I know the joke is that the grear British baking show is happy and delightful, and American cooking and baking shows are intense, and this is supposed to be a cultural thing
But American shows are for anywhere from $10,000-$50,000 and the British bake off is for a bouquet and a trophy
Plus the GBBO is usually full of contestants who are retired, stay at home parents, college kids, and teachers who have the summer off and it’s filmed on the weekends
I’m not sure when American shows are filmed but considering how most that have the same people back every episode have the contestants mention leaving their families behind and quitting their jobs to compete, it’s not a convenient summer Saturday
Plus you ask the GBBO people why they’re competing and they say it’s for fun, as opposed to the Americans who start crying over being in mountains of college and medical debt and this being their only way out
If you took a bunch of poor UK bakers and made them quit their jobs to compete for the chance at a shit ton of money I don’t think they’d be helping each other make biscuit dough
It…never occurred to me the cultural difference in question was being framed as being between the contestants. Rather than the shows.
Of course it’s how they’re being treated and incentivized? I had no idea we weren’t all on the same page with that.
Also worth noting that even on shows where the incentive is the same, this behavior carries through, and you can actually see it as a difference in the cultures behind the shows.
Take Kitchen Nightmares. In both countries, Gordon Ramsay comes in and improves your restaurant. That’s it, that’s the prize. Ramsay gives your restaurant a second lease on life.
But in the UK, it’s like “your menu kind of sucks, this decor hasn’t been updated since 1982 and also is that a microwave I see in your kitchen?”
In the US, where it’s considered a badge of honor to pay as little as you can for as much as possible, it’s “there are pigeons nesting in your kitchen and rotten meat in your fridge ON TOP OF VEGETABLES and also your line cook is literally snorting coke off a kitchen knife.”
Well. Is it editing?
Or is it that the cook hasn’t had a day off in three months, health-inspection agencies have been gutted, and the owner is actively able to say “do this wildly unsafe thing to save me ten cents, or get fired” in 49 states because of right-to-work laws?
I went throught culinary school at some pretentious uppity college only to find out working as a chef was a nightmare and I wanted out. So I became an office sheep, made $$$ only to come into work after 4 years to find out the company was laundering money (I’m sure if it now because the managers always high), and scamming the entire country! 🤯 Crazy fucking shit.
You can look the company up! I kid you not. Because of that I don’t work in commercial kitchens and I refuse to work for a company that has anything to do with finance, debt, credit correction, etc…
Do I want to go back to the restaurant?…. NOPE! Can’t pay me. I make more money on disability and part time work plus more time to do whatever the fuck I want permitted I’m not suffering from crippling depression and anxiety given to me by the creators of PTSD. Life is crazy.
