I never used to care for TV before I married my husband. Had I not been so lucky as to meet him, I probably would have lived my whole life without owning a TV or subscribing to any streaming services at all, except maybe FORMED. Just one of the many, many reasons why I’m super lucky to have met my husband!
When he bought us our first TV, I didn’t like it. It was big, it was ugly, it was expensive; I felt, at best, wary of it. My heart began to thaw a bit, though, when my husband suggested that our inaugural viewing be my favorite movie of all time (The Wicker Man, the 2006 remake; yes, I will die on this hill); I even threw a little viewing party for us with a themed dinner!
And in the weeks and months that followed, I realized that the TV had another perk: it made at-home workouts way more fun and easy, because I could follow along with any of the millions of free workout videos on YouTube. It’s kind of hard to do that using the tiny little screen of a phone. So now, the TV and I became friends.
And eventually, at last, I discovered the joy of TV shows. My husband is a movie-and-TV genius – he knows pretty much every movie and show that’s ever been made, and scrolls IMDB for fun – so he introduced me to the world of streaming services.
Before, I always thought shows were kind of stupid. The only ones that I appreciated were things like Jeopardy!, cooking shows, HGTV programs, documentaries, and the like. I had no respect for TV as a storytelling medium. Even when my favorite college professor, the one whom I idolized (and whose voice lives on in my head forever as my inner writing critic), once remarked during class that some of the best story-writing these days was being done for television – even then I looked down my nose at it. People should just read books, I thought, haughtily.
Which they should, of course – but overall I was wrong: TV shows are fun, and some of them are brilliant!
Although I’ve come to love lots of shows of all different genres, my favorite kind of show remains the baking competition show. It goes without saying that GBBO takes the cake (ha) when it comes to the baking competition show – but I devour all of them with glee. My current favorites are the seasonal Baking Championships on HBO Max – Holiday, Spring, Summer, and Halloween (I actually don’t care for the Halloween one; too much campy gore and horror and demonish stuff: gross; I wish they’d just do a nice, pleasant Fall-themed one instead, but, oh well).
And so: the idea for this post arose from my obsession with baking competition shows, combined with all of the other shows that I love. My husband and I like to ask each other fun hypothetical questions, it’s one of our favorite games; and together we came up with this one: which TV characters, from any show, would you cast as contestants on a baking competition show? Obviously there have to be twelve; that’s the standard with baking competition shows. (The perfect format starts with twelve bakers, and eliminates the weakest one each episode, until there are three left in the grand finale, with the winner being chosen from those final three.)
So without further ado: if I could choose any characters from any TV show to be the twelve contestants on a new season of the baking championship, these are the ones that I’d choose – listed here in the order in which I think they’d go home:
12. Dr. Iggy Frome from New Amsterdam. He’s a fan favorite, and most of his fellow contestants love him (especially Tanya, she gloms onto him real fast), but, he’d bungle something in one of the challenges – he’d probably get nervous and do something idiotic, like, mention in front of the camera that incest is fine because, you know, love is love, after all, or replace the sugar with salt, or something. On his way out, he’d give everyone a giant hug and a tearful but uplifting speech about how it’s okay to fail.
11. Tanya from White Lotus. In fact, she was probably in the bottom two with Iggy last episode. She’s been tipsy this whole time, and probably dumped a whole bottle of booze into one of her bakes, then in the next challenge slipped in spilled batter and fell spectacularly, and had to be escorted off the set by medics, thus unable to finish the challenge in time. Her fellow contestants are glad to see her go.
10. Eddie from Stranger Things. He did okay; he did his best. I don’t imagine he’s much of a baker. It was just his time to go. He’ll be missed.
9. Jean-Ralphio from Parks and Recreation. He’s been loud and boastful and cocky this whole time, insisting that he’s the winner and also the best dressed. The other bakers hate him, and hate how he sings while he’s baking (Izaya actually stabbed him in the first challenge this week). And he’s only made it this far by cheating, and because he was lucky enough to be teamed up with Marcus in the Team Challenge last episode. He throws a tantrum when the host announces he’s going home, and threatens to call his dad (Kendall laughs at this), and security guards have to walk him off the set.
8. Martha from Baby Reindeer. She’s actually a decent baker, and bakes with fierce intensity and devotion; she does a lot of bold, amibitious flavor combinations, like smoked chili pepper + tropical fruit, but she tends to fall short in the decorating department. She’s eliminated because she was a little too bold this time: she way overdid it on the spice, or the alcohol, or maybe she overfilled her pastries so the overspiced filling was oozing out in a gory mess. Just way too much for the judge’s palates. But, she’s not unhappy to be going home; she’s a very busy woman, after all, and knows she is sorely missed at her demanding job, and can’t wait to get home to her precious boyfriend.
7. Kendall Roy from Succession. He’s not a baker, and doesn’t know his way around the kitchen at all, but has managed to make it this far just by being insanely rich. I don’t even know how that works; it just does. But in this episode, he was high as a kite on park coke, and made a fatal error, like, baking an entire silver spoon into his pie, or vomiting into the ice cream maker, or something. As the host is telling him he’s eliminated, Kendall interrupts and says that, you know what, he’s done with this show, he’s leaving, it’s just not worth his precious time, he wishes you all the best, and besides, the prize money is barely even pennies to him, anyway. To this day he maintains that he would have won had he chosen to stay on. (Side note: my favorite Roy is actually Roman, but I think Kendall would be more fun to watch on a baking show, because he’s such a train wreck. )
6. Fr. Khatri from From. He’s low-key a really good baker, and has been a dark horse this whole time; lots of viewers thought he would be a finalist. But he made the mistake of helping Patricia in the last challenge when she was running out of time to ice her cupcake wreath, thereby sacrificing the finish on his own cupcake wreath, and this act of charity would be his demise. He was very gracious as he left, and attributed everything to God’s will.
5. Izaya Orihara from Drrr!. (“But Mith, why,” you may ask, “do you like that silly anime so much?” The reason is: Izaya.) It was actually a super close race between him and Patricia, who were in the bottom two this episode – Izaya’s cake looked much tidier, but his flavors were kind of dead inside, while Patricia’s supposedly tasted better, according to the judges. The consensus on Reddit seems to be that the judges just let Patricia through because she’s a single mom and always gets very emotional on camera about her boys back home. Anyway, I’m surprised Izaya wasn’t disqualified before now, seeing as how he’s threatened every other contestant with violence or made them bleed at least once. I guess it makes for good TV.
4. Patricia Tillerson from Outer Range. She’s formidable, and experienced, with decades of all-American dessert-baking under her belt. She’s always talking about her three grown sons and their tragic story and alluding to her crazy ex-husband and playing the victim, which makes her sympathetic to a lot of the viewers. She goes home not because of a mistake, but just because all the other remaining bakers are really, really good.
And the three finalists are:
3. Scanlan Shorthalt from The Legend of Vox Machina. Not a baker by any means, but he has that magic hand thing that he does, and the lute, so, basically he can convince anyone of anything, and has weaseled his way out of the bottom two several times now. He’s also seduced 10/11 of the other bakers (not Angela), all three of the judges, and the host, by this point; plus all the viewers find him weirdly enchanting, so it’s like he just can’t go home, no matter how chaotic his bakes are. He really wanted that prize money.
2. Marcus from The Bear. Obviously the best baker here, and the only one who’s classically trained; he’s won the most challenges out of everyone. He really should have won the whole thing. But in the final challenge, he got a bit too heated and emotional, and ended up making one tiny mistake and being bested by…
1. Angela from The Office. The baddest B in TV history? I think so. Her bakes are simple but flawless. She’s neat as a pin; she’s been making little passive-aggressive remarks about the other contestants this whole time; viewers can’t stand her. She accepts the prize money with an icy little smile and says something about spending it all on her cats.
Side note: Obviously I know Marcus would be the rightful winner out of these twelve. But, if you’ve ever watched a baking competition show, you know that the ones who seem like the rightful winners are often not the actual winners: for reference, see: Juergen from GBBO, Romy from Spring Baking Championship S8, and Alex from Spring Baking Championship S10.
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What do you think? Did I choose the right winner? Who would you cast? I also made a Season Two!