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

I liked all three finalists, although I wouldn't want to be friends with any of them IRL.

And it feels like old fashioned sexism to say that you don't like Chrystelle because she's "trying too hard." Chigs gave up a job in sales to join the Bake Off. Guiseppe is from a family of chefs and now has a book coming out. But they're dudes, so...

Chigs is the only one who is regularly promoted to my IG. I have no idea how that algorithm works, but she hasn't been promoted to me at all, and I'm seeing a lot of him.

Crystelle is a fairly typical Habs old girl - second-gen professional middle class family, modern languages at UCL and then straight into a City job. A cool baker from a couple of seasons back, Selasi, worked for another one of the big banks.

It's okay to be a in a competition and want to win, though!

Competitiveness ≠ narcissism

― Chuck_Tatum, Thursday, December 2, 2021 9:46 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don’t think she’s a narcissist at all, she grew on me immensely as the season went on (full disclosure I think she’s hot), but the striving ambition that leads one to end up being, say, a goldman analyst was pretty obvious in her manner, and I think noel picked up on that, which is what made his little needling land

Noel's needling was affectionate and in good humour, can none of you Americans read English comedians at all?

Good humour doesn’t preclude sexism though.

yeah, the Noel/Crystelle scenes really crossed into uncomfortable for me. like she was constantly having to smile for the camera and go "seriously, dude?" at come-ons disguised as "jokes."

I'm not saying he doesn't fancy her, but I'm not sure that she was uncomfortable with him. It did seem more along the lines of he is her annoying brother. Like, I can't believe, at this stage, that the production team would be clueless enough to leave actual harrassment in the final edit? The dynamic of the last two series has been very different from previous years, it seems to me, because they are all together all the time for weeks instead of just for a couple of days a week. But maybe I am absolutely clueless on this.

I feel like a lot of noel's interactions during baking are quite awkward - he says the wacky thing, the baker acknowledges the wacky thing but then he lingers as though the wacky thing warrants further reaction. jurgen on more than one occasion had to shrug or ask him to go away.

Yes, I think with Jurgen that became part of the joke. Though at one point Jurgen did say he found Noel hovering a calming presence "believe it or not", but not sure if he was being serious.

There is a “laugh or I’ll shoot this puppy” quality to the reaction shots.

My secret shame about bakeoff is that I think Paul is great! His annoyingly selective palate aside, I’m always interested in what he’s going to say, enjoy watching him, and I like his apparent comfort with having the piss taken out of him constantly. Don’t really care if he’s a bit of a berk offscreen.

Oh yeah, me too. I bet he’s quite mesmerising in person.

The dynamic of the last two series has been very different from previous years, it seems to me, because they are all together all the time for weeks instead of just for a couple of days a week.

This for sure, you get the sense that you're just seeing the surface of a lot of the dynamics and inside jokes that have developed in the bubble.

Oz bake off, 5 minutes in. they have paul and pru, only paul is bald. and mel and sue. and a shed rather than a tent.

!! mel and sue!! really? awesome

not the actual mel and sue, but mel and sue analogs (rather than, say, noel and matt analogs). it's all a bit mirror-world ((c) william gibson)

oh ok
jeez! do not be casual with these details lol

One of them is actually a Mel, right?

Also, it looks like a lot of the episodes are on d@!1ym0t!0n!

oh, i did cut and paste the names somewhere...

"Claire Hooper and Mel Buttle and judges Maggie Beer and Matt Moran" ??????

(it's season 4, from 2018)

veg, if you love mel, you should be watching Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker. she hosts.

shut the front door! i will check that out thx

there's also this on Dave, which i've never seen

https://dave.uktv.co.uk/shows/mel-giedroyc-unforgivable/

veg, if you love mel, you should be watching Handmade: Britain's Best Woodworker. she hosts.

Is that the one that Lee Mack was meant to be hosting but one of the contestants turned out to be a nazi?

no frame of reference whatsoever but i really liked the show!

the season of taskmaster with Mel and Noel (crossover!) is v. good (and is the only taskmaster season i've had the patience to watch without fast-forwarding)

oh trishyb might be right, although that was sky history and not ch4, but it sounds a lot like the same premise. the contestants in the ch4 version were very diverse.

british week on australian bake-off.

much more innuendo than the uk version

but the best parts are the interstitial shots of the birds outside the shed, kookaburras (are they that tame?), aussie magpies, parakeets, er, some other things.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORyKiLThT-8

TLDW: Every season basically has had contestants cashing in on their time on the show.

well why not!

The kids' faces when Paul Hollywood walked into the tent. He must feel like Henry VIII. And the way he was helping them and encouraging them was very pleasing. And Rav looking awesome as always. And Harry being tolerated by the more serious kids. Junior Bakeoff is the best.

The looks Harry has got for dad jokes has been God tier this year. I was sceptical about Paul - I wasn't sure how he'd manage the sort of encouragement and leading clues the kids need - but in the second ep he's really settled into it.

My favourite is Lola but she won't make it much further. Wasn't that surprised about the first elimination, they couldn't get over what happened in the technical and it ruined their other bake.

Junior Bakeoff is the best, yes.

Are Rav and Liam still on the show? My 7yo is a huge Rav and Liam fan.

Rav and Liam still, yes, but Liam's off ill for the first few, replaced by Paul H

Ah, good news!

It was lovely to see how happy everyone was that Liam was back. The relief on their faces that their fun uncle was OK.
Today's star baker was a very popular choice in our house, but the upset of the eliminated contestant was hard to watch, as always.

I was saying the same thing, treading that line where one of them wants to celebrate but another is in floods of tears is very difficult but Rav is brilliant at it.

i find her organising the cheering and the way she looks around when she does it a bit disturbing.

I like the show but the elimination is too much for me. I don't think kids are built for high-stakes competition and living under the existential threat of sudden elimination. It seems cruel and unhealthy, even if the hosts are empathetic and sweet. I just don't want to see it.

Would much rather they just kept all the kids for the whole season and crowned a winner at the end.

It just breeds the idea that perseverance and hard work and WINNING are important, but it's just adult bullshit.

I know what you mean, but I'm not sure the kids are mortally upset for more than a couple of moments. It's just hard to see it on camera because they're more honest about how they feel and it's very hard to see kids cry. I like the fact that either this year's challenges are a little bit easier or the kids are better prepared, because there isn't anything like the amount of tears during the challenges that I remember from other years, even though some of them have really struggled.

Yeah, I like everything about the show, even Harry sometimes, but maybe if the kids are upset, do they have to film that bit? Everything's distressing at that age. I want to think the producers have thought through (or give a shit about) the implications of showing a kid cry on television to a large-ish viewership. It's a small trauma but a trauma nonetheless. I err, at the risk of overcautiousness, on not thinking it's a good idea.

Yeah, I don't want to see kids cry either. And I think they are better about that this year. One thing I do notice is that the kids who are clearly not going to win get some great shenanigans with Harry or Rav that they will get to watch back on the telly later and will hopefully be happy about. Like, unless you're Kezia, who wants to be a professional baker and is already focused on her cookbooks and whatnot, surely the real prize is getting to be on the telly, and the better you look in the edit, the more you have "won" in some sense? I think that holds for the adult show as well -- Liam's a good example of it.

I mean, they surely must get all kinds of Junior Bakeoff branded swag to take home, which has got to be a great cushion against the heartache of leaving the tent.

Are there no Scottish, Welsh or Irish contestants again?

There's a Welsh lad next week.

grand - I always forget they have more than one group of bakers.

I'm crying laughing at Gabriel in the signature bake.

"It's actually better than I thought it would be "

Junior Bake Off doesnt appear to be available in the US — are any USians watching it, abd if so by means other than t0rrentz?

> I'm crying laughing at Gabriel

i have him down as first to leave. is very confident but is very much a car-crash

I'm amazed at Liam making the right noises about his ski slope cake because watching it being assembled...