TV Binge: Nailed It! Mexico (Season 1, 2019)

If you’ve missed my reviews of the original American Netflix version, here are my reviews:

Nailed It! (Season 1)
Nailed It! (Season 2)
Nailed It! Holidays

Nailed It! Mexico (Season 1, 2019)

Hosts: Omar Chappuro & Anna Ruiz

Hosted by Omar Chaparro and head judge Anna Ruiz, home bakers in Mexico with a terrible track record take a shot at recreating edible masterpieces for a $10,000 prize. It’s part competition, part hot mess. – IMDB

After the massive success of Nailed It! on Netflix Original series that has gone through 2 seasons, brought in a special Queer Eye episode and then a holidays version, it has now expanded internationally with its first stop with Nailed It! Mexico. I’m always a big supporter of Netflix working around its own Netflix’s international grab and expanding its show, just like how it did the international cooking show, The Final Table or obstacles competition, Ultimate Beastmaster, which proves that its a foundation that has endless possibilities and a way to truly expose the world to different cultures and well, just each other. Plus, Nailed It! is a great idea because it breaks out from the professional version of things and takes a more relaxed and amateur approach to things while still keeping itself educational.

Nailed It! Mexico honestly was a lot of the same as Nailed It! for USA. That is a good and bad thing. The good is that it keeps a certain type of humor and joke that runs throughout. It makes it more united and keeps it fun to watch. It uses Nailed It! signatures, like the golden hat for the winner of the first round or the same trophy design. However, going international as I mentioned gives a look at culture and while pop culture and its guests go hand in hand to expose some of their talents there in the baking and celebrity and/or foodie world, the baking designs are also with Mexican culture and themes for example something as simple as incorporation a pinata or the quinceanera. What also works here is that the first episode sets up the Mexican version to be on a higher baking knowledge especially looking at the same structure but more seemingly complicated desserts and designs.

There are a few “bad” things here. The bad is that it lacks a uniqueness other than location and language to give Mexico’s version its own distinction. Its something that is important to for someone like myself who watches all of it.  It likes reusing the bits like having those funky buttons like having Omar Chaparro take over the nagging duties and inviting Sylvia Weinstock as a foreign guest to link the two together while doing her little “stealing” things from the pantry bit and her witty remarks; also the trophy never being there for the announcement and reappearing from weird spots, etc. This all works well enough except when doing something like that, it becomes Nailed It signatures and yet, its easily going to be compared with its US original, which has an upperhand (in my opinion, because of Nicole Byers having that charisma she brings to the show).

With all that said, looking at both sides, Nailed It Mexico is a lot of the same, but that isn’t a bad thing because I had the same criticism about the second one going into an odd direction which didn’t work. In comparison, the complexity and different humor might sometimes get lost in translation however, the entertainment of Nailed It has always been looking at the funny failures (and learning from them) and with that, the Mexican version still delivers in spades.

Advertisement