TV Review - The Baker and the Beauty

Earlier this year, I talked about the wave or trend on television recently that I've dubbed the "Latino remake." The trend is to take popular or hit TV shows and remake them with a predominantly Latino or Hispanic cast or at least with a Latin-x protagonist. Examples of this trend include Jane the Virgin (2014), One Day at at Time (2017), Mayans M.C. (2018), Charmed (2018), Roswell, New Mexico (2019), Grand Hotel (2019) and Party of Five (2020). This series is another to add to the list and the ever-growing trend. The idea for this series came from a very successful, Israeli show from 2013 by Assi Azar. Some of the other Latino remakes have incorporated specific, political issues that directly affect Latinos, such as the issue of immigration. Aside from spotlighting certain Latin cultural things or an episode that goes to Puerto Rico and comments a little on Hurricane Maria without ever saying that name, the series doesn't feel like it's going to get all that political or at least not as political as the other aforementioned series.

The series, adapted by Dean Georgaris (Bluff City Law and The Brave), is a simple romantic story. Boy meets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy gets girl back. Not having seen all the episodes, it could be girl loses boy. Girl gets boy back. It involves good-looking people falling in love and not much more. The thing that complicates it is that in the couple, one person is working class and fairly average, whereas the other is rich and famous. It's comparable to Notting Hill (1999), which is about an average man dating a female celebrity. Recent films like Beyond the Lights (2014) and Always Be My Maybe (2019) also deal with a similar dynamic of an average man dating a female celebrity. This series is similarly about the pitfalls of such a disparity in a relationship.

Victor Rasuk (Fifty Shades of Grey and Raising Victor Vargas) stars as Daniel Garcia, a guy who works at his parents' bakery in Miami. His family is Cuban and proud. Daniel is very good at preparing pastries. He does have a girlfriend whom he's been dating for four years. His family tease him that she wants to get married but he doesn't. Unfortunately, Georgaris doesn't really establish why Daniel doesn't want to marry his girlfriend. In the original series, Azar did establish the dichotomy. In the original series, the baker's personality just didn't fit with his girlfriend's and perhaps wasn't as ambitious enough for her. It wasn't great on the part of Azar, but Georgaris provides us with even less. Here, Daniel just doesn't want to be with his girlfriend of four years simply because she proposes marriage, which would mean that he's simply afraid of commitment but with no explanation as to why. In Episode 4, he simply says he doesn't love her as much any more, but again there's no explanation as to why he fell out of love.

Nathalie Kelley (Dynasty and The Vampire Diaries) co-stars as Noa Hamilton, the gorgeous model who runs her own fashion company. As the daughter to a billionaire, she's perhaps comparable to Paris Hilton or Ivanka Trump. Yet, her personal politics are perhaps far removed from either of them. She's big on social media and is an aspiring actress. She runs into Daniel in the bathroom of a fancy restaurant, which feels more contrived here than in Azar's original series. It's a meet-cute that seems standard for romantic films, particularly romantic comedies. She recently broke up with her actor boyfriend because he cheated on her. She has issues with her mother who has mental challenges, so she is perhaps trying to find something or someone more grounded to date.

Besides the two of them being gorgeous and being newly single, the question in any romance is why do they supposedly fall in love. In order to answer that, we have to know why he fell out of love with his previous girlfriend. It probably wouldn't be so bad, if Daniel didn't rebound so fast. Literally, within minutes of breaking up with his girlfriend, he's already involved with Noa. Daniel moves on so quick, as if his previous relationship of four years didn't even matter. Obviously, the series feels like it will circle back and have Daniel address his previous girlfriend and possibly close the loop, but right now, it just seems like he's afraid of commitment, which I suppose is fine, as long as Noa never wants a commitment like marriage.

It's not to say that Daniel as a character or as a person has to want to get married or be in a committed relationship. If he just wants to have a casual connection to a woman where he never feels tied down, but he needs to express that. Noa saw him turn down his girlfriend's proposal. For her to jump into dating Daniel only minutes later must mean that she doesn't want anything committed. Yet, it then begs the question, if that's the case, then why did she break up with her previous boyfriend? If she's just in for a casual thing, then his so-called infidelity wouldn't matter. In Episode 4, she goes immediately to wanting to meet Daniel's parents, so she seems not to be just a casual kind of dater. Further episodes might illuminate things, but at the start of this series, I have no clue as to the motives to any of the main characters.

Belissa Escobedo plays Natalie Garcia, the younger, teenage sister to Daniel. She's a lesbian girl who is discovering her sexuality and trying to date other teenage girls. She's not exactly open to her family at first, but that feels like it will quickly change. Her experiences and scenes are the cutest and most romantic thing about this series. If only the romance between Daniel and Noa were as clear or explicated more.

Rated TV-PG-DLS.
Running Time: 1 hr.
Mondays at 10PM on ABC.