I remember once seeing a video of a group of laboratory chimpanzees being released from captivity and seeing daylight for the first time. Up to that point they had spent their entire lives trapped inside, in cages, being experimented on; they had never seen a tree, never known the feeling of grass between their toes. Yet, looking at them take their first hesitant steps into their new enclosure, blinking in the crisp sunlight, it was evident that despite having never known the outdoors, on some sub-conscious level, they were suddenly aware that this was where they were supposed to be. They were aware that these were the proper surroundings that had previously been denied them. It was not long before they were rolling around, their fur growing matted with moisture as they tumbled in the dew-dappled grass; relishing their freedom, they were at home.
If you can imagine this sort of scenario, but exactly reverse it, then you have a glimpse of what it was like watching Rahul on Bake Off last night. Previously, Rahul didn't make sense out of the context of being in a kitchen. He was an enigma, a mercurial figure who seemed lost unless he was elbow deep in a trough of dough furiously thwacking the stubborn goop into the shape of a large ferret in a crown or some such - it was thence that he was home. And yet, last night, amongst the familiar surroundings of the kitchen, he all of a sudden seemed lost. There was a fearful look in his eyes, as if he were trapped like those laboratory chimpanzees - and with his coiffed hair as typically buoyant as ever, he had obviously been treated to a similarly comprehensive regime of exposure to high-grade shampoos and conditioners.
Rahul, who had long reigned supreme in the tent, seemed broken. Having consistently impressed the shit out of the judges, week in, week out, his confidence was shot. He, who has twice been crowned Star Baker, and has been heavily in contention for the award in at least three other weeks; he who has been on the receiving end of so many Hollywood handshakes that he now carries around a small bottle of hand-sanitiser to remove the worst of the gravy-residue from his hand after each handshake; he, Rahul, has been dethroned. He, who was evidently so adored by Paul Hollywood that, whenever they stood face to face, the tent crackled with a barely suppressed tension, as we were unsure whether Paul, his cheeks almost wet with tears, was going to leap across the table to kiss Rahul for showing him the power of love, or to attack him for being a superior baker. He, Rahul has been dethroned by pastry and his own unfathomable sense of inferiority.
It seemed that every time the camera cut to Rahul he was berating himself for some lapse in concentration or some glaring oversight. In essence, every time the camera panned from showing some perfectly rendered piece of pastry-work that Ruby had assembled, it would then show Rahul trying to fish his car-keys out of a large pot of ganache. For every time it showed Briony crafting sumptuous icing, it would then cut to Rahul, a crew of firemen around him using a 'jaws of life' to free his hand from the fridge after he'd accidentally closed the door on himself. As the episode progressed, his confusion grew, until, at the end, his confidence had evaporated so thoroughly that he seemed flabbergasted by the mere sight of anything vaguely related to baking. It felt like we were minutes away from seeing Rahul just staring at an egg, then screaming, "What in the name of sodomy is this!?" and breaking down into floods of hot, salty tears. He became like a man who had never heard of the idea of baking before.
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And yet, he survived. In spite of this, in spite of everything, seemingly buoyed by the good grace his previous successes had bought him, Rahul will return to the tent next week. Hopefully, he will somehow have spent the intervening days rebuilding his shattered confidence, so that, by next week's show, he can proffer forth, a tray-bake say, so profoundly delicious we can once again see every fibre of Paul Hollywood's being thrumming with the force of the self-restraint keeping him from lunging at Rahul.
