One of the most appealing things about The Great British Baking Show - or as it's called everywhere else, The Great British Bake-Off - is its exceedingly gentle and calming nature. There's something so nakedly melodramatic about the way so many competitive reality shows are edited and structured - manufactured beef between contestants, a toxic "every man for himself" mentality. But then you watch The Great British Baking Show and it's just a bunch of self-deprecating British people laughing nervously about how badly their tortes and puddings came out, and then one of them has to go home, and no one is harboring any bad blood or resentment or being petty, and it is not treated like a tragedy or a triumph or anything obnoxious like that.
Making It was a six-episode reality competition that just aired on NBC, and it borrowed heavily and heartily from The Great British Baking Show, right down to the format of the competition and the physical set up of the competition space - a big old barn in the middle of the woods. It was the perfect length, at six episodes, just enough time to really get to know the eight contestants and the hosts and judges without ever feeling needlessly long or padded.
Anyway, this is basically "Etsy: The Competition." Etsy ads were all over this thing and the whole competition was based on crafting. Make a last-minute Halloween costume. Make a child's fort. Make a non-traditional quilt of some sort. And so on and so forth.
Marissa taped the first episode because the show was hosted by Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler. And while I didn't need to watch "Etsy: The Show," we found it easy enough to watch Nick Offerman and Amy Poehler being generically pleasant and cheerful and positive to eight people just making shit with their bare hands. Do I need a second season of this thing? Fuck no, I do not. But it's a much more berable summer show - especially at just six episodes in length - than, like, MasterChef ever was.
No comments:
Post a Comment