If I regret one headline in this life, it is the one in which I made a parallel between the Masterchef jury and God. The skills of Pepe, Jordi and Samantha have been key for the format to last more than 10 years, and with so many spin-offs that one lost count a long time ago. But the trio chose evil as they became richer and richer: Samantha appeared on social networks explaining to her son that boys dance with boys and girls with girls; Jordi earned the nickname “Bad Jordi Cruz” after his support for Ayuso; Pepe remained silent. Sometimes I think that this animosity was my own thing; Others asked me how the format survived the death of Verónica Forqué.
In any case, the program continues alive, although touched, after having already made conciliation impossible, extending until 3 hours, or even starting at 11:10 p.m., after Broncano, in its Junior (?) edition.
‘Bake Off’ may seem like your answer to ‘woke’. Okay, Masterchef can introduce an Inés Hernand, like Bake Off introduces a bullfighter, but what happened last night on the program presented by Paula Vázquez went beyond a casting choice. The first episode of its return was scheduled on Sunday, as a replacement for ‘Drag Race Spain’. And seeing part of its cast of contestants, many – not just Yurena – gave the sensation of coming from the format presented by Supremme de Luxe. If ‘Bake Off España’ wants to have something, it is the scoundrel humor of the drag world, visible in the very subtitle of the program: “Celebrities in the Oven.” In some past episodes, he has succeeded.
Before the OT presented by Chenoa, ‘Bake Off España’ was one of the first bombs dropped by Prime in our country. The “friendship”, so to speak, between Esty Quesada and Esperanza Aguirre, gave rise to some of the most surreal television scenes that I remember. Yolanda Ramos, who repeated the casting with the move to RTVE for her second season, should have insisted on this third, which for the moment has not left such a funny superstar, despite the fact that Víctor Sandoval and Cósima Ramírez -daughter of Pedro J and Ágatha Ruiz de la Prada, self-proclaimed “happy crazy woman” and incapable of sitting still, have tried very hard.
What the third season of ‘Bake Off: Spain’ has already left us with, after just two episodes, is a transition announcement by one of the participants. One of them began the contest as Maestro Joao and will end it as Benita, adopting the name of her deceased mother. His announcement after raising his hand at the beginning of the second episode is already television history in 2025: Mario Jefferson started crying like a cupcake; Carmen Morales, even more so; Isabel Gemio was shocked… When no one except Paula Vázquez seemed to know what to do, in a completely unexpected way, the one who made a move and came to hug Benita was the most unlikely of all, with permission from Finito de Córdoba: the biker and fucker officer Pol Espargaró. Next, juror Paco Roncero, normally unable to close his legs, decided to move them to get out of there shotgun. Perhaps hoping to look more like Samantha Hudson than Samantha Vallejo-Nágera, she missed a fitting to miraculously get, in a matter of an hour, a gorgeous apron with the word BENITA on it.
The scene on public television, although filmed months ago, would not be the same without the already openly transphobic context that is going to be allowed on Facebook and Instagram by the grace of Mark Zuckerberg, just when Trump is going to regain the presidency of the United States and his friend Elon Musk is trying to drag Europe into that far-right tide. Speaking of cupcakes, it seems incredible that these three come from the same planet as Manuela Carmena, last night’s guest on ‘Bake Off’, received with queenly honors. Between this, the battle between ‘La Revuelta’ and ‘El Hormiguero’, and that Marc Giró moves from today to La 1, RTVE sometimes looks like a completely stark cultural war, but I swear that ‘Bake Off España’ is enjoyable as a mere entertainment program.
‘Bake Off’ is that type of comedy program that makes you laugh when you see that Isabel Gemio is incapable of turning on a mixer but capable of delivering some shits of candy that not even Divine would have ingested in John Waters’ most extreme movie. That Cósima can forget to turn on the oven in a baking program, that Yurena cuts the hazelnuts with bread knives, or that Cristina Tárrega can give you a best friend hug… as long as you don’t stain her. And the jury here is God until proven otherwise: Eva Arguiñano is an absolute sweetheart, she finds everything funny and will never say anything that could harm a human being. Roncero seems to be the one who really rules, but Damián Betular stops measuring himself against them. A look of disapproval is enough to plunge anyone into misery. And he knows how to do it with humor, in these times when it is no longer worth humiliating people just for the sake of it. At least until now.
