This Was the Most Insane Episode of ‘The Great British Baking Show’ Ever

This week’s episode of The Great British Baking Show, “Pastry Week,” broke me. I’m a shell of a human being, stretched past the point of sanity. I’m not even sure we can call this show The Great British Baking Show anymore.

Usually I can point to one specific issue in an episode and say, “Yes, that’s what’s not working for me,” but there were so many small, surreal moments this week that at times I thought I was having a fever dream. The Great British Baking Show “Pastry Week” episode started with interviews wherein each of the bakers admitted they loathed pastry. You know, that’s what you want to see: a baking show about bakers who hate baking the thing they’re about to be baking. Then there was a Technical Challenge that inspired Henry Bird to curse and say “absolute carnage,” and finally a Showstopper that even Prue seemed to admit was “crazy.” (Like, I got a strong sense the producers just made “vertical pies” up.)

In between those peaks of personal frustration, there were lobster claw gags, a random cameo from Australian comic Adam Hills, David Atherton in a wet towel bonnet, Steph Blackwell pouting her way through a panic attack, Sandi Toksvig pretending she was short enough to live in a cutlery drawer, and Noel Fielding admitting that he had wasted a whole minute of his life interviewing Rosie Brandreth-Poynter about pastry. Oh, and everyone but Steph gleefully started tossing limes around the tent for laughs.

This was it, folks. This was the most insane episode of The Great British Baking Show of all time.

The Great British Baking Show has had something of a rocky season, what with the hyper young cast, strange judging choices, and Noel Fielding literally blocking the bakers’ way to their own ovens. However, it’s still felt largely like the same show that once exalted the kind critiques of Mary Berry (and the glory of old pensioners and their innate baking skills). This week, the wheels came off for me. There was something in the bonkers energy that made me feel like everything I knew and loved about The Great British Baking Show was dead.

First, I can’t get over how none of the bakers felt good about pastry. It’s one of the harder technical skills to manage, but to listen to them, they were being asked to make some kind of repulsive nightmare. None of them were familiar with tarte tatin, they almost all botched their Moroccan pies, and most of them delivered Showstoppers that looked great, but tasted terrible and dry. (David even went so far as to not even lid his pies, which judges Prue Leith and Paul Hollywood took to be a scandal.) Quibbles with their performances aside, I really was concerned with their attitude. The joy of baking was nowhere to be seen. The joy of lime tossing? That showed up, though.

Yes, there was ample laughter in the tent this week. In fact, the show seemed more concerned with setting up sight gags than capturing the baking process. All those Noel and Sandi bits aside — and there were a lot this week — the producers seemed to be more interested in whatever funny moments the bakers could inspire than the cooking they were doing. There was a moment where Henry’s freezer didn’t shut the first time, and the camera lingered on the fridge in a way that suggested something ominous would happen, but instead it was just a set up for the visual punchline of Henry catching it. Later during the Showstopper, the camera stayed again on Henry as he asked Paul if he liked “meaty pies.” Paul’s poker face and Henry’s continued questions lacked an organic feeling. It was funny, sure, but they were both performing for the camera.

There was an expletive this episode, a pastry dragon named Bert, references to Maundy Tuesday and the guillotine, and the revelation (after 8 episodes!) that Rosie is married. That last tidbit only jumped out at me because all we heard about her personal life in the early episodes is that she lets her bread dough rise in her pet snake’s vivarium. I just didn’t see it coming. But I’m very happy for Rosie and her husband Lewis and their pet snake.

Still, the nitty gritty of the show is where I really thought I was losing it. I’m talking about how burst pies got positive marks during the Technical and how — and I can’t stress this enough — insane the Showstopper Challenge seemed to me. To the bakers’ credit, they all managed to make beautiful, stacked, “vertical pies.” However, as soon as I heard what Paul and Prue wanted them to be intense sculptures made out of stacked pies, I shook my head and said, “Who wants that?” Ironically, it seems, no one did. Yeah, you can make a sculpture out of pies, but besides Steph, none of the bakers succeeded in making them good. Henry’s “upside down chandelier” looked nothing like a chandelier (and Prue and Paul called him out on it). And when Prue called it a “fairly crazy idea,” she did so with this giggle in her voice that make me think, “THIS IS NOT A REAL THING.” (Though I’m sure it is a real thing for window displays and Instagram; it’s just not a great test of baking skills.)

This episode was an avalanche of all the tiny, irksome ways The Great British Baking Show has changed in the last three years. It’s more interested in manufacturing giddy, silly moments than baking pies and pastries. Steph seems to be keenly aware of this shift, as she’s pointed out for the second time that her fellow bakers seem to like goofing off more than getting their bakes done. She might come across as the Hermione of the tent, but Steph is the only one acting like she’s on the old Great British Baking Show, not the new one. I feel like it’s a key to her success, but it’s also sad to see her sometimes look around the tent as though she’s woken up in an alternate dimension.

The Great British Baking Show is still an entertaining show, but the problem is it seems to care more about bum shots, extended goofs, and drama than baking. That was always the intrinsic charm of the show: the kind, simple, open way baking was exalted. That’s not The Great British Baking Show‘s way anymore.

Watch The Great British Baking Show on Netflix