You guys. I like this show so much. Nope, that’s a lie—I don’t like it. I love it. I fucking love The Great British Baking Show and I don’t know why, which is something that’s been really bothering me lately. Because this love affair? It’s completely out of character. I’m not British. I don’t bake. I don’t understand the metric system, like at all. And I can’t think of any other cooking competition show that I have actually liked...not like this. That I should lose myself in a reality show that doesn’t contain the word “Housewives” is beyond me.
So to try and understand this implausible relationship, I am going to go back to where It all started: when I was on maternity leave last fall. Now, I could stop right here because, let’s be honest, “I was on maternity leave” is really the perfect explanation to many, if not all, out-of-character behaviors. But I shall continue.
During those early days when my husband was still on his paternity leave and I was still recovering from a baby being airlifted out of my abdomen, we kept the TV on a lot. It was mostly white noise as we fed and “slept." But it was also one of our only windows into the outside “real” world where people wore clean clothes and said actual words to each other. Our groggy, glassy eyes would stare blankly into the screen or uncontrollably close as Netflix steadily streamed on, its comforting jibber-jabber percolating in our mostly dead ears.
On one particular comatose afternoon, my husband chose The Great British Baking Show to rest our weary eyes upon. My own eyes rolled. Another cooking competition show? And a foreign one to boot? What fresh hell is this? Many who knows this man know that he loves pretty much any competition show. He actively seeks out The Voice, FFS. But cooking competitions? Now that’s his real bread and butter. I mean, it makes sense. He’s a great cook and pre parenthood, he spent most of his life working in restaurant kitchens. But I’m not and I didn’t. While I can tolerate a good ol' American competition show now and then, one or two in a row—tops—is usually where I draw the line.
But on this particular day, I was too tired to do anything but humor my husband’s decision. Also, considering I was in a mangled maternal state and he was the most able bodied of the two us, he had probably just done something (read: everything) quite helpful for me. So in a stroke of hormonal genius, I kept my mouth shut instead of verbally abusing his choice in television programming (which, for anyone who knows me, is as about as much out of character as my love for TGBBS. But we don’t need to go there). And then just like that, it began. One, single and shiny episode was all it took for this unlikely British suitor to take hold of my cold American heart.
The soft pastel colors that decorated the inside of the baking tent. The dewy, fairytale-ish English countryside. The glow of fresh bread baking in a warm oven. Submitting to the whims of this foreign folly was like curling up in the fuzziest, softest, comfiest blanket, like getting cozy on the couch with the perfect cup of coffee, like coming home to a nice, organized, freshly-cleaned house, like sliding effortlessly into a favorite pair of skinny jeans. It was like...life before kids. And that was comforting as hell. In the midst of my new mom mental mayhem, TGBBS enveloped me in its warm, uncomplicated embrace and like a world weary English grandmother, told me that despite it all, everything was going to be alright: there was cake in the oven, light and fluffy banter coming from the show's amiable comedic hosts and another episode starting in 10 seconds.
Now, as I look back on the beginning of my affair of TGBBS, it suddenly seems so obvious. With it’s perfectly baked beginning, middle and end, the show is refreshingly and reassuringly predictable, like a scrummy 3-tiered cake. It is utterly endearing...and safe. Unlike the shit storm of a personal life I was enduring when we met, I know exactly what I was going to get when I was with it: beautiful, buttery British accents and cake. But, alas, as much as I'd like to say that this foray betwixt me and TGBBS is monogamous, I cannot tell a lie. There are others.
All have to do is look at the internet and It’s clear. Millions of viewers have been drawn in by TGBSS' charm. And now it's really not hard to understand the commercial appeal. You see, despite the show's efforts to whip up drama with its crazy ass baking challenges, there's absolutely nothing controversial about it. Sure, calamities arise, if you call under proofed dough and poorly drizzled mirror glaze a calamity. And yes, the grizzly bear stares from Paul Hollywood, the show's brazen yet beautifully blue-eyed judge, are a little freaky. But they're still not enough to stir up the muscle-clenching tension we've all come to expect from the competition TV genre, like America's Next Top Whatever. No, aside from a few quintessential British and utterly enjoyable innuendos and the occasional “off color” joke about diabetes and calories, TGBBS is about as cookie cutter as it gets. The winner doesn’t even earn money or the promise of fame, but an engraved cake stand.
So now I know. I, and others like me, fell in love with TGBBS because it's a soft cushiony escape from, well, all the hard things—new babies, crazy schedules, the stressful jobs, the political climate. As one BBC article aptly quotes, and the end of a long day, it’s "the perfect set of arms to run into". And now...it’s almost over. Those charming English arms are about to let us all go. The last episode of season 7 is airing this weekend and I don’t even know what to do with myself. I feel like my lover is about to board a plane to somewhere that's not here and all I'lI have left are the fond memories of what once was...and the fact that I now know what a choux pastry is. Just as I was just beginning to really make sense of our relationship, too. Isn’t that always the way?
I know, I know. Another show will come along to drag me out of the garbage dump of life and hold me in its strangely captivating grasp soon enough. But it won’t be the same. Nothing will ever measure up to what TGBBS and I have had all these episodes. I don't know what the rest of its soon-to-be cast aways can take away from all this, but when it comes to me and The Great British Baking Show, at least I can say we'll always have maternity leave.
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