On Your Marks, Get Set, Baaaaake! A Thread for Great British Baking Show / Bake Off & all of its sundry delights

Have you heard her Apollo 11 story?

I have not!

New season starts on Netflix US this Friday 9/25 😃

From Wikipedia

"In 1969, her father covered the landing of the first man on the moon from mission control. Toksvig was holding the hand of Neil Armstrong's secretary during the landing."

(She recounted this, and a bunch of other stuff you wouldn't think would happen to one person, on various QI episodes)

Hooray, actual likeable contestants this year instead of Innocent Smoothie labels in human form

Interesting/edgy that the woman who enjoys scandi metal chose to commit a hate crime with her Louis Theroux cake

the technical accident and the result of that round was good tv.

they must've been quarantined with the presenters and tv people for, what, 2 weeks beforehand. i wonder how much mingling there was. and if they got to go straight home afterwards or faced another fortnight in isolation.

Laura's resemblance to Theodora from I May Destroy You was unnerving.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2020/09/22/23/33477066-8761361-Digital_manager_Laura_31_looked_to_be_feeling_the_heat_in_the_ki-a-30_1600814097535.jpg
https://tvarchive2020.bradfordzone.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/sites/26/2020/05/Harriet-Webb.jpg

Anything else would just make it a holiday rather than a bubble, surely? Also bits of the 'journey'/'kids are my life' narrative ring a bit hollow if you leave them at home alone in the middle of a pandemic; I noticed this when they said one of the guys was "part-time carer, full time dad" to two daughters. Does that mean they/he were shielding? If so then leaving them is a big deal.

Interesting to see how this will change the production of the show - if we assume 10 episodes, filming is normally at the weekends so it's 2 1/2 months. Now, assuming back to back filming, it's done and dusted under 3 weeks.

This week I'm not sure anybody's baking stood out so this may be a personality-driven series. Also lol we are old, one of the entrants remembers John Whaite inspiring him "when I was just a kid".

Hats off to the one who said she never wanted to eat baking again, before the first cake was out of the oven.

It was filmed over six weeks: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2020/sep/20/pizza-by-paul-flowers-by-prue-how-great-british-bake-off-built-its-covid-bubble

Yeah, that Guardian article pretty much agrees with my assumptions and clears up discomfort over home Vs TV bubbling.

Really enjoyed the new episode

The cake busts challenge was v good tv!

poor Freddy Mercury & David Bowie
https://townsquare.media/site/295/files/2020/09/Mercury-Bowie-GBBO.jpg

Tom DeLonge cake was a) lol and b) terrifying
https://www.nme.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/TD-and-cake-696x442.jpg

Marie Antoinette came out surprisingly awesome tho!

tbf, the mercury and delonge cakes are pretty recognizable!

It was all good tv and I felt so bad for the lady who bumped into the guy at the end of the technical challenge

We’ve really missed Noel’s voiceover giving the contestants’ bios, always the best part of any season

It was pointed out on Extra Slice last night that Marie Antoinette was actually David Cameron.

yeah that was rough

(xpost re the woman that bumped into the guy)

re Noel’s voiceovers the one where the woman was a pantomime producer who did yoga in her spare time & enjoyed listening to Scandi metal
made us fully crack up laughing

i made up my own contestant voiceover script feel free to play along

“VG is a chicken sexer from North Whistlington. She worships the Outer God Yog-Sothoth in her spare time & lives with her half sister in a haunted bakery where they enjoy listening to calliope music.”

guy who got his cakes bumped seems a little socially awkward, he seemed to be having a hard time acting anything other than really pissed
been on both sides of that problem of course

plus the stress of being on-camera for the whole thing cant be easy to deal with

oh yeah, there's no way i would ever go near a reality show.
hollywood's "you signed up for it mate" about the closest i've gotten to empathizing with him

It was all good tv and I felt so bad for the lady who bumped into the guy at the end of the technical challenge

i know he'd just had his cakes knocked over but that guy (who is in the tent days after his wife has given birth, iirc) was really ungracious about it and had a bad energy imo

Oh yeah to be clear I think that guy is probably Qanon-curious at a minimum

ah the internet, where you can go from "guy-who-wasn't-happy-about-having-his-cakes-carelessly-knocked-to-the-ground" to "yeah, he's probably a 9-11 truther" in twenty minutes

i made up my own contestant voiceover script feel free to play along


We do this too!

cmon i dont think he deserves that level of flaming. humiliation & disappointment are pretty hard feelings to mask in the moment, even for a Britisher.

As they also pointed out on extra slice, she was flailing long before he got anywhere near her. But she was obvious gutted and moreso when she won.

There was no joke about what the judges were about to get up to either.

No judge chat before announcing the winner either

cmon i dont think he deserves that level of flaming. humiliation & disappointment are pretty hard feelings to mask in the moment, even for a Britisher.

trust me i know pass/agg arsehole British blokes, this guy is almost definitely oe of them [prepares to have assumptions destroyed next week when he turns out to be good egg, I honestly don't think there's ever been a bake-off contestant i didn't like]

I feel like I watched a different show from the rest of you! I barely noticed the man whose cakes fell; he was like the intact paste of other chewed-up humans.

Meanwhile, the lady who knocked down the cakes seemed (to me) rude throughout the episode and then shed crocodile tears to make the drama about herself, followed by visible embarassment. I thought she was very selfish! Suffer in impotent shame like the rest or us, geez.

What are examples of her rudeness?

Rudeness maybe the wrong word – maybe 'ungracious' is a better one. "I feel sorry for whoever has to clean up after me," (smirk); "I don't like Battenburgs" ; "I don't want to eat cake again" ; "half of the Batttenburg is in the oven, it's like toast, it's horrible." eyeroll, sneer, turning her back on the bland guy right in the middle of him saying, "it's okay, accidents happen."

"I don't like Battenburgs" ; "I don't want to eat cake again" ; "half of the Batttenburg is in the oven, it's like toast, it's horrible."

i don't think ungracious is really the word for this but maybe the typical brit sense of humour doesn't travel very well? she just seemed funny to me

I thought she came across as mostly nice, smart and funny so idk

Yeah, my partner had already said "Okay, I like her" before the cake nudging incident - and I think she was genuinely mortified over it.

Sura is VERY London - I was sold on her when they showed footage of her walking a leashed cat in front of her estate.

Ha! Yes, that was exact moment that sold Sarah, too!

Definitely agree with you, Stevie. Those remarks seemed very much like jokes.

I thought it there was a strange energy in the tent, as if everyone knew each other and the presenters better than in previous series (but maybe that's just the way Matt Lucas is with everyone? Just instantly friendly?) but also everyone's nerves were stretched almost to breaking point, and anything at all could have set them off. I wasn't surprised that there was an accident in the first round. Hopefully (for the sake of their own sanity) they'll all have calmed down a little bit by this week.

Lockdown, innit? Weird vibes all round, I'm betting.

I mean, soda feels what he feels, obv. I liked Sura, thought she was very deadpan in general (exchanges w Noel lol) and actually mortified at the cake-knocking.

No surprise though that soldier cosplay armored guard couldn't pass off graciousness. Son, we have had an actual prison warden who had better manners than you.

This thread, from the favourite group of a particular bit of ILM:

When we were 16/17 we had one of those teachers you never forget (1/9)

— The Clientele (@theclientele) September 23, 2020

That’s great.

I love Rowan: he’s like a non-miserable Kenneth Williams.

We think he looks like old ben whishaw. Except we like him.

Oi, disliking Ben Whishaw is NOT ALLOWED. Few things more hilarious than watching Paddington 2 and A Very English Scandal as a double bill (“Hugh Grant just bummed Paddington!”)

Aw thats so great!

I was corrected last night that we like Ben Whishaw a great deal, I was in my cups apparently and thinking about a conversation about a different cast member of The Hour (dominic west)

(I wasn’t in my cups at 11am, I was in my cups when the conversation happened)

is dave the one we don't like? his florentines looked pristine.

is dave the security guard who made a bust cake of a UFO conspiracy theorist?

Yep.

Dominic West has an extremely annoying daughter.