The inspiration behind this story is a Stanford class I read about. Each student in that class, in turn, gets to be the ranker. The ranker must arrange his or her classmates in a line, in order from most influential to least influential. It made me think that, in addition to being pure nightmare fuel, publicly ranking your peers would also be a great reality TV show concept.
Disclaimer: Any resemblance, purely coincidental, yada yada.
Social Scores Judge: Bob
Food Theme: Milkshakes
Well, it was inevitable that the eventual American version of The Great British Bake Off would ruin everything good about that too-pure-for-this-sinful-world show, but I was unprepared for the depths this show would sink to. Gone are the lovely scenes of the bakers helping each other, replaced by a peer-ranking mechanism designed to foment strife. Gone are the weekly baked-good themes, replaced by… any dessert, apparently? (Really, milkshakes?) Gone are judges with thoughtful critiques, replaced by the likes of influencer du jour Olivia Fairfax squealing that Ella’s “choco-date” milkshake is “super gram-worthy.”
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Social Scores Judge: Chris
Food Theme: Chocolate chips
The show claims that each week’s social judge is selected randomly, but I have my doubts. This week’s selection of Chris was precision engineered to create maximum drama. You see, Chris doesn’t believe in ranking people. All people are born equal and the light of the universe shines in all our hearts and Chris is his brothers’ (and sisters’) keeper, so Chris randomly ranked people for social scores. Or so he claimed… but no one believes him because he ranked himself first. The rest of this season might as well be called Everybody Hates Chris.
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Social Scores Judge: Danica
Food Theme: Liquorice
Danica, who is not the best baker in the world, was thrilled to get help from everyone (well, everyone except Alice) this week. Ella helped her calculate the right ratios, Chris helped her mix her ingredients, and Bob helped her plate her food. Unfortunately, that meant that all of them wanted to be ranked first by her. Pity poor Danica. To paraphrase Game of Thrones, if she thought this round would have a happy ending, she hadn’t been paying attention.
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Social Scores Judge: Chris
Food Theme: Donut holes
The producers just can’t help themselves. After seeing how much controversy Chris sparked last time he was the social judge, they “randomly” selected him as the social judge again. This show’s “random” selection is just as suspicious as Chris’s “random” rankings. This time, Chris makes himself enemies by ranking Alice highest. Coincidentally (or not), Alice is the only contestant who helped him in this round.
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Social Scores Judge: Alice
Food Theme: Fruit
All season long, Alice has been proclaiming that the social scores are the scam - she is here to be judged solely on how her dishes taste. This week, she finally got her chance to judge others as she wanted to be judged, and by god she did it. Her social ranking was exactly the same as the judges’ taste ranking. Never mind that it cost her the friendship of the one person on this show who was willing to help her; never mind that she is now villain numero uno on this show; never mind that it made her look like an asshole on the number one streamed show in the world. If I didn’t hate her so much, I would admire her for sticking to her principles no matter the cost.
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Social Scores Judge: Bob
Food Theme: Honey
This week’s episode was such a palette cleanser. Bob is the avenging angel we all needed. Thank god he reconsidered his gunpowder idea from last week and decided to execute a much more legal revenge: he convinced Danica and Ella to enter into an alliance with him (not that they needed much convincing). Watching Alice and Chris struggle and fail for the rest of the season is going to be such soothing balm on my angry heart. I await with glee.
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Social Scores Judge: Chris
Food Theme: Whipped cream
The producers of this show are fucking with us. Ella has not been the social judge one time, and Chris somehow is the social judge for the third time? Too bad the producers’ plan to create more drama didn’t work. Turns out, Chris has been randomly ranking people all along. He proved it this week by ranking Bob first, even though Bob all but spit in his dish last week. The other contestants were all unfairly maligning Chris’s name! Chris is now redeemed. Will Alice be next, allowing this wild show to end on a happy note?
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Social Scores Judge: Alice
Food Theme: Nuts
There are some things that I shouldn’t enjoy, but I really do, like eating an entire gallon of ice cream in one sitting. This finale was another one of those. Ostracisation is no fun, but I loved watching everyone work together to defeat Alice by making sure Ella won. In my defense, Alice is very hateable! She really needs to rethink her whole “only the food matters” schtick. I fully started the episode ready to watch an Alice redemption arc and forgive her, just like I forgave Chris last week. But Alice remained as sanctimonious as ever, and so now I have five separate GIFs on my phone showing Ella throwing her prizewinning pie at Alice at the end of judging.
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