I fear we’ve officially reached the worst part of any season of The Great British Baking Show. That is, the time when you’ve fallen deeply in love with all the bakers and cannot stand the idea of any of them going home. So it was, when judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith revealed to hosts Noel Fielding and Alison Hammond that the bottom two bakers for “Caramel Week” were Sumayah Kazi and Mike Wilkins, I wanted to revolt. There was no way the Netflix show could get rid of either talented baker. Sumayah was a cute, precocious teenager who had already nabbed Star Baker, while Mike was a fun and funny farmer who had quickly bonded with the married women in the tent. Both were angels. Both needed to be saved. Alas, one of them had to be eliminated.
**Spoilers for The Great British Baking Show Season 12 Episode 4 “Caramel Week,” now streaming on Netflix**
At the end of the day, it was Mike Wilkins whom Paul and Prue sent home from The Great British Baking Show Season 12 Episode 4 “Caramel Week.” As soon as Noel delivered the terrible news, it was like a reverberation went through the tent. Sumayah described Mike as the “heart” of the tent and even Paul Hollywood rushed to hug the baker goodbye. It was an especially emotional elimination, proving how enchanting the bakers are this year â and how tight they’ve already become.
So what happened? Why did Paul and Prue send Mike home? And why is the emotional response to his elimination actually a really positive sign for the rest of the season?
For the fourth week of competition, Great British Baking Show hosts Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith asked the bakers to tackle caramel. The bakers had to make a batch of caramel biscuits for the Signature Challenge, a pear tart tartin for the Technical, and a caramel mousse cake for their Showstoppers. As the bakers filed into the tent up top, several explained to camera the finicky nature of the ingredient. Mike ominously says, “We’ll see after the end of the weekend if I wanna make caramel again.”
Mike’s first issues came down to time management. As the clock ticked on the Signature Challenge, he enlisted the help of Gill to finish his bake. When she happily said he would do the same for her, Mike replies he would, but he would never have the time. His biscuits had a few other problems, though. According to Paul, his shortbread should have been thinner and crispier. Both judges were dismayed by the “bulge” of the biscuits, rendering them not as neat as they could have been. Mike gamely made a self-deprecating joke about the note. “They didn’t like my bulge, which is a bit of a personal comment.”
Mike then came in seventh out of nine bakers in the Technical Challenge, but his true setbacks came during the Showstopper. Mike’s mousse split during the baking process. As he put it himself, “It’s really not a good thing that the caramel mousse of my caramel mousse cake is really bad.” Ironically, neither Paul nor Prue would even notice the split mousse during juding. They would harp on the fact that it was technically not even a mousse cake. The small amount that Mike had smeared between layers of cake rendered it more of a tiramasu than mousse cake.
Although past Star Baker Sumayah also struggled in the tent this week, she had a much higher Technical score than Mike and her cake more closely followed the brief. Given that, it’s not all that surprising that Mike was sent home.
Now, Mike’s elimination wasn’t shocking, but it was upsetting. That’s because this crop of bakers has already proven themselves to be one of the most delightful collections of characters we’ve seen in some time. We’re only a few weeks in and you can already see cliques forming. As the bakers waited for the axe to fall on one of them, Mike was sandwiched between besties Georgie and Illiyin, while Dylan looked as nervous as Sumayah was about her fate.
If we’re already feeling waves of devastation about eliminations, then it’s proof that this group of bakers is a great one. They’re talented, sweet, and endlessly entertaining. You want to spend more time with them.
It’s all a sign that this season will not only continue to be electrifying to watch, but that we should also prepare ourselves with kleenex to watch all future eliminations.
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