The Expulsion of Helena Garcia from the Great British Bake Off Has Upset Me for Months and I Can No Longer Enjoy or Endorse the Show
I’m not a big reality tv guy. I watched a whole season of a reality singing competition show, once, because a close relative was competing. When a second close relative competed on a different singing show a couple years later, I didn’t watch. Felt like I’d already seen it. I watched an episode or two of a few shows over the years - Jersey Shore, The Bachelor, Top Chef - and hated every second. The artifice, the naked brand sponsorships, the plain stupidity, the ad breaks. I just can’t.
So I resisted the Great British Bake Off for years, despite endorsements from people I trust, because it is a reality show. I mean, it’s not like there’s many endorsements I trust, because for instance, my professional mentor and sponsor whose judgment I trust in non-artistic matters also totally loved Outlander, which is dime-store romance trash, and if you can’t see through the prestige-tv veneer of Outlander to its badly written characters, well. But I was hearing enough good things about GBBO from enough people of different backgrounds and perspectives that finally I thought, “Wisdom of Crowds” or whatever, I’ll give it a shot. Also, I am always looking for not-terribly-dense tv and movies to put on while I work out, because exercise is boring.
I started with the most recent series to air, Series 10, which concluded in late 2019. And I immediately loved it. I had no frame of reference for it. The creations were so elaborate and fanciful, I just kept thinking “who would ever think to do this? Why does this show exist?” And yet, at the same time, the contestants were so kind to each other, the judges and hosts so calm and warm, it didn’t feel like a reality competition so much as a kitchen hang-out show with my favorite British weirdos, learning about cooking. This is a common reaction to GBBO.
I had some clear favorites: David, whose biscuit towers I would’ve sprayed with polyurethane and kept for decades. Henry, 20-looks-like-12, who deeply reminded me of an old friend who almost joined the priesthood but didn’t (and looked like he was 12 until he balded at 22 and was suddenly 61). And more than anyone, Helena, who had the chops to bake anything but only ever wanted to bake…the macabre.
It would be easy to describe Helena’s bakes as Halloween-themed. And sure, I guess that works - ghosts, spiders, vampires, ok. But her bakes are not Halloween-cute. And is a demonic, bloody, fanged octopus all that Halloween-y? I don’t think so. Let’s call it Addams Family Gothic.
A few other things about Helena:
She is Spanish by birth, but grew up all over Europe, the Canary Islands and Las Vegas. Her accent is eerie and unplaceable.*
She tells insane jokes, such as when a fly lands on her, “they come to me because I am dead.” The kinds of jokes you tell only in your second language.
She had a baby shortly before filming and was breast-feeding during the competition (not on camera, and this is never addressed on the show, but she’s spoken about it since and it is pretty badass.)
She is joyful.
In Week 5 of Series 10, Helena is expelled from GBBO along with Michelle, another baker with a fairly consistent and distinctive aesthetic (“Wales”) who had also performed well in prior episodes.
And the problem is that Helena had performed well in the episode, certainly better than several other bakers. Her departure was so shocking that it undermined the trust I had built with GBBO as an anti-reality show.
After I saw this episode I rampaged through google search results looking for similarly outraged citizens. There were a few, but mostly on twitter, and twitter is no place for art criticism. I wanted someone to sympathize with each and every one of the reasons that I hated this episode, and that I now hated GBBO itself. No one had spoken about this episode, by itself, in sufficient detail. (Some referenced this episode as an emblem of the show’s broader decline; not enough, I say. I want to rant about this one episode, and my love for Helena, and my righteous indignation.)
It was obvious that I would have to write the review myself. And I thought, if you’re going to do this, do it right: you can’t review one awful episode of a show - one of the most popular shows in the world - without sufficient context. And so I took three months, and I went back and watched every goddamn episode of GBBO that came before.
Long story short: it’s a good show. Everything I initially liked about GBBO is much more present in the early seasons. Henry = Martha Collison lite. Kimberley Wilson > Ruby Tandoh. I too would fuck Selasi. Norman is the grandpa we all wish we had (and I kind of did!) All set? Ok.
Context: Roaring 20s was a highly unusual weekly theme, and the epitome of an aesthetic preference the show previously eschewed
I learned this from reading the negative reviews of Series 10, but didn’t fully appreciate it until I watched the whole show: there was never previously a weekly theme like “The Roaring 20s.” Weekly themes are for the type of baking to be performed: cakes, pies, biscuits, tarts, patisserie, “desserts” which basically means sickly meringue bullshit, but ok. The weekly theme is to allow the bakers to focus on a skill. The closest the show came before was “Victorian Week,” which was pretty insane but at least focused on foods recognizably associated with the Victorian era. And you’d trust the bakers, who are British, to know something about the Victorian era, as opposed to “the Roaring 20s,” which is a U.S. thing.
The weekly theme format harmonizes with the central conceit of the show, emphasized in literally years of the judges chiding contestants for “style over substance.” Yes, the show is about creating aesthetically beautiful food, but the food has to look appetizing and taste good. Judge Paul Hollywood accuses bakers of “style over substance” even within this episode.
And yet, what is “Roaring 20s” if not a choice of style over substance? The show generally does not ask the contestants to become historians of baking, obviously because that would be boring and there would be no way for a reasonable viewer to gauge the accuracy of anyone’s historical views. And even if that were the intention here, the theme chosen was not “1920s,” it is “The Roaring 20s.”
Let’s be clear: my grandparents lived through the 1920s. They did not live through the “Roaring 20s,” because they were too poor and, variously, too Idahoan and Jewish to worry about being part of whatever cultural movement seemed like it would crystallize the decade for posterity. The Roaring 20s is a name given to a cultural aesthetic that developed in America in the 1920s due to a very specific confluence of events: the end of the first world war and the influenza epidemic, the passage of Prohibition, economic growth, and all of the political and social and artistic developments you’d expect to accompany that kind of upheaval. The Roaring 20s means flappers, jazz, prohibition gangsters. It does not mean any particularly popular baked good. While there are important and popular foods that were invented in the 1920s (sliced bread! canned foods! powdered juices! practically every modern shelf-stable food commodity!) they are not related to the “Roaring 20s.”
It is no coincidence that David gets a handshake from Paul Hollywood for his custard tarts adorned with biscuits styled as flappers. It’s just that there’s no way to excel with a “Roaring 20s”-themed bake other than by putting a picture of a flapper on it, any more than you could crush a “The 60’s” theme without mentioning Woodstock and hippies and flower power. Statistically there were very few hippies and only 30,000 people went to Woodstock, and my mom spent the latter half of the 60s eating cat food and peanut butter sandwiches, but that’s what “the 60s” means to a certain kind of tv-watching person. The theme demands style over substance.
I’m not knocking David - hot dog, do those look amazing. But I am knocking the producers.
It’s no surprise, then, that when we get to the showstopper (brief: tiered cocktail-themed cake), four out of nine bakers choose the same idea. It’s pina colada - a flavor combination employed many times over the course of the show, reliable with a shimmer of the exotic, Paul is known to love it, and it’s a cocktail. Is it “Roaring 20s”? Emphatically not - try 1950s. Cream of coconut, a critical ingredient, was first made commercially available in 1954. That’s the year generally pegged for the invention of pina colada. But then there’s Prue, asking Helena whether the “Vampire’s Kiss” is really a cocktail after she explains that her design is an homage to a movie made in 1922. There’s just not much to do with this theme, so you might as well pander.
the technical: for once, a test of essential baking skills
Weirdly, one of the things this episode gets right, in contrast to preceding episodes and seasons, is that the technical challenge is not insane bullshit meant to make people uncomfortable. This is another detail that becomes clear from watching prior seasons: originally, the technical challenge is exactly that - a challenge of technical skill, to see how bakers have mastered common baking techniques so that they can turn out quality products with minimal instruction.
The key to a good technical challenge is the focus on core baking skills. An English student should know how to write a sonnet, a math student should solve a quadratic equation, and a baker should know how to make all four types of pastry. Several challenges in seasons past have involved choux pastry (highlight: Series 4 Week 7, Religieuses), and I guarantee there is not a single GBBO finalist who has not only mastered choux, but layered superfluous profiteroles into some random landscape/sculptural showstopper. Until, apparently, this season, when Helena and Priya are the only contestants who can make a choux.
Fortunately, someone on the internet has made a list of every technical challenge. So you can see that in the beginning, the focus really was on fundamental recipes, not just skills: Victoria Sponge. Scone. Cornish Pasty. Iced Buns. Sachertorte. Things that you should know how to make if you think you’re a good baker. Then as the seasons go on, it’s much more about skills: English Muffin. Baguette. Ciabatta. Things you might never think to bake on your own, but that you can put together if you have well trained hands and a sense of how ingredients work together, the history and theory of baking.
But in the middle seasons, there’s a trend: after an easy first couple weeks, the technical challenge explodes into, “what is the dumbest, most ridiculous dish that no one has made for four hundred years, that we can watch these idiots fuck up.” Flavor genius Chetna Makan is knocked out for baking only 17 of 20 alternating color layers of a broiled German schichtortte. There is a parade of stupid, arcane recipes that none of the judges, hosts, or contestants are able to either pronounce or spell: Dampfnudel. Ma'amou. Puits d'amour. Vegan Tropical Fruit Pavlova. Æbleskiver. Torta Setteveli. Those last five? All in a row. Followed by the all-time worst: the pita bread challenge.
Pita bread by itself? Fine. But this was “Campfire Pita Bread.” And you had to build the campfire. It was a test of who could build a fire. Eater magazine called the challenge “a stain on [GBBO’s] otherwise perfect legacy.” That about sums it up. (I don’t know about “perfect,” but there was darn sure nothing on GBBO comparably awful until that moment.)
When the challenge has no relationship to the bakers’ actual baking skills and is so clearly arbitrary and capricious, it becomes obvious that the results of the challenge are not meaningful. While viewers do find some contestants’ neuroticism fairly compelling, it’s not compelling or particularly neurotic when you see the contestants say, over and over again, “I’ve never heard of this and I’m going to fuck it up because I have no instructions to go on,” and then fuck up, I don’t know, a cake that looks like a tennis court for no goddamn reason.
In Series 10, there was something of a course correction. Yeah, Maids of Honor are pretty wacky, but they’re very similar to egg custard tarts (Series 4, Week 4), and there’s no element that’s by itself too outlandish: double baked pastry dough, lemon curd, cheese curd, and a stencil flower design. The only element the show hadn’t done before was the cheese curds, and I’ve made cheese curd, it’s not hard. Likewise, maybe it’s because I’m American and I’ve been to New Orleans and watched Treme, making beignets doesn’t seem all that crazy. (The elements: fried choux, raspberry jam, sabayon. Very clearly not enough time provided, and I wish they’d called it a zabaglione, but fine.)
So heading into Week 5 of Series 10, it’s looking like you have difficult but well chosen technical challenges — and as a result, that the outcome of the technical challenge (a clear numerical ranking) should be meaningful.
Well, you’d think that if the results of the technical are meaningful, then the person who wins the technical shouldn’t go home unless they are absolutely the worst at everything else. So now let’s talk about how and why that didn’t happen.
A close analysis shows several bakers more deserving of exit.
We start with nine bakers: David, Steph, Alice, Henry, Rosie, Michael, Priya, Michelle, and Helena.
For purposes of this article, I’m leaving out David, Steph, Alice, and Henry, each of whom perform admirably in the episode. (David royally bombs the technical — he can’t make choux! And he’s clearly very talented and trying to win! — but again, those tarts, and his showstopper is fine.)
Rosie
Signature: “Little Blackberry Pies”
She has a cool idea, translucent gelatin domes filled with juice, looking sort of like paperweights on top of her tarts. (It’s not new to the show.) But her timing is wrong and the domes all melt. This alone should be a major black mark.
She also drops one of her tarts, so she only presents three, which is ordinarily a major transgression. Yes, accidents happen, but shit falls down and there’s historically very little leniency for numerical inconsistency with the brief (see schicctorte, above).
Her pastry is damp. Huge, huge problem for prior bakers.
She uses matcha, which Paul has indicated he hates (and previously docked Helena for using).
Technical: 5th Place.
Showstopper: “White Russian Cake”
Prue likes the decoration.
The “ganach” is a half inch of solid chocolate. It’s a chocolate bar.
“You can certainly taste the alcohol.” Not usually a good thing.
Prue says “I think it’s a really good cake, but you know it’s not perfect.”
Overall notes: After her performance on the signature, it should’ve taken a miracle for Rosie to survive the week. (In the post-judging interview, Rosie says Prue came up to her prior to the showstopper bake, and told her as much.) Her design melted! Her pastry is damp! She didn’t fulfill the brief! It doesn’t taste good! Seriously, what could have been worse? (A couple of contestants have swapped salt for sugar, and one guy threw his baked alaska in “the bin” (the trash), and one guy used a store-bought icing. Those were all worse I guess.)
Was there a miracle, after Rosie’s signature? Sure doesn’t seem like it. Even Rosie believes it isn’t enough.
Michael
Signature: “Mango, Lime & Ginger Pies”
Well decorated, flavored, and baked.
Not enough custard.
Messy decoration.
Technical: 8th Place. Notably, Michael also cries and nearly breaks down during this challenge, and not for the first time. I find it pretty tiresome, but we’ll stick to judging the results.
Showstopper: “Brambling Cake”
Well decorated, beautiful, original.
His drizzle technique utterly fails and the judges are unimpressed with the flavor. Style over substance.
Overall notes: Neither the signature nor the showstopper are really bad; he just can’t seem to nail the style and the substance at the same time. His showing in the technical is awful and he seems to get help from the hosts, barely keeping himself together. In prior episodes he’s also made the classic “I made this ten times at home and it worked only once” mistake - as soon as a contestant says this, you know they’ll fail in the tent. If you can’t crush it every time in your own kitchen, you are absolutely not going to crush it in the tent, with outdoor heat and humidity, with all the pressure, and using different equipment. And you need to know that and be guided by it and not freak out. Sure, previous champion Rahul was very neurotic, as was Ruby Tandoh - but that neuroticism never rose to the level of sobbing and walking out of the tent during a technical, it just drove them both harder. The difference between self-confident flagellation and open, vulnerable, irrational grief. Watching Michael here, even if he didn’t deserve to lose the week, you know he’s not sticking it out much longer.
(I really like Michael, and his Keralan Star Bread is one of my favorite bakes in the entire show.)
Priya
Signature: “Lemon & Raspberry Ripple Pies
Ran out of time, decoration sucks. (Paul’s initial reaction: “Oh dear.”)
Not enough custard, and she boiled it. It looks awful.
Pastry “far too thick.”
Paul says it otherwise tastes amazing.
Technical: 2nd Place.
Showstopper: “Meena Colada Cake”
Prior, Prue says she "fear[s] for Priya.” Paul repeats his concern about the boiled custard.
Paul: “The decoration’s been rushed. It needs to be much more vibrant.”
Fondant too thick.
Seems well baked and flavored; Prue says she wants more passion fruit flavor.
Overall notes: Her signature is awful, second only to Rosie. Both her choice of flavors and her decoration are extremely simple - she appears to be the 3rd best of 4 pina colada cakes. Like Rosie (and explicitly), she enters the showstopper in need of a miracle. It sure doesn’t seem like she found one.
Michelle
Signature: “Blueberry & White Chocolate Creme Brulee Pies”
No blueberry taste.
Brulee top hasn’t worked, no sugary crackly texture.
Paul says “nice idea and they do look very neat though.”
Technical: 7th Place.
Showstopper: “My Little Sister the Dancing Queen’s Pina Colada Cake”
Too many concepts in the decoration. Specifically, the top half has a cool yellow/gold layering, and the base is a sort of pastel collage. Individually cool, but the combo is truly unattractive. It’s a question of design, not execution, and she should’ve known better. Prue notes this and describes concerns; Paul is silent.
She’s put shavings and flakes of coconunt in the cake, and the judges hate the texture.
It’s dry and flavorless. Paul clearly hates the taste and texture.
Overall notes: Michelle is definitely in the bottom rung. Unlike Priya and Helena, she doesn’t ace the technical. And unlike Rosie, she doesn’t have a competent showstopper to fall back on. If Rosie alone had gotten the boot, would I have thought “it should’ve been Michelle?” Probably not. But if two bakers were going to go, it makes sense one would be Michelle.
Helena
Signature: “Lemon & Lavender Pies” (with molded chocolate octopus/Cthulu)
Paul’s initial reaction: “the design is incredible.”
Prue says there’s too much lavender. Paul says “It’s a little bit soapy. It’s not bad. It’s not brilliant, but it’s not bad.” No more to say on flavor.
Technical: 1st Place
Showstopper: “Vampire’s Kiss Raspberry Vodka Cake”
She openly justifies her conformation to the theme, noting that it’s an honor of the first film adaptation of Dracula, in 1922. Prue asks if Vampire’s Kiss is a real cocktail or if she made it up (it’s real).
Prue on the decoration: “It’s such a mixture of sinister and very pretty.” Evidently not to her taste but she seems to respect it.
Paul: “I don’t like the outside of it. I’ll tell you why: I think your piping work is not good.”
Paul thinks it’s a bit bland inside, and Prue admits the raspberry doesn’t come out. But Prue says she likes it if she closes her eyes.
Overall notes: It sure seems like Prue hates Helena, but it doesn’t seem justified. See below.
some theories posited.
Honestly, I think there is some truth to all of the following:
Helena’s bakes were offensively bad-tasting, and the judges were just being nice.
It occurs to me after watching so much of the show, that Helena’s (and Michelle’s) bakes may have been just so wide of the mark that the judges didn’t bother with detailed commentary, and even went the extra mile to give vague compliments so as not to come off as assholes. Paul especially walks a line every Series between his dickishness and the need to not alienate viewers, making noticeable adjustments year to year. He may have just known that Helena wasn’t long for the show and been working not to be a jerk about it.
The reason I think this could be the case is that too much lavender is really a very serious problem for any baked good. It shouldn’t happen. So when Paul says it’s not bad but not great, when even Priya’s boiled custard gets a “tastes amazing,” it’s reasonable to suspect that the octopus tarts may have in fact been bad.
the judges just got tired of helena’s aesthetic.
There’s some evidence of this in Prue’s comments. Prue is not into HP Lovecraft. She wants nice, pretty, English things. She wants to be pandered to. So does Paul, in different ways.
The thing about Helena, she was definitely on brief at all times, but she forced the show into her world, her brand. And while the judging may have been poor, maybe even unfair, it still wasn’t a wise choice in terms of winning a competition that’s judged so subjectively.
To be specific: the Vampire’s Kiss cake was not a good idea. Red Velvet cakes are not notoriously good tasting (or even particularly showy), they’re mostly known for their coloration. Likewise, in the history of GBBO you can see that the judges are never terribly impressed with isomalt sculpture, and frankly I thought the bat wings were forcing it. And if you’re going to pipe, it should look precise - even if the intent was to look gorey and a bit messy, any kind of lacy piping that wasn’t perfectly executed was going to give the judges an opening. So I think the judges may have taken that opportunity to rid themselves of Helena’s Halloween shtick.
the judges don’t care about the technical.
It may be just that simple. I hesitate to blame Paul and Prue for the technical challenge sucking so hard for so long. It’s clearly a production decision. Maybe the judges’ response has been to categorically ignore the outcome of the technical when deciding Star Bakers and eliminations (or at least reduce it to a tie-breaker). That would make sense. It just makes me sad, because the show only works if you trust that both the challenges and the judging are designed to be meaningful.
the judges waited too long to use the double elimination, and then got pressured to use it up lest they be forced into an even more egregious choice.
This is the most plausible reason I can imagine. And it’s unfortunate, because in weeks 1-4, the show ousted some real losers: Dan, Jamie, Amelia, Phil. None of them had a single good bake and none of them had a chance in hell of winning the competition. It would’ve been perfectly logical and justified to banish Dan and Jamie in week 1. Or Jamie and Phil in Week 2. Or Amelia and Phil in Week 3. Except that the whole point of double elimination as a gimmick is that it’s a hammer that could fall at any time. If it falls too early, it has no benefit throughout the season. If it falls too late, highly talented bakers will be removed to satisfy a production gimmick, not because they deserve to go.
I don’t think they waited too long to use the gimmick here. I think they could’ve used it this time, to take out any of Rosie, Priya, and/or Michelle, and I wouldn’t have had a problem. But Helena? Who won the technical challenge and didn’t bomb either of the others? Sending her home was a clear signal that GBBO prefers manufactured drama to integrity.
it’s still not excusable.
With any competition based on judging, you’re going to have the odd egregious error or open corruption. I mean, I was super into boxing for a little while, until I realized how much that affected the outcome. Just thinking about Roy Jones Jr.’s 1988 Olympic silver medal still makes my blood boil. Why would you bring yourself to care about a competition, about the people in it, when the outcome is so arbitrary? Is there not enough pointless suffering in the world?
Either the technical challenge matters, or it doesn’t. Either the judges’ comments matter and justify their decisions, or they don’t. If those things matter, Helena should’ve stayed in the game, and it’s a travesty of justice that she didn’t, and I can’t give my valuable eyeball time to support such injustice. If those things don’t matter, then the game is a fraud, and I don’t want to watch it.
I don’t know when they’ll be able to make Season 11 — it’s on hold during the pandemic and quarantine. But I doubt that I’ll watch it when it comes out. Unless: give Helena her own show. They did it for Nadiya. They put Candace on a dancing show or whatever. Give me a “Helena’s Halloween Baketacular.” You want to regain my trust, we’ll start there.
I actually had a conversation with my wife about Helena’s accent and how to describe it here. I first called it “outlandish,” which my wife felt too “Othering” and potentially cruel. It’s maybe not the right word, but look: Helena’s accent is Other. It’s very, very strange. And how is that not AMAZING and completely appropriate for a self-created witch? Her whole thing is she’s into the strange, the macabre, the otherworldly. Her voice just synergizes with her entire aesthetic in a way that would be impossible for most people.
Also, Helena used to be a professional poker player. And she has a beautiful house. I wish we were friends. But that does not cloud my judgment here.