Cakealikes: Viewers Drag Show & Predict It Won't Be Renewed
Discovery+ may not have the hit it was hoping for with celebrity-themed-cake-show Cakealikes. Baking competitions are ridiculously popular, and even more so during the pandemic, when everyone suddenly has time to take up their own baking. Despite this, Cakealikes is not winning the praise of fans. Viewers have embraced shows celebrating highly skilled bakers, like The Great British Bakeoff, and shows celebrating hot messes, like Nailed It! Somehow Cakealikes has failed to appeal to either of these audiences.
Like all baking competitions, Cakealikes bakers work under a tight schedule to meet the challenge of the day. The show's twist is that the challenges are to make a life-sized version of a celebrity out of cake. Since cake is a fragile medium, not really stable enough to sculpt a full-sized human, the results are usually messier, Nailed it! style. Contestants on Nailed It! have had spectacularly epic fails, but the show is a hit, unlike Cakealikes. There’s one key difference that makes fans less receptive to one show rather than the other.
Nailed It! contestants don’t seem to take the show too seriously, able to laugh at their disasters along with the judges. They’re not professional bakers, so they’re not invested in making a good cake. Viewers noticed that the cake makers on Cakealikes, however, don’t seem to be in on the joke. Cakelikes set contestants up to fail, with a challenge that is basically impossible and then the judges laugh at them for failing. Since the contestants on Cakealikes are professional bakers, there is more at stake for them and looking foolish is more personal.
Online commenters don’t have much good to say about the show. They’ve suggested Cakealikes is like Nailed It! with all the fun and joy sucked out. The judges mocking contestants doesn’t endear judges to viewers, unlike the judges on Nailed It!, who fans love. Redditors pointed out that they watch baking shows as a pleasant diversion, but it isn’t enjoyable to see people being mocked for their imperfections. Most online commenters didn’t even watch all of the first season and find it hard to believe that the show will be renewed. With most of the online conversations about the show being negative, there doesn’t appear to be enough of a fanbase to justify more seasons.
Discovery+ has faced an uphill battle as the latest streaming service. Besides being one of an ever-growing group of streaming services, they have not been good at giving viewers what they want. 90 Day Fiancé fans even called for a boycott when they realized the streaming service would split the 90 Day franchise, making viewers pay for both TLC and Discovery+. Now Discovery+ is failing to capture the tone of popular baking competitions. They haven’t inspired much confidence with their first endeavors. We’ll see if they can figure out what viewers want before they lose too many audience members to recover.