WARNING: The following article contains spoilers for season 16 of “The Great British Bake Off.”
It’s Friday evening, around 6 p.m., you’ve finished any urgent homework you have and you’re feeling quite content with your life. So you plop down on your couch and put on the most stress-inducing yet relaxing show of all time. The beautiful cozy strings of the theme song fill your ears and you are automatically transported to a world of cakes, chocolate, and ravishing (sometimes funny) English accents. That’s right. I’m talking about the one and only “The Great British Bake Off” (GBBO). Except season 16 could be better described as Great British Jasmine Mitchell Bakes Raspberry Essentially EVERY EPISODE.
I adore the Bake Off, I grew up watching it with my mom and it has always been a comfort show. This season was more infuriating than comforting. Started out great, all the contestants were amazing and it was easy to like them all (nonetheless, I did have a couple favorites). Similarly you could clearly tell who was going to make it farther throughout the show. There were some bakers that were significantly better than others and I fully acknowledge that. I also want to preface that I am in no way knowledgeable or credible enough to properly criticize these amazing bakers, my baking knowledge stops with making scrumptious double chocolate chip cookies and somehow failing to succeed at soft pretzels every time.
The people on this show work insanely hard and it shows. Bakers like Toby Littlewood, Iain Ross, Jasmine Mitchell, and Tom Arden caught my eye instantly. Did I just name three of my favorites? Yes! But Dhanya, you named four people? Also yes. I really did like Jasmine at the start and I agree that she was possibly the best baker in the tent. However, she was good at certain things and she latched onto them. She found flavors that she was good at and baked them every single episode. Raspberry. Pistachio. Lemon. Passion fruit. Repeat.
We get it. You’re good at fruity and floral flavors. That’s great, but when Aaron Mountford-Myles is doing yuzu, rhubarb, and who knows what every week, it gets a bit boring and honestly, lacking. Jasmine’s monotonous use of raspberry was honestly so annoying in the last couple of weeks. So you can imagine my fury when the word “Jasmine” came out of Alison Hammond’s mouth, announcing the winner of the series. This was after she had baked a cake with, you guessed it, RASPBERRY sponge and LEMON mascarpone cream.
I am going to let you process that. I feel my anger resurfacing as I sit on the same couch writing this article. Jasmine is an exceptional baker but she never goes out of her comfort zone. EVER. My problem with the result isn’t the fact that she won, it’s the fact that there was a sure chance that the someone else in the finale could win.
Tom has also been one of my favorite contestants and I understand that he’s been doing pretty average in the past couple weeks. But in the final, he got first in the Technical (Jasmine got last place, by the way) and his Showstopper “couldn’t be improved’. That feedback was from Prue Leith herself! I really did think that Tom put up a good fight and that he deserved the title just as much as Jasmine did.
Others like Toby and Iain were also notable bakers. Obviously, it’s always sad when a baker gets eliminated, but I was truly devastated when they eliminated both of these absolute divas. Iain, I’ll admit, was also doing average. BUT HE WAS SUCH A COOL PERSON. Iain will forever be remembered, our short king! Toby was an exceptional baker who got an ever iconic Hollywood handshake from the crueler judge on GBBO, Paul Hollywood, won two Technical challenges, and got Star Baker one week.
The whole reason Jasmine won the finale was because the judges were clearly looking at her previous bakes as well. However, if they did this for her, surely they should have done it for Toby as well? Nope. I was deeply wounded when Toby was eliminated and that was THE moment when I lost all faith in the show.
This season left me discontented as I felt like it was clear that there was lots of favoritism (cough, Jasmine, cough). As someone who loves reality shows, baking, and British people, I was so excited for this season and I really did enjoy watching season 16. Reality shows are meant to be realistic, with people who are like us. But when the cruel favoritism that happens in real life also happens in these shows, there’s no significant point in watching. While I don’t believe that the GBBO will get any better as the seasons go on with just how irritating this season was, I will keep watching and hoping that my comfort childhood show will be like it once was.
