aw, Linda Holmes, this is why you're my favorite.
Because this review of The Great British Baking Show (its PBS title) turns into a statement about life:
http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2016/07/01/484184090/the-bun-also-rises-why-we-love-the-great-british-baking-show
Don't laugh, but this is life, in a way, as we all hope for it to be. You screw up, but not entirely. You see your hoped-for result dashed on the counter in a pile of goop, but someone says, "I see what you put into this; I see what you intended." Someone you trust who is better than you are at whatever you're trying to do says, "We both see what you did wrong; I can help you identify what you did right." You still might lose. You still might go home crying with disappointment. But someone will have said, "Next time, take it out of the oven five minutes sooner and you'll really have something." It's a show of such … hope. Hoping everybody else is going to be willing to try the imperfect layers of your particular not-quite-put-together cake is often the only way to get through the day, after all.
Although this sentence describing the appeal of the show as compared to that of Top Chef is also pretty good too (and took a direction I didn't expect):
I don't know that it's more exciting, but there are days in which you find yourself more in the mood for a relaxing evening having drinks with low-key, charming friends than for an hour spent watching a skunk and a rat fight over who gets to drag a rotten potato into a hole in the ground.
Heh.
http://www.npr.org/sections/monkeysee/2016/07/01/484184090/the-bun-also-rises-why-we-love-the-great-british-baking-show
Don't laugh, but this is life, in a way, as we all hope for it to be. You screw up, but not entirely. You see your hoped-for result dashed on the counter in a pile of goop, but someone says, "I see what you put into this; I see what you intended." Someone you trust who is better than you are at whatever you're trying to do says, "We both see what you did wrong; I can help you identify what you did right." You still might lose. You still might go home crying with disappointment. But someone will have said, "Next time, take it out of the oven five minutes sooner and you'll really have something." It's a show of such … hope. Hoping everybody else is going to be willing to try the imperfect layers of your particular not-quite-put-together cake is often the only way to get through the day, after all.
Although this sentence describing the appeal of the show as compared to that of Top Chef is also pretty good too (and took a direction I didn't expect):
I don't know that it's more exciting, but there are days in which you find yourself more in the mood for a relaxing evening having drinks with low-key, charming friends than for an hour spent watching a skunk and a rat fight over who gets to drag a rotten potato into a hole in the ground.
Heh.