What Makes It Work? – Nailed It!: The Baking Contest We’ve Been Waiting For

Note: This article was originally posted on theyhavethoughts.com on July 28th, 2018.

This one is for you Food Network bingers. The ones who spend their summer days or post-work hours rolling their eyes and screaming at the top of their lungs at the amateur mistakes made on Chopped. The people who single handled created a psuedo-cult following around the Sriracha god himself: Guy Fieri.

Have you ever wondered what’s really going on in a judge’s mind when they cut into their chicken marsala, only to find it raw? What is Alton Brown really thinking when he someone making an absolute mockery out an ice cream machine? Well worry no longer! Netflix’s Nailed It! gives you the brutal honesty you’ve been waiting for on a grand scale.

So how does it manage to deliver the insults, without coming off cruel, and keep the tone charming and hopeful? How is Nailed It? approachable to both the cynics and kind souls? What makes it work?

The judges’ dynamic is a moist, perfectly chilled, red velvet cake: the perfect base.

Nicole Byer leads the pack, and what a leader she is. Byer, of Girl Code fame, is a comedic powerhouse. She’s funny and generates a lot of energy. Nicole is our hype-man and our inner monologue. Nicole, with no true culinary background, is us.

Nicole is in the role that many of us convert to the minute we sit on our couches with a half-eaten pint of cookie dough ice cream and turn on Cupcake Wars. And just like monkeys wearing electrode caps while they watch the scientist pick up a banana, our mirror neurons are firing! We recognize ourselves in Byer so much we can’t help but grow attached; we’re both jealous and living vicariously through her.

The sweet jelly to Byer’s salty and strong peanut butter is Parisian Chocolate Papa Jacques Torres. Jacques is our guy on the inside, a master chocolatier with loads of baking expertise in his arsenal. He’s a Dean of Pastry Arts for Pete’s sake!

Now normally having a man of this caliber can go one of two ways: A. he can be a really pompous ass. Or B. he can be a kindhearted guru; and luckily for us Jacques is the latter.

Jacques is a kind, gentle, educated man who is the perfect balance to Nicole’s over joyous and beautifully brash demeanor.

Just watching them play together is like tasting sea salt and caramel: absolutely addicting.

The contestants, no matter what, remain positive.

The contestants on Nailed It! are down to earth, average joes who love baking, but suck at actually baking. They try their darnedest to become masters of the pastry arts, but more often than not they create pastry farts. The contestants on Nailed It! are modern day Sisyphuses pushing their boulders up a hill for all eternity, or in this case continually overfilling their cake pans so they are simultaneously burnt and raw at the same time.

Normally watching people struggle and stress this much can come off is cruel, but Nailed It! handles things differently: they focus on how they contestants try to remain positive throughout and with a lack of rules threatening elimination is things are made in an exact way, there is no threat of consequences for contestants trying to create a decent product using out of the box methods.

Plus, the judges may make the occasional joke, but at the heart of it they really take every failure and turn it into a teaching moment. There is never a “you’re the worst” rhetoric. Instead of knocking them down, the judges build them back up by offering extra help and consoling them that they tried and now they’ve learned how to be more successful the next time.

My recommendation:

Every cooking competition aficionado should take a day to watch it. With only six episodes, Nailed It! gives you a taste of what American cooking competitions should be and leaves you wanting more. But don’t worry, it’s already been renewed for a second season, and it might be just the perfect kickoff for your need to start watching every episode of The Great British Baking Show for the third time.