The Baker and the Beauty (Mondays at 10:00pm on ABC)
Just like the fairy tale its title resembles, The Baker and the Beauty is a silly, reductive rom-com that couldn't have come at a better time.
ABC's newest light-hearted romp is very much a modern fable, from its painfully expository opening scene to its flat, pretty characters and fast pace. Unlike traditional fairy tales, however, I'm not totally sure what the moral here is supposed to be. We meet Daniel (Victor Rasuk, Jack Ryan), a baker with bigger dreams than living in the kitchen at his family's business; his industrious parents (Carlos Gomez and Lisa Vidal); his aspiring DJ brother, Mateo (David Del Rio); and his young sister Natalie (Belissa Escobedo). After getting dumped by his girlfriend of four years (MIchelle Veintimilla, Gotham), Daniel is whisked away by international superstar model and entrepreneur Noa Hamilton (an alluring Nathalie Kelley, recently late of Dynasty) for an evening of fun and flirting with the promise of three wishes. They share a whirlwind evening of vandalism, rappelling down the side of a skyscraper, and messily making turnovers.
This is a weird little show. It took me a while to understand what exactly was going on and what it was trying to do, and I doubt I'm the only one. Honestly, I wanted to turn this off less than three minutes into the pilot thanks to a clunky set-up in the family bakery full of unnatural exposition. There were occasional moments throughout that threw me off, like a salsa-dancing flirtation scene between Daniel's parents that could have been either an awkward dream sequence/musical number or just a strange moment between two characters with a long, comfortable history. I don't know. Throughout there were these weird little moments where I couldn't tell if The Baker and the Beauty was trying to parody romantic comedies and situations like public proposals or if it's just silly. Either way, director David Frankel (an Emmy winner for Entourage who also helmed one of the most beloved romantic comedies/cultural skewerings in recent memory: The Devil Wears Prada) and writer Dean Georgaris (who also created this year's flop Bluff City Law) never take things too seriously and never linger long enough for any of the absurdity to really sink in.
That's the show's biggest strength: it's very light and breezy, an example of true escapism. It's an average Joe getting to live an outrageous, candy-coated, neon fantasy. I'm a little over this particular trope of unremarkable guys landing remarkable women (at least it's not as pronounced as something like a Kevin James sitcom, though), but maybe that'll also be fixed in future episodes. Maybe Daniel really is remarkable and just a victim of circumstance. Maybe Noa sees something in him that no one else does (this is a fairy tale, after all). There are hints of that throughout as the chemistry between Kelley and Rasuk begins to crackle and in the pilot's light cliffhanger of an ending.
The Baker and the Beauty is a show that is (literally) wish fulfillment. And right now, in the midst of a deadly global pandemic which has kept most of us isolated from friends and communities while staying locked up in our homes, that includes the audience. Despite not entirely loving the show and all its inconsequential frivolities, that's exactly what also made me feel a certain kind of longing for the world it occupies. Had I watched this episode at any point other than right now, I likely would have entirely dismissed it, likely without even finishing its full run time. But the silliness, the lightness, the outrageousness, the cuteness, the brightness... it worked for me more than it didn't.
Further evidence of the crazy, unpredictable times we are living in.
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