, ones inspired by French fries and cotton candy), while other challenges would fit any show.

All this gives Baking Championship with Blue Ribbon much more life and focus than PBS’ dreary The great American recipeand it has a bigger budget than a Food Network competition, but it still feels like a copy, lacking some of the great qualities of the shows it emulates – especially GBBO.

The barn set features a nice loft where Sandra Lee and Jason Biggs hang out, but something about the design prevents wide or long shots of the space, and so it’s kind of disorienting to be jostled from one close-up to the next.

To judge the second challenge, the remaining contestants sit on the “stand,” a collection of hay bales with blankets on them, and each is surrounded by walls of crumpled plastic sheeting, which I assume means ET’s dying body lies somewhere nearby.

The cast could be a little more diverse (the cast is very, very white, although there is a 73-year-old in it) and it could definitely use more playfulness, like the energy Carla Hall brings to the shows she judges.

While it doesn’t adopt the tone of Food Network’s seasonal competitions, Netflix’s new show unfortunately often follows Food Network’s established tropes.

The editing repeatedly interrupts the action with interviews in which we hear one person say phrases that have been forced upon them (“Oh my God. I’m actually baking for Sandra Lee? This is a huge, pinch-my-self moment.”) One person breaks a glass bowl, announces this, and there’s a montage of other bakers looking up and reacting so awkwardly that they were probably cut from other moments.

Where Baking Championship with Blue Ribbon The assessment is really exhausting.

I love that in the second challenge, the judges evaluate and award the baked goods and present white (third place), red (second place), and blue (first place) ribbons to the best baked goods.

The winner of the first mini-challenge also receives a ribbon, albeit a tiny one, that has absolutely nothing to do with anything other than that one challenge. As Sandra Lee tries to explain to a contestant who wins the first challenge and goes home the next, “You could be the judges’ choice at one end and then lose and have to go home.”

When judges visit the bakers’ stations, not everyone gets the same amount of time to judge, and even with the most challenging of challenges, the judging can be generic. Netflix Grill Showdown set the bar high for assessment and I miss this specific criticism here.

Here is an example from the second episode:

Sandra Lee: “The whipped cream is sweet but not too sweet and I think the berries go perfectly with it. It’s a fantastic trifle.”

Bryan: “The raspberry on top, I think we can do a little more. All we need is the second application that says: Wow, I’m coming for that creative throne.”

Bill: “But it is an excellent dessert.”

Sweet, but not too sweet. Perfect. Fantastic. A little more. Excellent. Ugh, get a thesaurus out please!

Bryan Ford’s critiques are the ones who bring personality and life to the work, but the editing doesn’t give him enough time to establish himself, at least not at the beginning.

Worse still, the assessment lacks empathy and warmth Baking competition; there is little to no recognition for the effort or idea. The finished baking is particularly odd as they talk about baking while the baker watches, but talk about it as if they were in the supermarket analyzing something in a box.

It’s maybe a touch too serious. I wish Sandra Lee would send people home with something like, “Life just isn’t fair.” (Get it? Just?!) At only eight episodes, it’s a successful first outing, and with another season or two, the series could eventually find its way out of the rather generic corner it’s currently stuck in.

Although it is a well-known baking competition, the effort was considerable and the result quite impressive.