Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Baking It’ Season 2 On Peaco*ck, Where Amy Poehler Joins Maya Rudolph And The Grannies For A Baking Competition Full Of Jokes And Hugs (2024)

Baking It takes the formula of its crafting contest parent showMaking It, which is essentially the format of The Great British Baking Show, and brings it back full-circle, mixing a baking competition with the funny banter from the original series. Eight teams of two compete for a $50,000 prize, with their baking creations judged by a group of opinionated — but warm and friendly! — grandmothers. Season 2 of the show brings some changes, most notably a change in co-hosts.

BAKING IT SEASON 2: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph sing a song about the second season ofBaking It, including the lyrics, “We’re hosting together for the first time, so who knows?”

The Gist: Yes, in Season 2 ofBaking It, Andy Samberg has been jettisoned in favor of Poehler, who produces this show as well asMaking It, the crafting competition from whichBaking Itwas spun off. Rudolph jokes to the baking teams who have walked into the kitchen set that Samberg can’t make it due to “global supply chain issues.” Of course, Poehler is a more than capable substitute, given her history with Rudolph and just the fact that she’s Amy Poehler.

The Opinionated Grannies — Nana Harriet, Grandma Anne, Gigi Sherri and Bubbe Norma — are all back, though, and they’re the ones who will judge the baking teams on presentation and taste. It helps that all four are accomplished bakers, and that they’re all funny as hell.

The hosts promise that the new season will have more action than the last, demonstrating that by taking a complex-looking 3-tier cake that Amy supposedly baked and blowing it up. In the “Big Ol’ Bake” for the episode, the teams need to recreate the cake’s look from memory. The inside of the cake can be something that reflects what kind of baker they are, and there was a variety: A peanut butter and honey cake, a cinnamon bun cake, a churro cake and more. The teams, which consist of friends, couples and co-workers, also can do a custom cake topper.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? As we said last year,Baking It isThe Great British Baking Show mixed with the sense of humor ofMaking It.

Our Take: Unlike the first season ofBaking It, the second season doesn’t have a holiday focus, and the backing challenges are more varied; the second episode has people baking representations of their greatest fears, for instance. There is a celebrity-focusedBaking Itholiday special that airs on NBC on December 12 for people who want to get their fill of gingerbread and sugar cookies, but we appreciate the creative freedom that not being tied to the holidays gives the show’s writers.

As with the first season and the run ofMaking It, the show is as much about the hosts goofing around with the contestants and each other than it is about the baking. Really, the funny but good-natured tone is what sets the show apart fromTGBBSor its American counterpart,The Great American Baking Show. It goes without saying that Rudolph and Poehler have the chemistry of the old friends that they are, and they have some good-natured interactions with the contestants. They even try to bring up the famous “Sweata Weatha” sketch with the couple that comes from Queens — though they had no idea what the women who used to do the “Bronx Beat” sketches were taking about.

The grannies are hilarious and the wild card that really makesBaking It stand out from other cooking competition shows. One of them talks about a good solo night for her is drinking a bottle of Barq’s root beer and “belching like a sick cow,” and then says, “Oh, they’ll never put this on TV.” Did she watch the show last year? But behind the granny exteriors are four expert bakers whose critiques are always fair but said with love.

The contestants do seem to have some personality this year, but as usual in the first episode of a show like this it’s hard to discern any standouts among the crowd. What they all are, though, are pretty good home backers, so there won’t be anyNailed It!-style disasters in this contest, which is a good thing.

Sex and Skin: Food p*rn shots, but that’s about it.

Parting Shot: The grannies hug the contestants who were sent home, then they hug the rest of the contestants, then the contestants hug each other, and Maya and Amy hug each other. There’s a lot of hugging in this show.

Sleeper Star: The grannies aren’t sleepers anymore, so we’ll give this to Kandyy and Sevn, a couple who found each other when one slid into the other’s Instagram DMs. We love them because Sevn cries at the drop of the hat and Kandyy is there to support her and bring her focus back.

Most Pilot-y Line: When Amy and Maya make jokes about the “spin-offs” in theMaking It/Baking Ituniverse — “our version of the MCU,” Amy says — they make up a show calledJaking It, about famous Jakes, and don’t even mention Jake Peralta, Andy Samberg’s character inBrookyn Nine-Nine.

Our Call: STREAM IT.Baking It steps things up a notch in its second season, with Poehler in the fold and a more general theme for the baking challenge. And as long as the grannie stay right where they are, we’ll keep watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.