They're Making Bad Shows On Purpose 

I felt so bad when the older gentleman's bowling pin cake got him eliminated. He had decades of experience in making realistic cakes but he just ran into some problems in this episode. If you look at his portfolio, damn, his realistic cakes surpass other contestants' cakes. But look how he still powered through. You're right, it's honest work. Meanwhile, Johnny cheated by putting jelly on other tacos. When he did that, I legit thought he'd be disqualified, but the producers just allowed it!!!

i started this show expecting to hate it and genuinely got invested. is it bad? yeah. is it entertaining? yeah.

You listed SSSniperwolf as a “low effort reaction creator.” Expect to see her outside your house soon.

So apparently Johnny asked the producers if it was cheating MULTIPLE TIMES and they said no each time, if altering the props was allowed they should have told the contestants outright so that they all could have done it. Just because Johnny has a conniving mind and the others were honest he won, guess this is the new survivor.

Johnny didn't cheat and double checked with the producers that what he was doing was allowed, but that just means the producers are entirely to blame. They considered the show to be entirely about deception, but the more important aspect is the artistry necessary to make a cake look like something else. Allowing the "something else" to look like cake completely eliminates that aspect of the show.

When I watched it I absolutely could not get over the taco cheat like why the frick was that not against the rules and why did they gloss over it when it was clearly the biggest most outrageous loophole. I felt like i was taking crazy pills so im glad to not be the only one it bothered tf out of

they also missed out on a perfectly good opportunity to call the show "real or cake" or "cake or fake" or "cake it till' you make it" (that last one kinda sucks, not gonna lie)

So, there is a show in Japan where every once in a while in an episode they are in a room that has one item made our of chocolate and they have to find it by biting into the things they think may be chocolate. Its way funnier bc it can get pretty weird and since it is not the entire premise of every episode it also doesn`t get boring too fast.

The fact that the judges have to play the game show part as they are "judging", causing them to celebrate when they eliminate people is somehow the funniest thing I've ever seen. They get so caught up in the time limit and not being able to actually "judge" beyond guesswork, that they forget they're the bad guys of the show.

The Japanese show where they’re biting all kinds of random stuff to see if it’s candy is way better

The only good thing this show gave to me, was the recommendation of another baking show at the end of it called "Baking Impossible". It's an amazing baking competition where teams have to engineer some type of contraption with food, and the judges are extremely competent in their fields and actually give detailed constructive criticism. It was so refreshing to watch I 100% recommend this to watch.

"Lingo" is a UK gameshow that is fundamentally Wordle. According to Wikipedia, it originally aired in the 80s (although the format was very different), but the current Wordle-esque iteration of the show first aired on January 1st 2021, which means it predates Wordle.

my jaw dropped when johnny won because he CHEATED! how could this possibly be okay i don’t understand how it was allowed

I'm also just getting really tired of "quirky silly hosts." I don't know who popularized it and did it effectively enough to warrant every competition show to do it, but it's really turned me off from a lot of shows. Crime Scene Kitchen and Lego Masters both have actors I genuinely enjoy hosting the show, but their charisma is just gutted by what I can only assume is corporate meddling where they're forced to make a cringey, terrible joke every line. And then of course, there's some shot of the contestants all "laughing" at the bad joke. Like can you imagine Jeff Probst on Survivor having to make a dumb joke every time he's on screen? "Drop your buffs.... But don't get IN THE BUFF this isn't NAKED AND AFRAID hahahahaha" "The Tribe has spoken... Maybe a little TOO MUCH HAHAHA LOOKIN' AT YOU SWATI time to GO HOME LMAO" "Wanna know what you're playin' for? DEEZ NUTS HAHAHA but for real they're peanut butter for some tasty sandwiches, brought to you by Applebee's." I honestly think part of why competition shows like Survivor, Big Brother and Amazing Race are all so successful is that the host treats the competitors (and the audience!) with a little bit of respect

Fun fact, Wordle was already a game show, called Lingo, hosted by Chuck Woolery.

5:42 “that’s a tacos”

It's infuriating because he doesn't just put a couple fake toppings on, he COVERS that shit and it's so insane

Something as simple as Scott saying "a tacos" made me smile, he is simply a delight

although the trend of guesing if objects are cake faded from the spotlight, i do want to say that watching cake artist create hyper-realistic cakes is the most interesting part of the show. Had netflix made a baking show around that premise and showcase different artists making the cakes would have been interesting especially if they still put the cakes with decoys for the audience to guess. The competition aspect felt very uneccessary and frustrating especially since we as the audience got close-up shots of everything so we could see all the small details that would have easily deciphered the cake from real objects. I still oddly enjoyed watching it and honestly would watch another season because I kinda enjoyed guessing which was cake.

My wife and I started watching this as a joke and then we got hooked on it like a couple of morons. It had a lot of problems, but…it was somewhat fun.

Just to clarify about the tomato thing, that was really the show's fault and not Johnny's. He said in an interview that he had asked multiple times if it was ok for him to do that and they said it was. Totally not ok they allowed that but anyone would've done the same if they weren't going to get into trouble for it. Edit: I also want to add that he did contact the contestants he was up against in the particular challenge later and they were pretty ok with it. They knew the rules beforehand and that they were allowed to do something like that. Some also sabotaged their decoys in later challenges

The thing I immediately started roasting the show about is that apparently it would be too obvious which one the cake is so they had the judges stand 30 feet away and decide on one of them in like 15 seconds.

Ok but I watched this show while I was playing a game on my phone and was amazed that my grumpy teenage niece seemed to like it. I actually thought she would judge me but she actually paid attention and even guessed along which is cake. I felt like I was secretly transported in a parallel universe where teenagers act like 90 year old women.

Omg the bowling pin cake episode really had me in tears from laughter The fact that they pretended to be surprised really shows how kind the judges were in that obviously uncomfortable moment 🤣😂🤣

honestly, this show would be way more interesting if the bakers were ALLOWED to sabotage real items to look like cake, but they could ONLY use non-food items to do so.

Apparently it was “within the rules” for taco guy to mess with the decoy like that, and other contestants also messed with their decoys-but wtf, why is that allowed? Why is that within the rules? That takes away from the whole point-can these bakers make cake look like _real_ tacos, bowling pins, etc. it’s not real if you mess with the decoys!

It is pretty crazy how they can make cakes that realistic. That's some legit skill

My favorite Netflix show is Bake Squad. It's 4 like professional bakers, the same 4 people all season (I think its 2 seasons actually). One specializes in cake sculpting, one specializes in sugar work, one is a chocolatier or whatever its called, and I forget the other one's exact specialty but she focuses on the actual flavors and taste. She's my fav lol but I actually really love all of the bakers. Each episode starts with a guest or guests coming to talk about an event they're planning and the person it is for, and then the bakers all go off and make these crazy fucking desserts like huge things like the one guy made an entire drumset out of chocolate and each drum was filled with a different kind of cake lmao it's crazy.. and then at the end the guest comes back and tries everything and chooses which baker's stuff they're going to use for the event. I just love that its the same bakers bc I really like them and it feels like you kinda get to know them after a bit. And the stuff they make is unreal. The one thing I don't love is that they kinda make the bakers and the host act like everything they're saying isn't scripted lmao I wish they would just let them say whatever they want. Tell then they have to mention or explain certain things.. but let it come more naturally. That is my only complaint lol I really love this show.

I think the real problem was the lack of rules because although johnny boy sabotaged another taco there werent any rules to begin with

I knew we failed when my Netflix show was too high quality. If we get renewed, I'm going to insist that we make it painful to watch so we can cash in on all this unpaid publicity from mid-level RU-vidrs 😂

That internet trend was inspired by a Japanese comedy segment where they made a whole bunch of crazy stuff out of chocolate. Like they made shoes and a doorknob out of chocolate

Not me in my early 20s unironically enjoying this show, I binged it, I was happy, it was my happy place, mental health break

It’s definitely a dead meme but the artists on the show are really talented and I’m glad they’re getting publicity

I'm so confused by Jonny because he seems like he doesn't know exactly what he's doing, but last time I remember, he was a professional cake decorator

I actually really enjoyed this show and watched all of it. The people on the show were very talented and likable and they really had some great chemistry together that felt really natural and I liked that they got to stay on the show the whole time unlike every other competition show. You really got to know a lot of them since they got 2 chances to bake. Mikey day was a little bit cringe near the beginning of the show. There is a really scripted but where they teach him a fake baking word but he really gets into the groove of his humor the further you watch. He had some really self aware jokes about being on SNL and at one point he is just playing giant Jenga by himself and they do not elaborate further and I just found it really funny. Also even though everyone had decades of experience they were able to learn things on the show. They learned if the food looks too perfect or there aren't enough gaps or spaces then it gives it away that it's fake food. If you aren't a fan of baking shows or you don't mesh with the shoes humor I can see why you might not like it but I think lumping it in with the other worst shows is overly harsh. I do really like your stuff though so keep it up.

As a French person, a “Croissant Sandwich” hurts me on a very deep personal level.

What killed me when watching the show was how much the host and contestants clearly had no idea what was going on. Like there were some moments where the people on the show were literally giving advice on how it should go bc it made zero sense

i was AGONIZING over who this Johnny guy was because i KNEW I'd seen him before. i discovered he was a judge on the Try Guy's cake episode of Without a Recipe! he really is a character...

I watched this show last week. Since it’s release, Netflix has definitely cut out the part showing Johnny putting the fake tomatoes on the real tacos… suspicious!

There is a wordle game show called Lingo coming out… Edit: I was wrong. The show existed long before Wordle and even inspired the game. The one I saw ads for is just a reboot.

Honestly it would be cool if they incorporated the cheating that Johnny did to the show. If they had a section of time before or after the baking part where the contestants have to sabotage real items to make them look baity it would be a bit interesting tho it defeats the main purpose of making real looking cakes.

To be fair, Wordle: The Game Show does exist and it's called Lingo lol

I was super frustrated with the episode where the red solo cups won. They were so obviously fake, and the closer you got to them, the more obvious it was, as the lines were super crooked. And the judges were fawning and saying how good it was. Seemed to me they were paid off.

I AM SO PISSED!!!!!!!!!! Mom and i skipped the baking and pretended to be judges. We were so mad we got the tacos wrong! I now know why and I'm honestly seething 🤬

While Johnnie's taco shenanigans were upsetting, some other bakers also sabotaged their decoys. I remember in the one episode with the party items, the one girl (I think Nina) HOT GLUED chips to the bowl to make them look like they were overflowing and therefore fake-- the judges fell for that too. I'm just glad Andrew won, because he was by far the most talented (based off what was shown in the show) and not once did he cheat.

Hear me out: I actually like this show. It is so dumb. Like the judges cannot even see the objects/cake because they’re sitting so far away. All the jokes are stupid and it is objectively bad. But it’s fun to watch people make the cakes and I kinda do enjoy guessing if it’s fake or not (even though it’s usually obvious). So yeah it’s a dumb show, but I like it

9:34 same energy as the bully from shark boy and lava girl

You are so underrated. I love your channel so much! I look forward to each new video😊

I was just hungry the whole time lol not for cake but all the other food they tried to imitate

it's crazy how much joy i get from scott saying "a tacos"

I watched part of an episode that my mom was watching and it was embarrassing. Of course they can't tell when they're standing like 10' away and the cakes are made to be deceptive. I can't even pick out details from that far away when I'm wearing my contacts.

2:05 "Concept" might also be a bit of a stretch.

I'm so ashamed about the fact that I watched this whole thing. I officially became a puppet in Netflix's hands.

disregarding literally everything else, the contestants had a shit ton of talent, Sam's cheeseburger was probably my favorite cake, she did a super good job with it, and Johnny's tacos were actually super good, im not sure if the tacos would've passed without the extra tomatoes, but regardless I think he did alright with actually creating the taco, it's honestly super cool.

I'd watch this show if it was called 'Is It an IED?' and the contestants have to decide from half a block away from behind a dusty windshield at 35mph and they have three seconds to decide.

I had that thing where your hands cramp up. Basically your hands a forcing themself to be in a weird state and if you try to move them they slowly go right back into that position. I also needed to put alot of pressure/energy to be able to move my hands.

I love scott cramer. This man covers the topics everybodies thinking about but nobody talks about. Respect.

Scott getting irate over someone cheating in a show he didn't even care about in the first place is a whole mood 💀

14:41 Eminiem appears

This show ruined my life, now I'm worried about what things might be cake, I had a panic attack getting into my car because I thought it was cake and would crumble, and maybe the road was cake and I'd fall through it, and maybe the earth was cake and I'd end up in space...And if space was cake I'd probably just die

I watched some episodes. And in one of the episodes the "experts" got all 3 wrong! And just arbitrarily picked a winner! What kind of world do we live in that if you win by tricking the "experts" those same "experts" get to choose the overall winner! Get better "experts" Is It Cake! Do BETTER!

I actually completely assumed that this was a baking show because to be fair, how long would they have to drag it out if it wasn’t? I do understand that it doesn’t really showcase that in the trailers.

there is now a wordle game show called "lingo" 1:10

The way your door is open to the hallway behind you💀i keep expecting to see something in the dark!!!!!

Can we talk about how the other contestants have to sit and watch them bake for 8 HOURS!?!? I was shocked by this and kept thinking about it

Not only was this done to death on the internet, it was actually the premise of a japanese game show where contestants were in a room and had to bite into regular looking objects to see if they were cake. Netflix just took the idea and made it bad.

i’m just watching this now, and the “wordle the gameshow” joke really got me, because i saw an ad for that tonight!! lingo, hosted by ru paul. its literally co-op wordle but rebranded lmao

“Wordle the game show”, 9 months later and sure enough, Lingo is a real thing on CBS

11:08 “Destroying people’s dreams with no benefit to themselves” Reminded me of the Nick show Figure it Out, I watched it when I was younger and it was Nick stars versus kids with random talents and if the kids won they got something good I forgot what and the Nick stars didn’t get anything so a lot of times they just basically give up to let the kids win. Some of them did not and still went hard and it was just funny to see who does and who doesn’t

I put this show on for background noise a few weeks ago and was surprised by how much I actually liked it I thought it was likable and funny despite it being a stupid concept for a show

The worst part of a lot of these shows is when they just give up all pretense of it being a competition, and instead choose to overtly focus on the characters played by the judges and contestants. They stop formalizing or enforcing the rules, stop making an effort to do interesting challenges, they just use the contest as an unrelated backdrop to do bits and jokes. I think where this got really big at first on Netflix was Nailed It. It lacks the earnestness of the best reality tv ever aired: Canada's Worst Handyman season 2.

My daughters love this show (and Netflixes other Internet-trend-turned-games how ancillary product: Nailed It) That croissant one is an interesting one to lead on, because there’s supposed to be the real mccoy and the cake version right beside each other. The judges are supposed to be guessing which one of the two options is cake. But it’s this portion of the game that bothers me the most. The rest is a pretty standard fare baking competition show with less drama and more support for each other. But when it comes to the judges, half the time they’re just doing a 50/50 coin toss by their own admission and it tends to kick off extremely skilled participants for no other reason than chance. Nailed It is the better show of the two, but we really do love marveling at the craftsmanship of the Is It Cake reveals

So I also wanted to hate it but I thought it ended up being kind of nice. I liked the contestants and how they didn't have to leave. I would like to point out that the lady who did the chip bowl did glue chips to the edge. Idk why they were allowed to mess with the decoys at all. Felt weird to me. Also didn't like how they really drew out the "if this isnt cake then you win money but if it is..." before he cut the cake because either way the contestant already knows so if it is cake it is hella awkward

I'm so glad you are talking about this! It 1000% looks like a fake parody show that you might see on a sitcom or movie, like "Punch Teacher" or "Million Dollar Heads or Tails".

I actually love this show for how extremely crappy it is snd because literally none of the participants act and talk like real people. I am genuinely convinced they are all npcs

a show with a somewhat similar concept but about making extremely detailed chocolate sculptures exists and is actually very good. the school of chocolate

y'know. it seems like mikey day is genuinely having a really good time. like it seems like he gets that the show is A Bit Cringe but he's just really leaning into it 'cause he thinks it's funny. good for him

I love how Scott projected an aquarium onto his wall. I couldn’t focus on the video cause I was trying to find out what was happening behind him the entire time 😅. “NEXT ON SCOTT CRAMER Is it a wall???”

"Wordle the game show" Lingo: "Am I a joke to you?"

My partner and I watched the first episode of Is It Cake out of boredom and in the first challenge, I noticed that the contestant who replicated the bacon croissant sandwhich lost, yet the cake they cut wasn't the cake they showed her making. They cut through the cake and the host said something to the effect of "Do the honors and serve the judges your cake" even though it wasn't hers? I'm so confused.

5:03 Did he just.. refer to a plate of tacos as "a tacos"?

3:40 He looks and gestures at the cake while saying, "and one..." That completely gave it away lol.

I only saw the first episode of the cake show but I liked the concept. I just like cooking competitions where the contestants make really elaborate-looking food. It’s cool to see the process and the end result.

Also I really thought how all the other contestents had to wait for hours till the three finished with baking.

I watched the first 2 episodes with a few friends. We thought Johnny was so smart to sabotage the real tacos, like he's gaming the system. We didn't have a problem with it, and thought the others players should have did the same thing. If I saw the bowling pin cake on instagram or something, I would think it looks pretty good, but next to real bowling pins, it kinda looks silly. Overall the episodes I watched were fun, but I was annoyed by the host.

There was already a “Wordle” game show called Lingo. I used to watch it all the time as a kid with my brothers. Basically you had to guess the word on the screen, and if you get it right, you get to draw a number that correlates to your “bingo” card and try to get ‘Lingo’

“i’ve given myself some time to cool off”…. “YOU KNOW WHAT THESE F’ERS DID?” 😂😂😂😂

When my friend told me about that show, I was intrigued, but when I find out that someone could be eliminated, I didn't want to watch it; I hate it when a contestant has to leave, especially when they leave sad and why they want to continue

I'm a pastry chef from Iowa and even though I did find this show a lil cringe I'm glad Andrew's bakery got the attention it deserves!!

It baffles me as to why these are the shows that go mainstream while small projects that are given genuine care and effort aren't.

Getting a Johnny Cakes jumpscare was wild. I knew he was in this show but idk it just never occurred to me that he was *in this show*. That's one of my favorite Try Guy's guests right there

Him: Netflix you think you can trick me and put peers into talking about your show. Proceeds to talk about their show

I loved this show. Legitimately 🤔 Sure I have bad taste, but still this show was full of positivity and passion from the contestants, and more terrible jokes than you can shake a stick at.

I love that "Would you rather be watching Big Heads" has become the standard way of judging if a game show is good.

Even if this were the most riveting program on the net, I wouldn't watch Netflix's version, because they'd no doubt find a way to cancel it on a cliffhanger! Screw Netflix!

Is it cake was already a popular show in Japan like ten years ago. This is a copycat idea. In the Japanese show, contestants would enter a room full of ordinary looking stuff and be encouraged to bite everything to find what's cake or not.

Johnny absolutely cheated but this show would be sooo much interesting if the contests who don't make the fake cakes are given the opportunity to make decoy foods to trick the judges. if their food gets picked over the cakes or real food they can get a point

He literally cheated and got directly rewarded by it

before the whole cake or not? wave i saw a japanese show wich had a similar concept but with chocolate. they put people in a room and they had to test the furniture, househol items if they are made out of chocolate or not. little catch they can only bite. so if they are suspicous that the leg of the table might be chocolate, they had to Bite it. i think its a more entertaining concept and far more fair than seeing the pruduct from a few miles distance

In season 2 you see a lot more of the decoy sabotage. Like a lot. Most of the time it was because a contestant fucked up the cake somehow and needed a last ditch effort. Like this one lady did it twice by struggling to get the color right so she just painted all the decoys and the cake, and she also made a printer that looked dirty so she dirtied up the decoys. I think another girl made a hairbrush but in the last like 30 minutes she broke a bunch of the bristles and she didn’t have time to make them again, so she broke or melted the bristles on the decoys. She still got her cake found that round but it was a good try. Idk to me in those cases where you feel like you need to adjust the decoys because of other circumstances with the cake is okay, but in other circumstances it feels a lot like cheating if you don’t necessarily need to do it.