The Great British Bake-Off 2023

[Pijlstaart]

Shouldn't do botanical week without the cumbrian mud lady, she'd have loved this, pawing liverwort and twigs out her sporran, should have a microplastics week to play to the remaining contestants strengths. Cristy, Matty and Dana all spend their weekends stencilling quotes from Disney movies onto the walls of their persimmon home and vacuuming cockapoo piss off their artificial lawns. 

Good to see Dana go. Cristy has some very dark aspects to her life coming through. Her husband and kids never clean up after themselves and she hates it, awful existence, she realises this show is and will forever be her only reprieve and it's getting snatched away from her, that's why she broke down, and the cameraman keeps trying to film down the front of her shirt even when she's crying. She's at midlife crisis age, if she has any sense she'll shake off the fleas and go start a new life in a cave in france.
 
Not sure there should be a sign language word for joconde, when I think of those bigot deaf separatist movements I think pragmatists. Very hard to be stealthy when you can't hear how much noise you're making, they wouldn't need joconde, they'll have lots of words for punji stake, probably words for garrotting we haven't even thought of, a sign if they suspect they've audibly farted. She does have big forearms, she'd thrive in a wooded area.

Noel Fielding a vampire but just for menarche blood, Matt lucas keeps hugging people, Daryl still wearing too tight clothes, prue a spitting image of the broccoli monster from that meat board psa about the dangers of fibre, it feels tired, it feels like the end.

[gilbertharding]

it feels tired, it feels like the end.

Along with all the adverts for EE this week, there was one for the Guardian. On the day they ran this: https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2023/oct/31/channel-4-is-this-the-dullest-bake-off-ever

[Huxleys Babkins]

It does feel like they've either picked a particularly dull set of contestants this year or that Alison can't quite get the reactions out of them that Lucas, Toksvig or Melon Sue could. It's like they've cast the usual archetypes, but they just fall flat in the tent.

Cristy is the saucy, yummy mummy one, but she's not really saucy at all. Plenty of M, not enough ILF. Tasha's the Ramona Flowers one for all the young lads to fancy, but she comes across as way too vulnerable for that role. Keith was supposed to be the middle aged weirdo, but never gave off those "possible paedo" or "genuinely a bit tapped through lived experience" vibes that are essential for the part. But then how do you follow an act like Rowan? Nicky started off looking like some mad, flailing harlequin but messy hair and a Scottish accent isn't really a personality is it? Josh may well have been a child's doll propped up against the counter by mistake. I can barely remember any of the others. I think there was a gay one and a black one. But were they really gay or black enough? Dan looks like the bloke my ex cheated on me with, so that's nice. I know Love Productions weren't to know, but it just means they need to improve their due diligence so it doesn't happen again. No Irish ones as far as I can tell. Pitiful.

I was disappointed by the lack of entendres this week.

Tight, glazed buns.

Having trouble getting it out.

Drizzling thick, white fluid down the creases of some moist, hot cake.

Big, wobbly domes.

All there for the taking. Alas.

[gilbertharding]

It's the same trajectory as Strictly. There's no-one that's comically bad. The bad ones are all bad in some hard-to-define way that's just not interesting. There's some game triers who will go on a huge journey, but you know they won't win against the three or four absolute Dance Robots who'll get to the final and one of them will win. Not worth watching anymore.

[dissolute ocelot]

They should do kids vs adults, add some opportunity for wanton cruelty. I reckon a couple of the current senior mob would be willing to swipe a 13 year old girl's cake onto the floor when the judges weren't looking, if it meant they could get their faces on a Sainsbo's spoon.

Someone I know applied for it a few years ago and got as far as an audition/tryout, she's quite stylish and quirky but I wonder if she'd be wacky enough. She didn't forage or weld or anything like that.

My other idea is that they should do light vs dark bake-off, where Noel has a tent full of goth bakers making black cakes, and Alison runs a rival school of wholesome foragers with white chocolate ganaches and angel-wings. I am quite bored by this.

[jamiefairlie]

It does feel like they've either picked a particularly dull set of contestants this year or that Alison can't quite get the reactions out of them that Lucas, Toksvig or Melon Sue could. It's like they've cast the usual archetypes, but they just fall flat in the tent.

Cristy is the saucy, yummy mummy one, but she's not really saucy at all. Plenty of M, not enough ILF. Tasha's the Ramona Flowers one for all the young lads to fancy, but she comes across as way too vulnerable for that role. Keith was supposed to be the middle aged weirdo, but never gave off those "possible paedo" or "genuinely a bit tapped through lived experience" vibes that are essential for the part. But then how do you follow an act like Rowan? Nicky started off looking like some mad, flailing harlequin but messy hair and a Scottish accent isn't really a personality is it? Josh may well have been a child's doll propped up against the counter by mistake. I can barely remember any of the others. I think there was a gay one and a black one. But were they really gay or black enough? Dan looks like the bloke my ex cheated on me with, so that's nice. I know Love Productions weren't to know, but it just means they need to improve their due diligence so it doesn't happen again. No Irish ones as far as I can tell. Pitiful.

I was disappointed by the lack of entendres this week.

Tight, glazed buns.

Having trouble getting it out.

Drizzling thick, white fluid down the creases of some moist, hot cake.

Big, wobbly domes.

All there for the taking. Alas.

" but messy hair and a Scottish accent isn't really a personality is it"

Hey!

[jamiefairlie]

Where did this Alison person come from? Is she one of those new light entertainment personality types that have arisen since I fled that scissored isle?

Honestly she's so over the top fake with all the crazy laughing about nothing that if I encountered her in real life I'd have to enquire after her mental and emotional wellness.

Like an even more demented Rusty Lee.

[bgmnts]

Reality tv star turned morning telly fodder iirc.

[jamiefairlie]

Reality tv star turned morning telly fodder iirc.

Ah, makes sense

[JesusAndYourBush]

Big Brother 3. Evicted after 2 weeks.

[Chairman Yang]

Wrap it up, shit's over.

[JesusAndYourBush]

I had to laugh this week when they all (bar 1) poured out their ramekins of uncooked goo.

[dissolute ocelot]

That was dire. None of them deserve to win. Send them all home and just have Pru make 20 cakes.

[jamiefairlie]

It was hilarious when she took out her massive spoon and laughed like a fucking lunatic. What a character!

[Huxleys Babkins]

Much better week. Dan deserved to go but they pulled a Rahul and kept him because he's been overall better than Cristy. Don't like it when they do that. You have a shit week, you get gone.

[dissolute ocelot]

The quarter final was indeed a bit better. The caterpillar cake challenge was fun. I was a bit disappointed by the non-beige party food round, as there was a lot of actually beige stuff, but some of it looked nice.

Christy was never that exciting (despite me saying earlier that they'd let her win as the most telegenic, she wasn't really all that telegenic). And I don't think there was a lot between them at the bottom. Still hope Tasha wins. When is Pottery Throwdown back?

[dissolute ocelot]

Fuuuck. Things your dad is doing. Making Sam Fender themed guitar cakes.

I get that Tasha fucked up and had to go like Darwin and Dawkins decreed, but it's turned into one of those flat-roofed-pub race nights where grinning automatons make pastry in a pastiche of competition till their artificial skin falls off and they tumble off the track into an open cellar and nobody cares because they all bet not on who'd win the race but on when the shitshow would fall apart. My bet is on nobody at all watching the final, the tent blowing away like one of those bouncy castles you see on the news, and Noel Fielding falling silently through the sky till the North Koreans trigger his self-destruct switch. Or else someone will make a cake shaped like a football stadium, and win.

[Thomas]

Tasha :(

I've had to transfer a lukewarm allegiance to Josh now. Corrigan posh, but he smiles far less than the boisterous lad and jovial dad. Wouldn't fit in where they'd thrive, and vice versa. I don't want to do PE or go to the pub - I want to sit in awkward silence with Josh.

However he does have that sports thing going on, maybe he emerges from his puff pastry shell in the company of rugger boys. 

Tasha :(

[daf]

Dan and his permanent plasticine grin - there's no way he's not done a murder! Heads hidden in the rugger ball pile - Brrr!

[Gurke and Hare]

Josh reminds me of Marek Larwood.

[Pijlstaart]

Thought I'd been watching this, but apparently not, winking in and out of consciousness here. "What if there was a country where you could sell children?" the paedophile presenter mused aloud before absconding to Argentina, reinventing himself, unrecognisable save for his meter wide count chocula paving slab face, sideburns and signature toupee. "Shut down the schools so all those luverly kids come out", he recites in broken spanish, first to the tour guide and then to increasingly large crowds. I'm sure I watched that, I remember this.

There was a deaf lady doing a horizon zero dawn cosplay, insurgency vibes, forest ambush playset with 3 moveable traps, big arms for strangling the young boy. I remember this. There was a pubic hair vole in a milkmaid outfit with a druid sickle and a duffel bag full of bits of other peoples' gardens. I remember this. There was a Nella Rose girl shaving live laugh love into the side of a handbag dog and a Carol Vorderman bully pensioner whinging about jon venables and her 8 kids hating her. I remember this.

Never seen these three before. Went into this rooting for the little face man, seems the least sexually successful of the three and I respect that. Saps the creative energy. What a dull man, he'd ruin the show! I love that. The northern blockhead one has a raoul moat haircut and that held him back, bet he wears wrestler trunks to bed.

Matty going to die balconing on a lads week in Tenerife, bought his tattoo sleeve from a crayon tattooist that charges by the square foot, one of these. Ma'y ma'e, Ma'y ma'e, at the actual end of the day Ma'e, you and lawa is well fit, sell us vomit pills Ma'y, vomit pills so we's actually get well thin. Who does he think he is, cooking things in an oven? Use your hands you shit. He couldn't have won, he isn't the right sort. I think the quiet boy won in the first take, but he was too shy to pipe up so it went to Matty by default.

I don't eat cake, it was never about that, I mostly eat things I've found on the floor, so it's been a real experience for me, we're all from different walks of life and I now have a more comprehensive reference library of bigotries and despair to keep me up at night. Ban this sick filth!

[Beagle 2]

It felt like they contrived a Matty win there, just because he's the housewives' favourite and otherwise it was just the slow, attritional plod to victory from Josh. Green fingers and a lisp are no sort of replacement for breaking into incredulous laugher at the end of every sentence. Matty's showstopper looked like a RTA and he'd already shat it big style for LARD CAKE.

The bit at the end where they talk about what the contestants have been up to in the interim was definitely the dullest montage yet. "Ian has been mostly sentient and did a doodle of a spider in late September" etc. I imagine money changed hands to ensure that Matty popped the question.

One of the worst series to date, but it doesn't matter as much as the Guardian think it does, it's still a lovely oasis of niceness in the bleakness.

[Huxleys Babkins]

And that's the end of the simultaneously best and worst series ever.

Best, because none of the challenges were designed to contrive drama. Everything was absolutely fair and you went because you fucked up.

Worst, because all of the contestants were dull as fuck and Alison Hammond wasn't really funny or sharp enough to bring them out of their shells. You need a comedian in that role because all she has in her oeuvre is hugging and fucking up the punchlines to Noel Fielding's antics. The way she sucked the life out of the tent following up Fielding's "bake in the nude" joke by just repeating it, but worse, was amazing. I can't believe they left it in the edit. Did they mean to get Judi Love, I wonder?

I don't think anyone had reckoned on Matty getting to the final, let alone winning it, so they suddenly had to find a journey for him. And that journey was Lara. Turns out that, having not mentioned her once in 9 weeks, she was his absolute everything so they had to batter us over the head with her. Getting married next year. The good news for them is that he's got nothing about him, so there won't be a book tour or anything like that to get in the way of their plans. Congratulations!

Josh dedicated every single one of his bakes to his grandmother and, my goodness, he wasn't going to stop in the final. Genuinely shocked he never put some of her ashes into the showstopper. Missed out on the win with his overbaked cake that looked like it had been decorated by Dan's kids. You failed, mate. You failed your nan. Think on.

Dan had mentioned his kids in passing, but now he was in the final, we had to see lots more of little Diesel and Jaxon. "I can finally stop lying to them" he beamed as he presented them with plates of bin cake. I think he had a wife, but she clearly didn't want to be on TV. After that lardy cake, I don't blame her. I'm not saying collapsing in the last three weeks of Bake Off is grounds for divorce, but I'm not saying it's not either.

The biggest winner was Tasha's sign language interpreter. Contracted for ten weeks, but only had to do nine. Well done, mate.

[Beagle 2]

I don't remember a single thing Alison Hammond said except "Bake". I don't really mind, I was allergic to Mel and Sue and Matt Lucas's depressed ghost vibe kind of spoilt the atmos. Toksvig was optimum.

[gilbertharding]

Is this over now then?

[dissolute ocelot]

It lacked a certain something because I was unable to remember which finalist was which. Um he's a guy who does sports and makes cakes do I like him.

The showstoppers were embarrassingly shit. there's always a tension between those that look nice and edibility. But decoration was woeful. Which meant it was just which white male made a cake Paul and Prue thumbsed-up. Honestly I'd have got more out of a show where they made perfumes and some guy with a nose assigned various numbers to it and the one with the most numbers got an invisible trophy.

Agree about the montage at the end. Clearly none has opened a cake shop or got a deal with Sainsbos or even started an Insta or possibly even made a cake. Lazy cunts, it's no lockdown any more.

[Huxleys Babkins]

There was a tragedy to the montage scene of Abbi foraging for ingredients, literally exactly where she was before she entered the tent.

[confettiinmyhair]

It's reached that point when you think, this show could take a break for a few years.

[Huxleys Babkins]

They should do a Pottery Throwdown crossover, where Paul and Prue have to guess if it's a real cake or a made out of rock hard, kiln-fired clay.

"Unfortunately, Alison won't be with us this week as she's having emergency reconstructive surgery after trying to eat a pottery mille feuille."

[dissolute ocelot]

It's reached that point when you think, this show could take a break for a few years.

There was a thing in the Guardian by a former contestant, Michael Chakraverty, complaining that there's just too much Bake-Off on TV. Although I'm not sure I agree that the contestants are as good as ever.