"Is It Cake?": non-review

Just a quick blurb.

I tried watching a show on Netflix called "Is It Cake?" in which cake designers are put through their paces, having first to guess whether the objects displayed in front of them are cakes or not, and then having to make their own cakes that look like everyday food or objects while a panel of judges must guess which products are real food (like tacos or sandwiches), real objects, or cakes made to look like those objects. This created a very weird dynamic: the judges had the job of guessing which of the objects before them was a cake, so it felt almost as if we should root for the judges to guess correctly, but the rules were that, if the judges guessed correctly, then this counted against the cake artist, who had obviously failed to create a realistic-enough cake. While that rule was clear, it led to a lot of awkwardness, especially when the judges, after correctly figuring out which object was a cake, would use such language as "it looked too perfect" to explain why they had thought a given item was a cake.

Anyway, I couldn't get past the first episode. First off, the host is insufferable, with a comic delivery that feels like Jim Carrey on 'Ludes. Second, the contest itself is bizarrely constructed, with weird (and unfair) rules leading only by luck to certain outcomes. Third, I'm pretty sure the guy who won $10,000 should have been disqualified when he not-so-surreptitiously sprinkled cake elements on some real food in order to make the real food look a little fake to the judges. Fourth, the main part of the contest took eight hours to complete. Obviously, what we viewers saw was edited and whittled down to just a few minutes, but I couldn't help thinking that, from the point of view of the competitors who merely observed on the side (only three of eight competitors could compete at one time—another bizarre rule), the whole thing must have been tedious as hell to sit through. It didn't help that the contestants sitting off to the side would occasionally mouth off with their sometimes-catty thoughts about what the bakers on stage were doing. As I said: awkward.

So I stopped after a single episode. I had originally thought that the concept of super-realistic cakes was a good one, and some of the cake artistry was admittedly amazing, but overall, the experience of watching this show was a real drag, and I didn't end up caring who won or what was coming next. I won't be revisiting this show. One episode was enough.