Baking Impossible: The great nerdish bake-off for the engineering set

Structural integrity, physics, and load-bearing properties—how often do you see reality TV series that reward contestants' careful engineering efforts? And how often do you see those creations subsequently picked apart with a fork and tasted by judges?

I'm not exactly sure how Netflix's algorithms, the ones that pore over millions of hours of viewers' watching habits and guess what we'll love next, settled on the idea of combining Top Chef and Mythbusters. But as I settle into the oncoming gloom of fall and look for series to watch with non-nerds in my life, I'm convinced that new series Baking Impossible is a good idea.

Having now watched a few episodes, I can safely recommend this as one of the better nerd-fluent reality series out there—even if it's occasionally too cheesy for its own good.

“Screwdrivers and spatulas down”

In this eight-episode series, Netflix dumps contestants into a massive lab decked out with everything a hobbyist or a baker could want. On one side, the lab is covered in laser cutters, 3D printers, and jigsaws. Oversized ovens, industrial-grade mixers, and a massive pantry fill out the other side. Each competing team has one established baker and one award-winning engineer, and every episode asks the teams to design and produce some sort of elaborate object that does three things: tastes good, looks good, and fulfills a defined function.

As an example, the series' first episode revolves around each team building a working sailboat out of food. It must be almost entirely edible, with the exception of whatever remote-control function operates its steering, and it must traverse a 20-foot pool of water with only a gust of wind as propulsion. (Merely floating won't do the trick; each boat needs legitimate sails to both catch a gust of wind and then subsequently go down as a tasty amuse-bouche.)

On a sheer reality-TV level, Baking Impossible passes the crucial "no fast-forward needed" test. Most network reality series pad their runtimes with invented drama or overlong personal-backstory segments, arguably to fill out an exact episode length for the sake of mid-episode commercial breaks. Thanks to this series' emphasis on the creation and crafting process and its ability to alternate between two types of crafting (functionality and flavor), each episode is generally deft about making us wonder, "Are they really going to pull off this edible such-and-such?"

Quick personal stories pop up between the teams' drafting and blocking-out phases, and they're tidy, entertaining punctuation marks, as opposed to shrug-worthy attempts to invent drama. The results are more American than British, so if you're looking for the softest, fluffiest reality TV, Baking Impossible might not be your bag—especially in the rare cases when a baker and an engineer disagree on a project's execution. But as a whole, it's certainly less catty and aggressive than your average Bravo reality series.