REVIEW: ‘The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge’ Mixes It Up Nice

The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge reformats the Nicole Byer-led Netflix Original baking contest for mediocre bakers into a full-season all-out contest to great effect. Where the original show saw contestants compete in a episode, the new show takes a whole cast of competitors and eliminates them one by one over a 10-episode season. None of the bakers here are especially skilled or experienced, but that’s the point. Their job is to recreate professionally prepared confections to the best of their limited abilities within a fixed amount of time, lest they be sent home on account of poor taste or form.

The series adds two baking coaches to the equation, both of who begin the first challenge of every episode with Baking 101, a rapid-fire demonstration of one particular skill, like stacking tall cakes or piping specific cupcake decoration patterns. It’s a fun element that shows off how attentive the contestants are or whether they’re impatient bakers who will try to cut corners.

Some of them are hot messes at all times and can’t grasp a single concept while others seem to listen well and learn new skills along the way. It’s a fun element that deserves a bit more camera time on the coaches while they observe the second half of the contest, given both their insight and their personalities. It does, however, quickly draw out who has more experience baking than others, which makes the whole contest’s fairness feel a bit tilted from the start.

As far as personalities go, the bakers certainly have plenty of it. I’m not sure that the constant dives into their backgrounds or motivations for the contest were all that helpful in building fanfare, given at least half of them were quite mundane, but on set, there is plenty of oddity, sincerity, and goofiness to go around. Of course, the show wouldn’t be anything without its main host, Nicole Byer, who always brings a high level of charm and humor to every moment. Jacques Torres is there too, I suppose. He doesn’t feel essential the way Nicole does, but she needs somebody to bounce banter off of, and he certainly fits the bill.

The set for The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge is quite nice, if a tad underused. It’s an eclectic kitchen space with lots of colors and dodads that never overwhelm your eyes but always offers something to try and peak at on the walls or around the little kitchen areas. There are a few other rooms where the judges and hosts go to do their work that add some whimsy without ever feeling too fantastical.

It’s a perfectly designed set for the kind of show this is, where everyone takes their work seriously but knows that they’re mostly having fun making quite imperfect replications of professional cakes. The loser of each episode also gets to go raid the set for 60 seconds before departing, which is a rather fun way to go out. They can take literally whatever they want, from a stand mixer to frosting. I’m sure the taxes they have to pay are a pain, but worth it nonetheless. It’s a nice bit of joy in an otherwise typically dower part of contests.

The contests themselves are as good as any cooking contest needs them to be, especially given the competitors lack the typical skills you’d need to be on one of these shows. It never gets old watching their mistakes in real-time and then being either shocked when things turn out okay for them despite looking like a monstrosity or learning their marvelous-looking carnival cake perhaps tastes like garbage.

The big cake reveals accompanied by the now classic “nailed-it” refrain are always surprises because the crew does well not putting the finished product in preceding shots. I didn’t ever realize how annoying most other cooking contests can be with how much they give away if the final products until realizing I almost never saw what these cakes looked like until the judges did every episode.

The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge doesn’t tweak the formula that much, but the combination of bad baking, Byer’s charm, and a few touches like the baking coaches and panic button winners if the Baking 101 round can earn do enough to make the show feel fresh in the vast sea of cooking competition series.

The Big Nailed It Baking Challenge is streaming now on Netflix.