The Great British Baking Show Recap: Puppet Strings Attached
It’s so crazy when things happen on the Great British Copyright Infringement. These people are just supposed to whip egg whites to stiff peaks, talk about their dogs at home with their partners, and gently help each other to finish before a deadline that is way too short, even shorter than Sandi Toksvig. They’re not supposed to fall ill or faint or fall off stools or talk to us about their unborn children that are still with them in the sky of a puppet theater made all out of biscuits. I can’t believe I just typed that entire sentence (and it’s all accurate).
The first big casualty is Jeff, our American brother, but it seems like Uncle Sam wanted him … to quit this Euro-centric show. It’s like if Trump were to pull America out of NATO but with a cup of tea and an orange hat instead of orange skin. Though Jeff finished the first challenge — where he used coffee and joked tea was for sick people — he was feeling woozy before the technical. Though he tried to finish, he just nursed a cup of tea and then slowly wandered off the set out of a gorgeous garden door covered with ivy and set in a brick wall. This is the most regal storm-off I’ve ever seen on reality TV. Usually, it’s some Housewife trucking out of a reunion special trying to gather her gown about her and not trip. But this time, it’s just a nice old (and shockingly ripped!) man from the Bronx just fading off into the distance.
As for the fainting, that was our girl Illiyin, who might have been having some sympathy pains for Jeff. Right after they finished baking their showstopper, she succumbed to the vapors, fell right onto the floor, and was helped out by the medical support staff. If this had happened on Survivor, she would have had Jeff Probst yelling in her ear, “That is how you do it on Survivor,” while the camera zoomed in on the sweat accumulating on her brown. On this show, the medic says, “She needs some privacy,” and we see hardly anything. Is this what happens when we allow humanity into the reality television arts and sciences?
Following that, at the judging for the showstoppers, my lover Dylan, who looks like a sexy pirate who just got a gift card to Cos, fell off his stool while reaching for his water bottle. Everyone was worried that there was some kind of Legionnaires disease swirling through the tent, but this wasn’t so bad, just a case of clumsiness. Either that or Dylan found my Instagram account and was knocked off his chair at the sexual tension that we feel for each other through the internet. (Just kidding, it was probably clumsiness.)
The first challenge during this deadly biscuit week is to make a batch of Viennese sandwich cookies. Much like Jeff, I had never heard of these until I moved to the U.K., but now they regularly figure into my post-joint snack sessions. Mr. Kipling’s, the Little Debbies of the U.K., makes excellent ones with cream and raspberry jam in the middle. Last week, they made Mr. Kipling’s mini Battenburgs, and this week, they’re making Viennese Whirls. Is this product integration, or did the challenge crew get their ideas just by walking down the biscuit aisle of a Tesco?
Everyone seems to be doing a good job except for Hazel, who didn’t put enough butter into her first batch of biscuit dough and then underbaked her second round. Her coffee and hazelnut rounds look totally flat and gross, and the judges don’t love them. Christiaan is making tarragon biscuits with a blueberry and lavender filling and I wish this guy would just stick to the classics. Last week, he was putting miso in things, and now his biscuits are going to smell like the perfume counter at a Nordstrom Rack. I think I might hate him and his try-hard flavors. Sumayah makes these gorgeous swans with blackberry jam and goat cheese buttercream that she thinks tastes disgusting but her parents love. Apparently, her parents are Paul and Prue, because they also love them.
Also on the top are Andy’s absolutely perfect-looking PB&J biscuits and my lover Dylan with his “campfire cookies” that have praline and charred meringue in them. They’re dipped in chocolate on one side and they look just as delicious as, well, Dylan. Not faring so well are Hazel, with her flat biscuits; Jeff, who baked a note from his doctor so that he could leave the tent forever; and Georgie, who made rhubarb and custard biscuits (it’s a very common flavor combination in the U.K. and quite delicious) but the dehydrated rhubarb she put in her biscuits turned a funny color so they look like a rose gold iPhone that has been left out in the rain for a whole month of Tuesdays.
The technical aspect is to make a mint cream cookie; honestly, they sound disgusting. It’s like a thin mint, but the cookie is shortbread and there is some weird frosting filling in them. They also look like a sand dollar wearing a backpack or a Pog with a giant tumor. I don’t like it at all. The biggest problem everyone has is tempering the dark chocolate coating and then getting it on their cookies. Dylan, coming from the top in the signature, makes a pile of cookies that look like the grass at the dog park after someone sets off a firework. Just absolute rubbish. He’s in last place, and just before him is Andy, whose cookies literally stick to the presentation board. At the top are Sumayah (of course) and last week’s winner John. However, the shocking winner is farmer Mike, who was in 11th place last week when they had to make Mr. Kipling’s Battenburgs.
Into the showstopper and, oh, help me ghost of Queen Elizabeth II, they have to make a puppet theater out of cookies. Ugh, these are the challenges that I hate, where they have to make something structural, there are only a few choices of what kind of biscuit they can make, and it seems like you need an MFA in set building to make it happen. Whose idea was this? Mr. Kipling’s?
Each one has to tell a story as well. Andy’s is about a Pig on the A12. (That’s how they number their highways here. It’s strange.) John’s is about a walk in Wales he takes with his dog. Nelly’s is about, well, how life is like a forest because it is full of hardships, but there is always a light in the forest to see you through, and sometimes that light is a star, and sometimes that light is her unborn children. She doesn’t explain more, but I am full of existential dread and that is exactly what I watch this show to avoid, so can Nelly knock it off please and just tell us a story about meeting a mermaid or some shit?
It’s clear that Hazel is struggling with this challenge, especially when Sumayah helps her put the finishing touches on her Punch and Judy theater. (Most Americans have no idea what Punch and Judy is, but it is a wildly violent and misogynistic puppet show that the English have been showing their children for centuries and, well, maybe that explains colonialism.) It also seems like Dylan is having a hard time. His theater is based on a Japanese myth that his father told him about a furry forest creature that self-immolates and is then welcomed into heaven by a moon goddess. What is up with these people and their creepy ass forests?
It turns out Dylan’s theater is absolutely amazing, complete with giant macarons inspired by Japanese paintings and a little critter that goes to heaven. He’s also the only one to make something that doesn’t have curtains in the front and looks embarrassingly English. Hazel’s, well, it’s just as terrible as we thought it was going to be, a giant white box that looks like it’s covered by salt. Illiyin isn’t there to present her showstopper, and Noel has the complete embarrassment of presenting something that looks like a half-tilled field full of strawberries.
The real show stoppers belong to Sumayah, who made a gorgeous, rolling puppet theater on wheels that the judges also think is delicious. Christiaan, however, made something that looks like a marvel. It tells the story of a little boy and his teddy bear who find a white tent full of sweets and finally find happiness. There are four sections of scenes, each of them brilliantly piped, and they rotate behind an equally elaborate stage front. How did he make this and how did Hazel make that (waves hand in her direction) in the same amount of time? And just when I was ready to hate Christiaan and his silly flavors, he had to go and make an absolute triumph.
Just when we think that he’s going to get star baker without even a fight, it is awarded to Sumayah. Sure, her technical and signature might have been better than Christiaans, but I feel like how much better his showstopper was than hers should have cliched him the win. It’s no surprise Hazel was asked to leave. I predicted last week she’d make it to episode three, and that might have been the case if Jeff didn’t quit prematurely because he didn’t seem to give us that much skill. But I guess when so much happens in one episode, who gets eliminated doesn’t matter that much.