Re-Nailed It!

If your tastes are anything like mine, you've been delighted by seasons of Nailed It! on Netflix, the goofy baking show where inexperienced chefs are given insufficient time to recreate impossible masterpieces to the best of their abilities... and to predictably poor results. I continued to watch each new batch of episodes when it arrived, even though I was becoming aware that each batch was a case of somewhat diminishing returns.

Part of the reason the bloom was falling off the Nailed It! rose was that the contestants themselves now knew what they'd be getting into before hand. You'd get the distinct impression that some of them were no longer trying to do their best in an impossible situation, but were deliberately setting out to make ugly, inedible cakes just for laughs -- and not generating as many laughs as earlier, more earnest seasons. That's because earnestness was actually Nailed It!'s secret weapon; even though the contestants were essentially set up to fail, even though the show was hosted by a comedian and a top-notch chocolatier, they never wanted to make the contestants feel bad about themselves. They always found a way to make sure the "bakers" were laughing with them, and would highlight the good tidbits amid the chaos.

Nailed It! returned a few months ago in a new format that leaned into that strength: The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge. The show was now more long-form, with 10 contestants continuing throughout the entire season and being eliminated episode by episode in a more conventional reality/game show format. Repeat attempts at elaborate cakes would ensure they'd improve over time, and a bigger cash prize at the end of it all gave incentive to try to succeed, rather than deliberately fail.

Most importantly, they'd all now receive instruction. Each episode of the new show begins with a sort of "warm up" task in which two coaches actually demonstrate a cake-art technique to be used in the episode's upcoming challenge. Now not only did the contestants have a fighting chance, but the audience at home could learn more too.

Don't worry -- there are still plenty of hilariously bad cakes on the show. Even with instruction, even with twice as much time to bake (or more), and even with incentives to succeed, the show is still fundamentally asking a fifth grader to paint a Rembrandt. But beyond the laughs, a new dimension has been added to the show: the feel-good story of actually watching people build skills at a thing. I've recently finished the 10-episode season, and the growth of the players who make it to the end, compared to where they started at the beginning, is stunning. It's an object lesson in the fact that one really can learn new things... and so long as you're not looking to become a "master," you really don't need the fabled "1,000 hours of experience" to become reasonably good at the thing.

So now, The Big Nailed It! Baking Challenge has kept the funny, but has made the whole thing inspirational too? I'm entertained, and maybe even a little bit impressed. If you've ever enjoyed Nailed It!, but fell out at some point, I'd encourage you to check this out. If you have ever enjoyed a reality show of some kind, I'd suggest you might want to give this one a shot. (Not that it will convert the reality-TV averse. The show is an even lighter, fluffier confection than the desserts depicted on it.) I give the show a B+.