“Is It Cake?”: Baking Mediocrity

“Is It Cake?” is an interesting concept that struggles to sustain interest past a few episodes, which ultimately leads it to be a poor viewing experience. The Netflix show is a competitive baking show that has three bakers creating hyper-realistic cakes to try to fool celebrity judges into thinking the fake cake is real. The show has its moments, such as a few nice quips from the host, but unfortunately, the memorable moments don’t stick as well as they could and they aren’t frequent enough to carry the show. This may come off as overly negative, but that is not the feeling that one gets from the show. Rather, there is not much feeling conveyed at all, and it is mostly indifference that the viewer is left with.

“Is It Cake?” was born from a trend of videos showcasing objects that look to be real, while being actual cake. The trend gained popularity briefly last year and lost relevance quickly as most internet fads do. The issue with creating a show based on a trend shows itself immediately, as the concept feels like it was forced and written by a board of out-of-touch writers. Looking past this issue, the premise is still somewhat interesting on its own. The summary given in the Netflix bio is enough to pull somebody into the show, but after watching a few episodes, it starts to become obvious soon that the show doesn’t offer anything past what you see in the first 40 minutes.

Every episode feels incredibly repetitive, and the only change is a different set of bakers. The baking phase is grating to get through, as it doesn’t do much in this segment to set itself apart from every other baking show. After this, it’s hard to get excited about the judges’ decision of which is cake and which is a real object when they are celebrities that most viewers won’t recognize that get replaced every episode. Ben Sucheski, a student at Pennridge and viewer of the show, felt that “there is a lot of buildup to a pretty average conclusion.”

The host, Mikey Day, tries to break up some of the monotony with humor, but he, unfortunately, comes across as someone who is trying far too hard to work with a relatively dead room. Of course, the host’s humor is completely subjective, so some viewers may find him to be a nice addition to the show. Steve Weiss, a competitor on the show, was a big fan of Mikey. “He was so funny on and off camera,” Steve told us, “he made the time on set go by quickly.”

“Is It Cake?” has so many alternatives to be compared to that there is little reason for one to watch it instead of the multitude of other baking shows. The show’s quirk is ultimately more two-dimensional than any of its competitors such as “Cupcake Wars” or “Holiday Baking Championship”, and we could not see it getting another season. There is only so much variation you can milk out of a trend, and it seems as though “Is It Cake?” ran dry before the first season concluded.