If you know me, you know Halloween is my holiday all year round. And because I’m still not a master at figuring out whether something is real or cake despite my obsession with My House is a Cake YouTube Shorts, this was probably inevitable.
I can never hit the jackpot with all five of her choices, and it pisses me off because it’s so hard to tell.
So after binging the first seven episodes of Netflix’s bizarre Wonka reality show, Is It Cake? Halloween showed up.
Well, how the hell could I resist?
I stayed up and binged this too. Apparently late-night binging is in my blood when I’m supposed to be relaxing with Scooby-Doo over on Tubi.
Is Is It Cake? Halloween a typical reality cooking competition? Why yes, it is. Except these people are making cakes that look like Halloween props, and some of them are absolutely insane.
I once made a doll cake with fondant for my mother-in-law because she’d wanted one her entire life. It took me hours. She loved it.
I hated it.
The cake was basically a stiff, flavorless pound cake wearing a dress, which may explain my continuing fascination with people who can make something look like a gargoyle while apparently also making it taste good.
Blackberry buttercream over chocolate cake?
Why yes. I’ll try that.
The Cakes Get Ridiculous
Nine cake artists start the competition, with three competing at a time before the winners eventually make their way to the finale. It’s a simple setup, and thankfully the show doesn’t spend six episodes explaining something that takes about 30 seconds to understand.
Make a cake look like something that isn’t cake. Put it next to the real things. Bring in some judges. See if you can fool them. That’s it.
And the cakes get progressively harder as the competition goes along, especially once they reach the final phase and have to tackle much larger, more complicated designs.
Paul, a retired cop, was particularly interesting because he specializes in incredibly detailed birds and animals. His vultures looked fantastic, but that incredible attention to detail may have actually worked against him. The judges started noticing that the object with the most precise detail was probably the cake.
That’s something I started noticing too. Sometimes too good gives the game away.
Meanwhile, I occasionally had no idea what the judges were looking at. There were times when I thought the cake was painfully obvious and they were staring at five objects like someone had asked them to solve the Zodiac cipher.
Breon’s witch’s hat? Come on.
But that’s also why I found this show so enjoyable. You’re playing along whether you mean to or not.
It’s More Fun When the Contestants Are Having Fun
Andrea was probably my favorite because she seemed to understand exactly what kind of show she was on. She participated, had fun with it and leaned straight into the cheese factor provided by host Mikey Day.
Some of the others weren’t nearly as thrilled after getting eliminated and still having to hang around in the gallery, but come on. It’s four episodes. There are worse places to be.
You could be sitting in the audience at Wonkavision inside Willy Wonka’s recreated chocolate factory.
And that’s another thing I liked about Is It Cake? Halloween: it moves.
Nine contestants. Three competitions. Final round. Winner.
We’re not spending half an episode learning someone’s entire life story before watching them measure flour. We learn enough about these people to know who they are, why they love making cakes and what they’re good at, and then we get back to the cakes.
That makes this feel more like a quick hit than some of the more elaborate baking competitions. Not necessarily better, just different.
It’s closer to watching one of those My House is a Cake Shorts and trying desperately to figure out which of five things is secretly cake before she cuts into it and once again proves I’m an idiot.
The themes help too. Brad — the blackberry buttercream guy — was clearly a Halloween guy, so his reaction when he wound up having to choose from Wonka-related designs was almost as entertaining as the competition itself.
He did not appear thrilled. And I understood completely.
For a Halloween Show, It Feels Weirdly Flat
The one thing that kept bothering me was the atmosphere.
For something called Is It Cake? Halloween, the show itself feels surprisingly flat. It reminded me a little of the problem I had with Widow’s Bay — not because these two shows have a anything in common, but because you can almost feel the edges of the soundstage.
There are different judges every round, including familiar faces like Kevin Nealon and Melissa Joan Hart, but otherwise it’s basically Mikey, the contestants and the cakes inside this isolated little Halloween bubble.
Something is missing.
The cakes have more atmosphere than the actual show.
That’s especially noticeable when some of these people are creating elaborate witches, vultures, clowns and other Halloween nightmares that look like they belong inside a haunted house. I wanted the show around them to feel a little more like Halloween instead of a television set decorated for Halloween.
Thankfully, you don’t have much time to dwell on it because the entire season flies by.
Before you know it, it’s 2 a.m. and you’re watching Ronique attempt to make a fucking gargoyle out of cake.
And I’m sorry, Ronique, but I knew.
That gargoyle was an incredibly difficult choice, and sometimes ambition is exactly what gives these things away.
The Faces Give Them Away Too
One of my favorite parts actually has nothing to do with cake. It’s watching the contestants.
As the judges move between the five objects trying to decide what’s real and what’s cake, you can sometimes see everything happening on the baker’s face. A judge gets a little too close to the right answer and suddenly somebody looks like they’re trying desperately not to react.
That gives the show some of the realness that a lot of reality television works so hard to manufacture.
These people aren’t particularly slick about hiding it. They’re nervous. They’re excited. They’re pissed when they’re eliminated. They’re thrilled when somebody can’t find their cake.
And that’s enough.
Is It Cake? Halloween doesn’t need manufactured drama or somebody pretending the fate of humanity depends upon a chocolate sponge.
The competition itself is fun.
🔥Our Verdict: WATCHABLE
Is It Cake? Halloween isn’t rocket science. It’s a lean-back reality TV show involving cooking, Halloween and people who possess a cake-making ability I absolutely do not understand.
The set could use more atmosphere. Some contestants are more fun to watch than others. Occasionally the judges make choices that had me wondering whether we were looking at the same damn objects.
But the cakes are ridiculous, the competition moves quickly, and the four-episode season doesn’t stretch a simple idea until there’s nothing left of it.
Most importantly, I started watching because Netflix threw it at me after I’d already binged seven episodes of Wonka’s The Golden Ticket.
Then suddenly it was 2 a.m. and I was still sitting there trying to figure out whether a gargoyle was cake.
I think that answers whether I kept watching.
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