The Great British Bake Off

"Bake Off? What the hell is this?"

~Average American viewer on the Great British Bake Off

Since 2016, The Great British Bake Off and Paddington have served as the entirety of the British Ministry of Tourism's operations.

The Great British Bake Off (or Baking Show, as it is known in the USA due to the national name copyright already being held by the Great Botswanian Bake Off) is a British reality show program programme produced by the Irish television network Channel 4 and filmed from several suspiciously bright and sunny pastures and farms across England. Bake Off is centered around a weeks-long competition waged between several of Britain's somewhat-competent home chefs to see who can manage to cook anything whilst surrounded by denizens of cameras, critics, and hosts constantly battling one another to determine the worst food-based puns a human can possibly produce without keeling over from the sheer lack of humor. The show has remained immensely popular throughout its run, and is currently watched by 49,000,000 Americans and approximately 4 Britons on a weekly basis.

Synopsis

Despite the show's name, actual British delicacies are rarely attempted on Bake Off.

Each episode of The Great British Bake Off is made up of three challenges: the signature, technical, and showstopper. The show claims that success in these challenges is the factor that determines the winners and losers of the show, although the fact that survival is determined solely on the physical appearance of one's inner ear has been an open secret for years. The judges themselves, Mary Berry and Paul Hollywood, manage to critique only one or two dishes per episode as the rest of their time is usually spent explaining that their names are indeed real and not just poorly-designed witness protection aliases. On the rare occasion that they do get to actually judge a baker's work, they simply pretend to know what they are doing, like all other reality television judges. Once in a while, if Hollywood decides he likes someone's creation, he will offer them a congratulatory handshake. While it may seem like a simple compliment on the surface, it is in reality a predatory technique used to lure victims into his grasp so that he can swallow them alive. The hosts of Bake Off can vary from season to season, as once the producers decide that their presence has overstayed its welcome, they burn the hosts' corpses as a sacrifice to the baking gods. In an effort to avoid this fate for as long as possible, the hosts often choose to be as obnoxious as possible to deter staleness in the eyes of the audience. These efforts usually include talking to the bakers, yelling at the bakers, riding the bakers as if they were horses, banging pots and pans in front of the bakers, stealing the bakers' ingredients and dumping them in a nearby river, pantsing the bakers, and secretly defecating in the bakers' works while they are looking away. As of this year, the hosts are rumored to be responsible for 19 deaths, 12 casualties, 28 cases of racial and ethnic insensitivity, 36 cases of food poisoning, 142 requests filed for restraining orders, and countless acts of puns against humanity. At the end of each episode, the judges converse with one another to decide which baker's performance is enough to earn them the title of "star baker" for the week and which baker will be kicked from the show and be rendered an utter yet unspoken disgrace to their family for the rest of eternity. Sometimes the judges choose to mix the two up just for the hell of it.

At the end of the competition, the winner of The Great British Bake Off is given a dessert tray. Per tradition, the winner, upon seeing their monetarily worthless award, has a full mental breakdown and attempts to strangle Hollywood until they are wrestled away by the authorities and taken into custody. It is then and only then that the contestant is informed of the £100,000 cash prize which accompanies the tray. Upon hearing this, the contestant’s head simply explodes from sheer fury.

Reception

Critical reception for The Great British Bake Off was fairly mixed upon the program's premiere in 2010.

Jeff Watters of The Daily Mail stated in a 2011 review that, "The show is simply not British enough. I'm almost completely sure that every one of those contestants is an American spy. Their accents sound fake, their teeth seem too perfect...While watching the show last Friday evening, I told my wife and kin that every one of them was just here to steal all of our great country's recipes and make them 'Kentucky-fried' and do whatever else those monarch-free bastards do to their food. Thus, in an act of cultural renewal, I destroyed our set with a hatchet and began singing "God Save the Queen" at the top of my lungs as my own children sobbed in response to my heroic patriotism. They have all since left me and are staying at my mother-in-law's in Surrey. But I know that I'm right!"

However, as the show has progressed, reviews have grown kinder and the show is nowadays met with almost universal acclaim. "It is truly wonderful in every sense of the word." wrote Jane Perkins of The Guardian in a 2017 review of Series 7, "Every time I flip on the Bake Off on my telly, a wave of happiness inundates my heart. And that dear Hollywood fellow makes me feel so very titillated. In fact, watching that man and this show gave me my first ever real orgasm! And I'm 76 years old!"

Controversies

Despite the show's consistent praise, The Great British Bake Off has seen a number of controversies over the years. Below in no particular order is a selection of examples.

Product Placement

In 2012, Bake Off came under fire for the increase in corporate product placement within the competition. Viewers had begun to notice brand names placed throughout the kitchen, including several large billboards advertising McDonald's cheeseburgers which were placed upon the bakers' heads, causing at least one's head to collapse onto a blazing skillet and burn. Objections were also made against the forcing of bakers to exclusively bake one of six pre-approved Kids Cuisine frozen dinners starting with Episode 6. Viewership plummeted following this development, and the network voluntarily withdrew the series' 6 remaining episodes (one of which saw the show adopting the new name of The Great British Bake Off presented by Kraft American Singles)

Use of Innuendo

Bake Off has also been criticized for its fairly liberal use of innuendo and profanity, which many fans believe goes against the aura of innocence the show propagates. Many fans point to the brash wordplay and gestures utilized by Paul Hollywood in particular, as seen in a Series 5 episode in which the critic spent the entire episode yelling the words "fuck", "shit", "cock", and "kumquats" in perpetual repetition. A similar series 8 episode saw Hollywood pretend to sensually fondle the foods offered for his judgement, at one point pantomiming himself inserting his penis into one baker's jelly doughnut. Hollywood has dismissed all criticisms levied at his actions, stating to one interviewer that every one of his jokes is made in good fun and is not indicative of his character. Hollywood then told said interviewer to get the fuck out of his kumquatting house.

Mexican Week

Bake Off has long been chastised for its portrayal of ethnic cultures during international cuisine weeks, and Series 10's Mexican Week in particular was harshly criticized for its mockery of Mexican culture. The episode opened with one of the hosts wearing a sombrero two times larger than his own body and wearing brownface while attempting to cross the "Cream of Tartar Wall." As it turned out, the show would only went downhill from there, and Channel 4 was ultimately forced to cut the broadcast altogether when complaints over the episode's technical challenge, an "Authentic Mexican dish” of teriyaki sushi tacos with cheeseburger sliders as a side dish (an original Hollywood creation) crashed the network's entire computer system, causing the entire channel to go dark. When the power was finally restored, any and all copies and records of Mexican Week had mysteriously vanished, and network executives could not recall its existence when pressed for comment.

See Also

• BBC (quitters.)
• Food
• Britons
• Stereotypes
• Baked Alaska