"Is It Cake?" and "Old Enough!," Reviewed: Two Paths for the Netflix Reality Show

The new Netflix reality series "Is It Cake?" consists of eight thirty-five-minute episodes of content extracted from a single Internet meme. In each episode, three professional bakers from a pool of nine compete to make the most realistic cakes possible, and then a panel of judges has twenty seconds to stare at a set of five similar objects on stage--such as a bunch of handbags, challah loaves, or conch shells--and decide which one is actually a meticulously crafted trompe-l'oeil dessert. Finally, the climactic moment arrives and the titular question is answered. The host, Mikey Day, a not particularly famous "Saturday Night Live" cast member, then stabs or saws the selected object with abandon. If the knife bounces off, the specimen is real; if it sinks in, it's cake. Anyone who was spending too much time online in the summer of 2020 (which is to say, everyone) likely remembers the Netflix show's source material, a video titled "These Are All Cakes," posted by the Twitter account of Tasty, BuzzFeed's food editorial brand.