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caviaporcella
Reviews
Nailed It! (2018)
Panic! at the baking station
In one of the earlier episodes, after someone pushed their panic button, and the host was screaming at everyone to panic, the camera started wildly swinging around. The goofiness extending even to the camerawork totally floored me and was one of the funniest things I've ever seen on TV.
If you prefer reality TV with serious hosts and editing focused on interpersonal drama, then you'll probably hate this show. But if you like the new trend of game shows designed for everyone to have fun, then you'll probably love it.
In short, this is a light-hearted and enjoyable show that doesn't take itself too seriously, giving people who suck at baking the chance to win a game show, a medium usually reserved for skill and solemnity.
Keep Breathing (2022)
Nonsensical background noise
Are you in the mood to zone out of a painfully boring story (consisting of 90% unnecessary, irrelevant, and largely delusional flashbacks) of an unlikeable and abusive woman getting lost in the woods while trying to rekindle with her unlikeable and abusive mother, in a fascinating world where hypothermia, broken bones, drowning, poison, and predation don't exist, where planes have no communication or emergency equipment, where boulders are made of gentle styrofoam, and where putting a bandana on your head is a magical cure for internal bleeding and mangled crush injuries? You do? Then boy, do I have good news for you!
Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon (2006)
One of the best parody movies
This is definitely one of the best movies I've seen. An original spin on an unoriginal cliché. Most parodies just suck the life from an existing franchise and are neither clever nor entertaining, but the parody here is done in a more unique way, and the humour feels a lot more genuine.
The ending, though a good twist, was however a little disappointing. Mainly when the protagonist grabbed the weapon that she knew was sabotaged instead of any of the other weapons that were literally Chekhov's Gun'd earlier in the movie. That was a weird choice on the writer's part and did sort of ruin the entire culmination of the plot.
100 Humans: Let's Talk About Sex (2020)
Breathtakingly sexist
The first episode was pretty fun, but each episode has gotten successively worse. The level of misandry in this episode is breathtaking.
The hosts and their 'experts' literally said, repeatedly, and I quote, "Women are superior to men in every way", "Men are all evil sociopaths", and "Hormones make women goddesses but makes men all violent and stupid".
To, again quote, "scientifically prove that women are better", they conducted nonsensical unscientific experiments and then lied about the results.
For example, to prove that women are smarter, they asked women questions about themselves (eg. When did you go to bed last night, what what as your first car) and then asked men trivia questions (eg. Which presidents are on Mt Rushmore, name X cities in this state, whose face is on X coin), because that's totally a fair comparison when women get more correct?
To prove that people are sexist against female comedians, they had people tell the "same" joke and rate the audience reaction, when in reality the jokes were recounted totally different (eg. The woman said she shot her friend with a shotgun, and that was the entire joke, whereas the man told the joke properly from the perspective of the 911 responder).
In the experiment to gauge how superficial they were, women consistently rated others more superficially on appearance, whereas men didn't seem to differ much. Somehow, according to the hosts, this proved that men were the superficial ones.
In experiments where women got 2 points higher, this "statistically proved" that women were better, whereas in experiments where men got 3 points higher, this was "not statistically significant and means it was a tie." Any time the hosts even vaguely conceded that women did worse in one of these (totally unscientific and nonsensical) experiments, they had their expert chime in that it was because we're so oppressed that we have no choice but to conform to societal expectations of being worse.
How is this sexist garbage something that was actually approved? Can you imagine if there was a Netflix show about "scientifically proving" that "Men are superior to women because women are all stupid evil sociopaths"? Holy moly.
Is It Cake? (2022)
Funny and light-hearted
This is easily one of the funniest and most enjoyable shows I've ever watched. Despite being a competition, everyone is happy to have fun, joke around, and not take themselves too seriously. Many of the host's jokes are deliberately eye-rolling, which is pretty obvious from the editing with things like cricket sounds and failure tones. Those complaining about the host and the light-heartedness are clearly more interested in a harsher competition show, not one with an actual sense of humour or air of personality. They even throw a miniature graduation ceremony and themed one of the trials around parties, after one of the contestants missed his graduation to be on the show. It's hilarious and warm and fun and really deserves more credit than it gets.
Blown Away: Mirror, Mirror (2021)
Great except for the judges
The contestants and artwork in this show are breathtaking. I would give it ten stars if not for the truly horrifying behaviour of the judges.
The main judge was a fangirl of Chris and decided from the beginning that he would win, beyond all fairness and reason. Chris persistently refused to follow instructions (for example, creating a bleeding pencil as a political statement when the task was to create a cartoon character) and whenever confronted about it, would laugh and say that he was better than everyone else and didn't need to follow the rules. He repeatedly insulted and mocked the other contestants, and at one point he poured dye all over Elliot's work to sabotage it, and was giggling about it, and the judges did absolutely nothing. He used his dad's death to win brownie points, and then after that worked, used his mother's death, and then after that too worked, used his children, demanding he win because it would unfair to his son if he didn't. His work was consistently the worst quality, but he would cry and throw a tantrum every time, saying that any flaws in his work weren't his fault because he should've been allowed more time than the other contestants. When his work was just so extraordinarily bad that the judges couldn't get away that time with sending someone else home, they decided to just forgo the elimination for that trial, and everyone else's hard work was for nothing, all so that Chris could stay.
Chris's behaviour should have had him disqualified in the second trial, and the show should have been a masterpiece of everyone's talent and perseverance. But instead the judges coddled him and favoured him so shamelessly and so openly, and were so cruel toward the other contestants - for example, insinuating to Kat that she didn't deserve to be there, and sending the black guy home because his work had too much "whiteness" - that it really did ruin the show. They didn't even try to edit out the blatant racism and bias.