Stars: Antoni Porowski, Haley Herridge, Kristen Kish
Reality television is not immune to Hollywood's penchant for resurrecting old brands and repurposing intellectual property. In their desperation to make their way through the clutter of hundreds of TV shows and the most engaging distractions of TikTok, they scratch at anything that might be recognizable.
But with its new Easy-Bake Battle cooking competition, Netflix has done a very smart thing: It used the IP and then ignored it. When I tuned in to Netflix's new Easy-Bake Battle cooking competition, I was expecting a battle with Easy-Bake Ovens, the 1960s toy oven with a light bulb for heating, and here was my mistake.
I missed the fact that the word "oven" wasn't actually in the title, and that Netflix's press release simply said that the show was "inspired by Hasbro's iconic Easy-Bake Oven." Yet that iconic oven, or at least its most recent incarnation, along with Easy-Bake mix boxes, are there on set, only to be ignored.
For the second time in a week, Netflix has taken a beloved brand and turned it into an aggressively generic competition reality show. Queer Eye guacamole Antoni Porowski performs in high-waisted pants with exuberance and excellent enunciation, serving as an affable judge alongside a different guest judge each episode.
They're judging, very kindly, three contestants, starting with The Dish Dash, which is a race to finish a dish themed around a real-life situation: cooking a quick date night dinner or frying up a late-night dish. . -night snack, how do you do one. Contestants have a limited time to make their dish, but they also compete to finish first, placing their dish on a lighted stand to stop their clock.
Antoni explains that the evaluation will be based on "how easy your dish is" and says that "we are looking for less time and ingredients, as well as smart tricks to save time". But they're not looking for those things, and I'm still looking for clever time-saving tricks, because like the Easy-Bake Oven, most of those things are missing.
Don't get me wrong: I love tricks! (And hacks). Ever since the Food Network gave its prime time to 4,918 versions of the same cooking competitions hosted mostly by Guy Fieri and Bobby Flay, instructional cooking has faded from prime time. Offering a handful of practical advice is a good way to split the difference between ruthless competition and education.
Unfortunately, the tips in the early episodes of Easy-Bake Battle are insightful things like "Haley's got shredded cheese," which, imagine, melts faster than unshredded cheese. Episode one guest judge Kristen Kish, who I love and would follow on the worst shows I guess I have here, says, "Honestly, one of the best home hacks for anyone is frozen spinach." Is that a gimmick, or just a thing you buy?
Antoni demonstrates his culinary prowess with his own trick in episode three, which involves cutting a hole in the top of a yogurt container, putting a teaspoon into it, and then freezing it to produce what he calls "popsicles." of icecream". That seems more like magic, turning yogurt into ice cream.
The most interesting fact I learned in the first two episodes is that Antoni is apparently called "Ant" by those who know him well, or at least that's what Kristen calls him.
A chef in the first episode wraps potatoes in damp paper towels to microwave them, and then does something pretty clever that he's never seen before: he cooks pasta in the oven by dousing it with seasoned liquid. Unfortunately, that is not labeled as an "Easy Hack".
The evaluation criteria themselves are equally curious. The on-screen text tells us how long it took each contestant to make their dish, and it also shows the number of ingredients, but in an early round, the person who takes the longest and uses the most ingredients wins, while the person who won the race goes home. After The Dish Dash eliminates one competitor, the other two move on to The Easy-Bake round to compete for $25,000.
Oh! There it is, the Easy-Bake Oven! Right? Tell me you're actually going to be using the Easy-Bake ovens that are there on set in the round called "The Easy-Bake". “Welcome to the big Easy-Bake Oven, where you will have to cook your entire dish,” Antoni tells the second group of contestants. There is! But wait, there is a catch. “We've created a special next-generation, full-size Easy-Bake Oven that captures the spirit of the original,” he explains in the first episode.
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