Great British Baking Show – 2019 Final

For reasons that I was not fully clear on, and which were informed primarily through anecdotal evidence (meaning feedback I’ve received from you, the readers, as well as a handful of friends), there were some bad vibes around this season of the Great British Baking Show. No one seemed to like it all that much. People I talked to and heard from thought the challenges were too hard and they thought this year’s crop of bakers maybe wasn’t all that good. I commented on this back in week 7, and while I stand by everything I wrote then, and while I am grateful for and appreciative of your comments, part of me wondered that perhaps I was commenting on a phenomenon that didn’t actually exist on a broader scale. Did everyone think this season was bad, or was it just the people I heard from?

And then, as I was watching the Final last Friday, Sarah handed me her phone to show me this article from The Guardian, which answered my question as emphatically as possible. Lots (and lots) of people disliked this season. The article highlights four things that went wrong with this season, which I have paraphrased below:

• Lack of older bakers, who have historically helped distinguish the show from lesser reality competitions and their cabals of 20-30 somethings

• Excessively esoteric and difficult Technical Challenges

• Too much pressure on the bakers, ruining the show’s celebrated chill vibes

• Excessively mean judging and judge’s comments

` I certainly agree that the Technical Challenges this season were far too difficult, and I would also extend that criticism to this year’s Signatures, as well, but beyond that I’m not sure to what extent I agree with these points, or to what extent they are fair criticisms. Specifically, I’m not sure what to make of the lack of older bakers. I agree that this season had fewer middle-aged and older bakers, of which there are typically a decent handful each season; Phil appears to be somewhere in his 50s, but no one else looked a day past (or even all that close to) 40. (Wikipedia says Phil is 56 and Helena is exactly 40, so there you go.) That said, I don’t think I have enough information to make this point into a broader criticism. Did this year’s Tent skew younger because of some producer mandate or other bias, or did it just work out that way, you know? If it happens that next year’s Tent is also filled primarily with young adults, I will take that as an indication something is up, but for now I feel compelled to withhold judgment.

Also, while I agree there were some uncomfortable meltdowns in this season, I feel that there have been uncomfortable meltdowns every season. Remember Iain up and chucking his Show Stopper into the trash out of sheer frustration? Remember Ruby forecasting doom and gloom all the way to the her season’s Final? Meltdowns happen in the Tent; there’s a reason I saw fit to consider a baker’s general mental state as a relevant component of my rankings. The Tent is now and has always been a high-pressure environment, but what has always kept the show from feeling excessively dramatic is the heartwarming support the bakers give each other through the tough patches and meltdowns, and that was no different this season.

And finally, there’s the issue of the judging. I, too, had issues with a lot of the judging this season, but not because I thought Prue and Paul were meaner than they have been in seasons past. I have a whole thing on the judging coming up in a bit here, but suffice to say I deeply regret my decisions to accept the judge’s comments on their own terms for power ranking purposes. And yet, I don’t think either judge was meaner than normal. Furthermore, earlier on in the season, I was thinking about Paul, and how he has a reputation for being a prick, but I think his prickishness has become overstated, to an extent. Compare and contrast with say, Gordon Ramsey, who appears to deeply enjoy hurling abuse, and Paul comes off as tough, but fair. He never yells outright, and most importantly, even most of his harshest criticisms are constructive. He points out what is wrong with problem bakes and what conditions led to those problems. Maybe some of his outbursts aren’t great, but I don’t think he’s that bad of a dude, at least not relative to most other fussy bastard TV chefs (although granted, I personally wouldn’t want to bake anything for the guy).

Anyway, while I agree that this season wasn’t the most fun, if I were in charge of the show’s direction, I would change three things for next season. First, I would reduce the number of bakers in the Tent back down to 12. Adding a 13^th baker seemed pretty pointless to me, and also necessitated a Double Elimination, which struck me as needlessly cruel, and added almost nothing to the show. Second, I would scale back the number of ‘theme’ weeks to absolutely no more than two, and probably only one. Most weeks need to be built around a particular style or genre of baking. It keeps the show more organized and is a fairer test of each baker’s abilities.

This bring me to my third and most important change – the difficulty of the Signature and Technical challenges must be scaled back. The core assumption of both challenges is that they are intended to demonstrate each baker’s grasp of and skill with the basic principles of the given week’s type of bake. This season, every Signature required elaborate decorations and thus felt like a Show Stopper, starting all the way back in Cake Week and continuing throughout the season. Most of the Technicals were designed strictly to be brutally difficult and not to make sure that each baker knows how to make, say, a hot water crust or a choux pastry or phyllo dough or whatever, and most everyone did poorly as a result.

This has a cascading effect on the show. It has diluted the Show Stopper itself, reducing it to yet another elaborate baking project. It has made the bakers appear to be worse than the bakers in season’s past, even though the opposite is probably true. It has increased each baker’s overall stress level, and almost certainly contributed to additional baker meltdowns. It seems as though part of the reason for this spike in difficulty is a vague notion that the bakers must be held to an increasingly high standard, but it is possible (and perhaps even advisable) to lessen the difficulty. As both Paul and Prue (and Mary before her) have made clear, if you go simple in the Tent you must nail what you’re attempting. When viewed through that lens, there is an opportunity for the show to lower the difficulty without lowering the judging standards. I think doing so would fix a lot of the complaints people have had toward this season.

As I stated last week, there will be no rankings this week. The season is over and the winner is decided, therefore, there’s no point to ranking the Finalists based on their chances of winning the Finals. Instead, I’m going to hand out a few awards (some favorable, some dubious), bitch about the judging for a bit, and at the end, there will be tables for whoever wants to conduct some light statistical analysis. The season is over, so not it’s time to unwind in the lounge.

Week 10 – Final

Signature Bake: Masterpiece Chocolate Cake

Technical Challenge

-Recipe: 6 Stilton Souffles with Lavosh Crackers

-Judge: Paul

-Judging Parameters: Light but held together souffle. Thin, crispy lavosh.

Show Stopper: Deceptive “Picnic Basket”

Winner: David

In Praise of Season Champion David

I feel like I should have seen this coming. After 9 entire weeks of consistently good but never Star Baker-winning performances, a pattern that became so established that it made me seriously question his chances of snagging the win in the Finals, David finally pulled it all the way together and put together a championship performance. His Signature may have had a little too much booze in it, but beyond that he clearly had the best week of anyone. Seriously, the Final seemed over before the Show Stoppers were all the way out of the ovens. It does suck a lot that both Alice and Steph had troubles holding it together, but this doesn’t take away from David’s accomplishments. He obviously had a lot of talent and skill, and he finally gave his best showing when it mattered the most.

Awards

The 2015-2016 Golden State Warriors Memorial Award for Regular Season Excellence

Of course, the only serious choice for this award is Steph, whose four Star Baker awards (including a three-week streak at the top) dwarf the competition. It was a colossal bummer to see Steph struggle so mightily in the Final; as I noted several times in the past few weeks, she had been having problems with the Technicals for most of the second half of the season, and unfortunately, the damn souffles gave Steph real problems that seemed to carry over into her performance in the Show Stopper. It was tough for me to watch; I really wanted Steph to come away with the season victory, and I guess it wasn’t to be. Hopefully she can somehow parlay her still incredibly impressive performance on the show into not working three part time jobs anymore. That sounds like it sucks, and Steph deserves better.

The Andy Reid Memorial Award for Terrible Time Management

Unfortunately, I feel compelled to give this award to Priya, whose noted perfectionist tendencies often resulted in her spending way too much time on a single aspect of a given bake, which in turn left her with less time for finish and also often created problems for whatever thing she was spending so much time on in the first place. While this may seem a little mean, I am handing out this award specifically because I relate to Priya’s struggles. I too can be a bit of a perfectionist, and I know all too well the feeling of trying so hard to make everything just right that I freeze up. I can assure you, it is no fun whatsoever.

The Steve Harris Memorial Award for Most Metal Baker

This one goes to Helena, obviously. I heard a few complaints about Helena’s “All Hallloween, All the Time” aesthetic, and while I can see how it could scan as a bit extra, I was picking what she was putting down. What I liked the most about Helena’s bakes was they always looked gross as hell, even when they were good. Her single best bake was probably the Show Stopper the one that looked like a giant spider; it looked ghoulish but apparently it was well-baked and tasted great. I think that’s really cool! Hail Satan!

A Note on the Judging

Back at the start of the season, I decided that for the purposes of making the Power Rankings, I wouldn’t opine on the judges’ comments. My thinking was that, even granting that objectivity (whatever the fuck that means) isn’t possible in this situation, my goal was to capture who seemed to being doing the best in the Tent on a week-to-week basis. I can think that the judges maybe shafted/over praised someone all I want, but because my opinion does not and cannot affect the judging in any way, I decided to keep my thoughts to myself. This was a mistake.

Like I said above, I do not necessarily echo the sentiments of The Guardian piece, which claimed that Prue and Paul were often extremely mean and cutting in their comments this season. Some of their comments were less than polite, but that’s true in every season. Nevertheless, I feel the judging was a real problem. Both judges occasionally indulged in taking out some weird biases on the bakers in a way I wish I had allowed myself the space to call out. I remember I first really started thinking about this when Prue went in on Priya for having purple cream on one of her Signatures, dragging it as an inherently unappetizing color.

As I sat listening, I really, deeply wondered what the fuck she was talking about. All sorts of purple food is delicious. You got purple potatoes and purple yams and grape candy and certain kinds of berries and you get my point. It just seemed like a deeply stupid and in some ways ignorant thing to say, let alone ding a baker for. Priya also caught some shit for the coloration on her Mishti back in…was that Dairy Week? Don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter. Anyway, Priya came up with these actually pretty damn gorgeous, Indian flag-colored Mishti, and then immediately got dinged for having unimpressive color work. What the hell was that?

Also worth noting is Paul’s dislike of matcha, and Prue’s dislike of blueberries (which wasn’t as prominent, but it is pretty hard to avoid once you pick up on it). I think the judges need to shut the fuck up and deal when presented with flavors that they personally don’t like very much. Matcha has been pretty popular for a while now, and it’s fair to assume that more bakers will (or will want to) use it in their bakes. Blueberries have been a thing in baking for…a while now, and their reputation precedes them. The bakers are already, in many instances, subsuming aspects of their vision to fit within the judging parameters, and if the judges don’t believe a baker met the parameters of a given challenge, that baker does not have any means of recourse. The very least the judges can do to not abuse this power is deal with ingredients they might not like very much like adults.

Next season, I will be back to do these rankings again, but if I think the judges are on one, I’m going to call them on it. Somebody has to.

Finally, A Couple of Tables

Here is everyone’s position in the Power Rankings from Weeks 1-9:

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9
Dan	13	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Jamie	12	12	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Amelia	8	10	11	X	X	X	X	X	X
Phil	11	9	9	10	X	X	X	X	X
Helena	10	11	10	8	9(tie)	X	X	X	X
Michelle	2	3	2	4	9(tie)	X	X	X	X
Priya	6	7	7	9	7	7	X	X	X
Michael	9	8	5	7	3	4	6	X	X
Henry	4	5	8	6	4	6	3	5	X
Rosie	7	4	6	3	5	5	5	4	4
Alice	5	1	3	5	6	3	4	3	2
Steph	3	6	4	2	1	1	1	1	1
David	1	2	1	1	2	2	2	2	3

And here’s everyone’s placement in the Technical throughout the season:

	Week 1	Week 2	Week 3	Week 4	Week 5	Week 6	Week 7	Week 8	Week 9	Week 10
Dan	9th	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Jamie	13th	11th	X	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Amelia	4th	9th	11th	X	X	X	X	X	X	X
Phil	8th	3rd	10th	6th	X	X	X	X	X	X
Helena	12th	12th	8th	9th	1st	X	X	X	X	X
Michelle	6th	8th	5th	5th	7th	X	X	X	X	X
Priya	7th	7th	4th	10th	2nd	7th	X	X	X	X
Michael	11th	4th	6th	7th	8th	6th	5th	X	X	X
Henry	1st	6th	1st	3rd	3rd	4th	3rd	5th	X	X
Rosie	2nd	5th	9th	4th	5th	5th	1st	2nd	1st	X
Alice	5th	1st	7th	8th	6th	1st	6th	3rd	4th	2nd
Steph	3rd	10th	3rd	1st	4th	3rd	4th	4th	3rd	3rd
David	10th	2nd	2nd	2nd	9th	2nd	2nd	1st	2nd	1st