Date of airing: May 18, 2020 (ABC)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.277 million viewers, 1.6/4 in Households, 0.42/2 with Adults 18-49, 0.2/1 with Adults 18-34, 0.6/3 with Adults 25-54
The writers have found a way to put some serious drama into the show, which means the delightfulness of the first couple of episodes has disappeared, and the viewers were given a chance to start caring about the characters. This may or may not have been the original plan of the writers’ room: Suck the audience in with sweet treats, sexy locations and people, and stories full of summer fun, and when you have them wrapped around your finger with the offerings of sugar and honey, trap them with dramatic storylines that make you want to grab a tissue and cry with some of the characters who are going to some of their hardest moments right now. Granted, I’m not grabbing a tissue just yet, but the characters become more likable with each episode and the dramatic stories are helping. Even if I would love to go through the screen, plant myself into this world, and slap the characters left and right for stupid decisions they have made. And it all began with how the characters dealt with Vanessa’s interview.
This is not the only problem the Garcia family or Noa’s band of closest friends had to deal with. The A-list model superstar is dealing with a hostile takeover of her company, led by none other than her potentially evil and non-caring father (familiar conflict material right here – I’m already interested in who the production has cast for the role of her father, because it may be a television A or B-lister), while the Garcia family is going through their version of a midlife crisis, and each of them individually. Mari and Rafael were victims of a scheme, followed by being victims of asbestos that shuts down their bakery; Mateo was the victim of an asshole music star who thinks he can talk down to aspiring musicians by telling them to piss off and do something else with their lives (revenge is sweet when Mateo becomes a star and makes more money than Asshole Music Star); Natalie punched a bully in the nose and was being forbidden to hang with Amy as a result; and Daniel learned what it’s like to be in the limelight of stardom and how it negatively affects his family. After three episodes of THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY being sexy and delicious fun, it’s about time to depict the seriousness of dating a superstar. That premise turns out to be intriguing for me, because thanks to this show I have been imagining for weeks now what it could be like for me and the superstar I were to date, and how I would handle certain situations.
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| Mateo needs his affirmations. |
You could say that the entirety of this episode happened because of Vanessa’s interview, but I really have no clue how it was possible for the characters to act this idiotically in response. When Noa was questioned about it during her television appearance, I was quite shocked that she was shocked about the news, instead of, I don’t know, telling the host that she doesn’t care what Daniel’s ex-girlfriend is saying in public, and that her relationship with Daniel is a private matter and not something for the media to manipulate or constantly ask about (not that the media is ever going to listen to me – or Noa – in that regard). In this series universe, Noa’s boyfriend and all of his exes seem to be the only thing the world cares about right now (lucky, they didn’t have someone like Trump as president, or were suffering through a pandemic full of anti-vaxxers), which might explain why the Garcias acted like idiots with their pants down, but all it did was making me think this show just removed itself completely from any kind of realism. Yes, Daniel’s romance with Noa being described as a fantasy by pretty much everyone makes THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY something of a fantasy romance saga, but the show’s bubble seems extremely small when the only thing people care about is the boyfriend of their biggest star.
Well, at least the drama was good enough. I still like Natalie, although her decision not to respond to Amy’s text at the end seemed faulty of her to do. Her emotional connection to her family runs deep or she would not have listened to her mother and at least explained to Amy what just happened in her life. But again I have to say, Amy is nothing more than a plot device for Natalie. Granted, Natalie’s problems stemmed from the fact that her big brother was dating a white chick (why the hell do high school kids care about that? Did I miss the high school beatdown of Kristen Stewart fans by Robert Pattinson fans after their break-up?), but all of Natalie’s tears come out of her eye sockets because her problems involve Amy somehow. Even more so after the writers just dumped Amy’s “disciplinary issues” into the episode four minutes before its end, so that Natalie has a reason to cry by the end of the hour. Quite the convenient plot development.
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| The media circus cannot be ignored this time. |
I’m also still very much into the notion of Vanessa and Mateo being each other’s unrequited love. The two think of each other in some romantic way, but for anything serious to happen, the writers first needed to remove Vanessa fully from Daniel’s plot, including her task to rip him away from Noa and get him back for herself, and for Mateo to go past his story of becoming a musician, either by giving up the dream for good or making headway by changing enough to build a slowly growing career. MC Cubano may be dead, but I’m getting the feeling Mateo could re-emerge as a singer/songwriter type artist, with Vanessa as his muse, manager, and agent.
By the way, how convenient that Vanessa wasn’t carrying most of the bulk of the interview – yes, the press was looking for dirt on Noa, and it found some through Vanessa, but it seemed like the ex-girlfriend may still be the bigger story here. The fact that Vanessa was able to roam around the city freely without being shadowed by paparazzi had me curious about how well the writers thought about the whole “thrust into the spotlight” premise.
