Nailed It!
Food fails are hilarious in this comedic competition.
Parents say
Based on 30 reviews
Kids say
Based on 69 reviews
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Nailed It!
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A Lot or a Little?
The parents' guide to what's in this TV show.
What Parents Need to Know
Parents need to know that Nailed It! is a comedy baking show that challenges home cooks to re-create professionally made novelty desserts, with hilariously disastrous results. Everyone is pretty much set up to fail, but they all seem in on the joke, so it just feels like hanging out with a bunch of terrible cooks in the kitchen while the host, Nicole Byer, heckles them.
Community Reviews
Interesting show, but Nicole is inappropriate
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Hostess is just too much
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What's the Story?
In NAILED IT!, host Nicole Byer invites three home cooks to compete for $10,000 by trying to replicate professionally made novelty desserts. There are two rounds of cooking, where the contestants are heckled and sometimes even helped by Byer, her co-host Jacques Torres, and a rotating group of guest judges. The home cooks rarely, if ever, succeed in creating a masterpiece, but that's the whole point.
Is It Any Good?
Even though this series sets up the contestants to fail, and even though you know it's coming from a mile away, the disasters produced are still hilarious. Everyone has a sense of humor about themselves and their cooking, so while the chefs are constantly being heckled by the host and judges, there are no hurt feelings, and they also celebrate the chefs (infrequent) successes.
Importantly, not all of the humor in Nailed It! comes at the expense of the chefs. There are plenty of other gimmicks built in to the show to keep it from becoming too much about failure. The winner of the first round has to wear a ridiculous hat, for example, or the chefs can press a button to have Byer come over to annoy their rivals for three minutes -- and sometimes the joy simply comes from Byer and the judges trying to figure out how to eat the dessert disasters.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about why the desserts don't always turn out the way the chefs expect on Nailed It!. A lot of the time it's as simple as "they didn't read the instructions" -- have you ever had a cooking experiment go wrong?
Families can talk about why people love to bake and cook. None of the contestants are consistently good cooks, but they all clearly love baking. Why do they love baking when their desserts don't always turn out well? What's important to them about being in the kitchen?
TV Details
- Premiere date: March 9, 2018
- Cast: Nicole Byer, Jacques Torres
- Network: Netflix
- Genre: Game Shows
- Topics: Cooking and Baking
- TV rating: NR
- Last updated: February 18, 2023
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