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Jun. 20th, 2018 04:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretNailed It Netflix show
This show is my aesthetic.
The premise of Nailed It is that the host, comedian Nicole Byers, sets three moderately competent amateur bakers (the sort who can pull off a tasty birthday cake for their daughter, for example) the task of making a Cake Boss kind of art cake, in an unfairly short time frame. The show is deliberately setting them up for failure, and when they fail, the show laughs at them.
But it's not a mean-spirited show! Everybody is in on the joke. The contestants are not deluded into thinking that they're master bakers, and they go on the show prepared to give it their all, knowing they won't succeed, and if things go well, maybe they'll pick up a few baking tricks along the way. So you're not laughing at the bakers, you're laughing with them. The task they were asked to do was beyond them and so they can take pride in accomplishing as much of it as they did. But the show isn't 'inspirational' about it, either. They don't pretend that failing at making a fancy cake is an accomplishment, just because they tried and put something on the judging table. Sometimes trying isn't actually enough. I love how realistic the show is about the value of failure and its limits.
It also is brilliant at picking at the unreality of crafting reality television. These show blur the distinction between the work of a professional and the work of an amateur- if you just did what they show on the show, you too could make an elaborate cake in the shape of a car. But professionals have all sorts of advantages in training, practice, equipment, time, and money that are often hidden in the cinematography. An amateur baking at home isn't going to be able to bake four times as much cake as they'll actually need, to make sure they select the best tasting, best looking cakes to provide to their customers. They don't have the time, the ingredients, the oven room, the amount of baking pans to do things like that.
There's a great moment on Nailed It when they're making cupcakes in too short an amount of time. All three of them botch the icing, because they didn't have time to let the cupcakes cool before applying the icing. The solution? They were supposed to have used the provided blast chiller to cool the cupcakes rapidly so the icing didn't melt and collapse. But of course they didn't know to do that! Nobody has a blast chiller at home! We just allow more time to let the cupcakes cool!
This show is my aesthetic.
The premise of Nailed It is that the host, comedian Nicole Byers, sets three moderately competent amateur bakers (the sort who can pull off a tasty birthday cake for their daughter, for example) the task of making a Cake Boss kind of art cake, in an unfairly short time frame. The show is deliberately setting them up for failure, and when they fail, the show laughs at them.
But it's not a mean-spirited show! Everybody is in on the joke. The contestants are not deluded into thinking that they're master bakers, and they go on the show prepared to give it their all, knowing they won't succeed, and if things go well, maybe they'll pick up a few baking tricks along the way. So you're not laughing at the bakers, you're laughing with them. The task they were asked to do was beyond them and so they can take pride in accomplishing as much of it as they did. But the show isn't 'inspirational' about it, either. They don't pretend that failing at making a fancy cake is an accomplishment, just because they tried and put something on the judging table. Sometimes trying isn't actually enough. I love how realistic the show is about the value of failure and its limits.
It also is brilliant at picking at the unreality of crafting reality television. These show blur the distinction between the work of a professional and the work of an amateur- if you just did what they show on the show, you too could make an elaborate cake in the shape of a car. But professionals have all sorts of advantages in training, practice, equipment, time, and money that are often hidden in the cinematography. An amateur baking at home isn't going to be able to bake four times as much cake as they'll actually need, to make sure they select the best tasting, best looking cakes to provide to their customers. They don't have the time, the ingredients, the oven room, the amount of baking pans to do things like that.
There's a great moment on Nailed It when they're making cupcakes in too short an amount of time. All three of them botch the icing, because they didn't have time to let the cupcakes cool before applying the icing. The solution? They were supposed to have used the provided blast chiller to cool the cupcakes rapidly so the icing didn't melt and collapse. But of course they didn't know to do that! Nobody has a blast chiller at home! We just allow more time to let the cupcakes cool!