Date of airing: June 1, 2020 (ABC)
Nielsen ratings information: 2.712 million viewers, 1.8/4 in Households, 0.52/3 with Adults 18-49, 0.3/2 with Adults 18-34, 0.7/3 with Adults 25-54
This episode may have shown the audience why THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY could be the finest of all of 2020’s summer television dramas. It had light moments and romantic moments connected with emotional character moments, making for an entertaining hour of television that made me smile and hope for the best for the characters at the same time. It was an episode that went back to the sugary sweetness of the first few episodes by giving the characters a happy few hours, and it continued the dramatic elements of the series by focusing on Vanessa and Mateo (and how they probably can never be together), as well as Daniel and Noa, who have become part of an epic love story at this point, forcing both of them to realize who they are amongst family and friends. And in the meantime, it depicted a quinceañera, which is something television should do more often when having Hispanic characters. Alex Russo had her quinceañera on WIZARDS OF WAVERLY PLACE, introducing me (the white guy that I am) to the tradition, and yet I still don’t know what the festivities entice and what is actually celebrated.
Still, Natalie’s quinceañera, bringing her from the age of “mommy’s little girl” into the world of grown women, wasn’t just the story to give Natalie the best night ever, because she went into this episode with a mission. Her family has shattered into a few pieces and she sees this opportunity to fix every broken plate – her parents who have been in a fight ever since the bakery closed, her brother who hasn’t had his career blown into the stratosphere yet, and her older brother who just lost his girlfriend and needs to get her back. Natalie’s quinceañera was the only weapon she had to bring peace and romance to her family, so the entire episode had to be strung around the festivities. This could never have happened if it weren’t for Noa though – that may have damaged the pride of Rafael a little bit, but even he had different issues to fight halfway through the episode, as he was dealing with his own emotions. Meanwhile, this truly was the episode to develop all the romantic relationships between the characters. Mateo realized he had to fight for Vanessa’s heart, Noa realized she is less when not with Daniel, and Vanessa realized that Noa may have saved her from an unhappy future, although the real estate agent wasn’t really happy about the current uncertainty of her future.
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| They are scheming to plan the greatest quinceañera ever! |
This was a fun episode. Natalie’s quinceañera essentially gave the characters a fancy party to plan and go to – the DNA of the series – and it gave the writers an opportunity to return to what made the show fun in its premiere episodes and why I started liking it in the first place (although I’m sure I connected with the show not because of the parties, but because of the delightfulness of it all). But the show has developed quite well over the course of the season, and the character drama was not to be missed here, as this hour had plentiful of that stuff. While it may have missed depicting Natalie’s bigger mission to get her family back together, giving them their individual moments of happiness, it was an enjoyable experience watching the Garcia family grow together again and proving once more why they can hold their own against all the other famous TV families. But yeah, Natalie’s point of view of getting the family back together seemed to have gotten lost midway through the episode, especially when it came to her task to get Daniel and Noa back together. Granted, her work seemed very much done by letting Noa spring for the festivities and have Daniel be there, but Amy was mentioning it during the quinceañera: It was still Natalie’s task to bring Daniel and Noa back together, yet that story seemed gone, at least for Natalie or Amy.
By the way, this episode could have been the best opportunity for Amy to become something more than Natalie’s one-dimensional love interest, by including her parents, for example. After all, Amy is now a real and permanent girlfriend, who seemed to be hanging with the Garcias a lot more than her own family. I assume the writers wanted to wait for an eventual second season (which, sadly, never came to be) to make her a bigger part of the show and Natalie’s life, but it didn’t help that her one-dimensionality made her a boring character.
Rafael and Mari’s marriage troubles seemed pretty good. I couldn’t connect with the pride part of Rafael’s story (because of my inexperience with anything pride-related, let alone my missing knowledge of how Hispanic families look at their family pride), but it served for some great drama, especially during the scene of Natalie projecting the family pictures. I wouldn’t have minded seeing more of that, but I guess the season finale was around the corner and the story needed to conclude here. Still, Rafael and Mari had a lot of screentime not just as parents, but as a couple, which I loved. Plus points for the hilarious moment of Mari leading her husband’s hands towards her butt cheeks during their private dance in the kitchen. THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY didn’t lose any of its sex appeal eight episodes in.
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| The morning aftershock. |
Meanwhile, a lot was done to move Vanessa and Mateo forward, and I appreciated it. I have been shipping the two for a while now, waiting for their first real kiss or the realization that they were into each other. Consider me happy when she stopped him from walking out of her own future home, although I’m already not impressed by the potential of Vanessa thinking she just made a mistake waking up naked under thin covers beside Mateo. I was however impressed by the line she may have drawn under her relationship with Daniel. Talking to him and Noa made her realize that she almost wasted her entire future, and that could mean two things: The love triangle between Noa, Daniel, and Vanessa is history now and the writers were able to focus on Vanessa and Mateo, or it was just one way to pause the love triangle premise for the moment and let it heat up in the next season for whatever reason (well, so much for that...). Because I can’t imagine that Vanessa was calling it quits with Daniel like that, when, during the beginning of the show, it was her mission to try and win Daniel back and be Noa’s fierce competition. In the meantime, let’s begin the stereotypical story of Mateo and Vanessa keeping their relationship a secret from Daniel. There has to be at least one kind of cliched storytelling.
And finally, the separated plot of Lewis, who was trying to find his own way of living after his cancer scare. First of all, I was a little sad that his cancer story seemed over already and that it was time for the aftermath of it all. But here we were, Lewis with a bit of depression and a potential love story coming up, proving that ABC was truly interested in a gay male romance. This better be an ongoing thing on TV, otherwise, THE BAKER AND THE BEAUTY can be charged for entrapment and queerbaiting, which should be illegal and prosecutable under the fullest extent of the law.
