The Last Word On Nothing

It’s still Thursday, as I write this, and they’re still counting. Meanwhile, everything about the show I’m watching makes me feel better, even when someone chooses to make a steamed treacle pudding.

Because of this show I can now tell a fiddly from a stodgy sponge. I know – by sight, at least — proper royal icing and perfect ruff puff pastry. I know a biscuit isn’t a dog treat and jelly isn’t for toast. I might even be able to measure in millimeters, grams, and degrees C in a pinch.

I love that the bakers on this show are lorry drivers and stay-at-home mums (stet) and amoured (stet) guards and “pantomime producers.” I enjoy, in particular, the seasons with Sandi and Noel doing interstitial silliness. (No Hollywood Handshake? Go for the Fielding Fondle.) I love the side looks over the phallic fondant sculptures and the innocent talk of soggy bottoms, leaky cracks, and unpleasant textures in the mouth. I love the sounds – mixers spinning, fruit compote simmering, birds chirping, rain pattering — and the gentle tiptoeing competitiveness of the whole thing.

This week, while properly binging past seasons of the GBBS, I am half listening to the U.S. presidential election coverage on another laptop. I have turned the volume most of the way down, because, wow, the whole thing is making me really tired and sad. I almost feel sorry for these folks who have to keep talking even when there’s nothing new to say. I’m impressed that they can continue flinging the same two colors onto virtual maps in different patterns and do weirdly confusing math out loud, with absolutely no impact on the results, hour after hour.

By the time anyone reads this, things will, almost certainly, be decided. There might be chaos or there might be calm. But as I’m experiencing things right now, the ballot count is still just an excruciating slow-motion tooth extraction by meat fork.

In some small ways, I’ve realized, the GBBS is like the election right now. For a while we’re left hanging, uncertain: Is the meat-and-veg pie too drippy? Too bland? Might the appeal of its flavors be too narrow? We consider the baker’s combos and calculations and some suspect an abuse of chamomile. There is talk of this or that path to victory (though, unlike for the election, never wild conjecture): If Tom’s pastry is flaky and his filling bursting with lingonberries, he’ll be in line to win the signature. But if Laura’s tray bake is as gorgeous as her beetroot and squid-ink custard, the result could go all topsy-turvy. And keep in mind, Nellie had the judges properly chuffed by her beautiful macaroons.

But in the most important ways, thankfully, the GBBS is nothing like the ballot count.

One example: On the GBBS, nobody is loudly accusing anyone else of cheating on the signature. No one is insisting the technical challenge was rigged. Nobody is threatening lawsuits and raving that their showstopper can’t possibly NOT win — the raw ingredients were so perfect! — so obviously the win is being stolen away.

And if that were happening on the GBBS, none of the judges would stand to the side and stay silent and allow a pathological liar and sociopathic bully to drone on without consequence. Because that would be wrong. (Perhaps good for ratings. But wrong.)

One other important thing: On the GBBS, if the dough becomes overworked, tasteless rubbish, it goes into the bin.

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Photo borrowed from Sweet Somethings Desserts