Oh, you were expecting this to drop on Wednesday? Wow, we have that in common! I’ve been really busy learning which cable channels I need to flip between in order to watch the sitcom Mom for five uninterrupted hours on a weekday afternoon (it’s possible and I’ll be sharing a guide shortly). Anyway, we’re back for more Candyland! If you’re behind, you can get caught up with my recaps of episodes one, two, and three.
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Picture this: it’s Sunday night, 8:58/7:58 central. You’re flipping through the channels, hoping to ease your ennui or settle your nerves in an unpredictable early December. Ah, The Food Network, you think to yourself. I wonder if there’s a new Guy’s Grocery Games. You decide to stop on this channel. But suddenly there’s...is that...I’m sorry, is that yodeling you hear? And then you see - wait, can that be...is that the sexually liberated aunt from Netflix’s The Holidate? SHE’S yodeling? And she’s saying we’re in Candyland? You’re confused. This is not Guy’s Grocery Games OR Chopped or even the Trisha Yearwood show you used to catch at the gym on the weekend (remember going to the gym on the weekend?). You have questions, but hey, this is a hook, and you can spend the next hour here, why not. This is, at least, what someone at Food Network hopes you’ll do.
Such is the opening of this week’s Candyland. Nothing has ever been better.
I need to know who is designing the dresses for host Kristin Chenoweth (the aforementioned sexually liberated aunt from Netflix’s The Holidate). Every single one has hit it out of the park, and this week’s purple number with matching shoes, paired with a sleek long bob, is no exception. She looks like she’s paying tribute to the girl next door with so much more, Jan, née Sport. I could watch for the designer in the credits, but my DVR has already deleted the recording and the Food Network media player is weird for me. In any case, the pieces shine just enough to not outshine the host (realistically, could anything or one do that, though?) and have the right amount of whimsy to set the stage for the whimsical world of Candyland.
This week, that world is all about SPORTS! The teams have to invent a sport that could only exist in Candyland and their assigned land, and this is a challenge I would honestly just walk off the set if presented with. Kristin’s example for such a sport is sliding down Chocolate Mountain, which is a life goal of hers. Same. There’s a twist, though, because Candyland is all about twists - that board is very twisty. It’s a no elimination week! The winning team gets to pick their land next week. Does this lower the stakes at the start? Sure. Will I be calmer for the rest of the episode now? You bet.
Kristin sings each Candy Captain’s name as she calls them up to pick their land, which is joyful. Red’s Deavynne, resident comeback queen, draws Lollipop Woods. Pink’s Robert picks Gumdrop Mountain, and Yellow’s Miriam selects Chocolate Mountain. With a group drumroll directed by Kristin, the teams are off!
There are bowls of strawberries just strewn about the ground in Lollipop woods, where Red is sketching out their build and idea for Lolliput, a game that incorporates pinball and minigolf. It’s inspired by Deavynne playing minigolf with her dad as a kid, and as luck would have it, he looks like King Kandy in real life; Deavynne and her dad, or at least their lollipop doppelgangers, will be the characters playing Lolliput.
Yellow calls themselves the team to beat, and as the team with the most wins, they aren’t wrong! They’ve dreamt up a game that feels, well, to call it confusing doesn’t fully capture the fact that I had to rewind my tv three times to catch the proposed rules. Edible players must capture gold nuggets from the other team and bring it back to their side but not be hit by cocoa cannons and does Yellow understand that they have to represent this through a dessert sculpture? Whatever, they’re the ones who have to build it, not me. If anyone can lead them through it, it’s Candy Captain Miriam, who got her dessert start making cakes for her daughter’s birthday and kept going with her husband’s encouragement. This week’s subtext is all about family, baby! (Last week’s, if you forgot, was about sopranos.)
Pink’s got something to prove as a team with one win that wants to catch up to Yellow. Speaking of yellow, Andrew’s glasses are geometric fuzzy yellow this week! I have many questions for another day about how one safely transports custom novelty glasses in checked luggage. Pink’s gumdrop mountain game will be a balancing act, in which players must balance on gumdrops without dropping another set of gumdrops, and Andrew will pull out all the stops by incorporating a literal levitating element.
We cut to judges Nacho Aguirre and Aarti Sequeira cresting the peak of Gumdrop Mountain, peering down on the competition from atop the candy slope. Sport, Aarti says, is a difficult theme because it has inherent movement, and sugar, typically and hopefully, does not. Nacho really wants to see the artists transform their candy ingredients, which is so important to him that he repeats the word “transformations” with great emphasis. Aarti’s eye shadow is once again AMAZING, and Nacho’s tan blazer is also great. I am so sorry that I simply do not notice men’s clothes because I do not covet them; this is one of my toxic traits and I am working on it.
There’s some trouble over on Red, where Deva has started feeling ill (concerning in a different way in these times!) She leaves the competition for the day, and as Red already pulled in the seemingly only reserve player when they gained Deavynne, they’ll have to finish the day with just three players. At least they can’t get sent home this week. Our remaining Red players focus in on their Lolliput elements, with Jewel adding rose gold flower petals around a foraged giant lollipop to make a very pretty trophy, and Ray making a rainbow marble pop as Deavynne’s King Kandy Dad. He’s gotta have a beard, which Ray is basing on Andrew’s. Andrew helpfully touches his beard with his gloved hand, which, so - okay, fine.
Nacho and Aarti check in on the teams’ progress. Yellow tries and fails to elevator pitch their build, which concerns Aarti and adds to her concern that their build won’t actually have a sport element. Nacho warns Pink that he is looking for his much emphasized transformations, and Andrew is worried, because Pink had been planning to throw some gumdrops on their build at the end and call it a day. He comes up with the idea to transform the gumdrops into bugs, though, and I hope for everyone’s sake this is enough for Nacho.
With a call of, “oh captains, my captains,” Kristin announces the start of the King Kandy challenge. This week, Princess Lollipop (who is not Kristin, who is Queen, which is different, and I guess implies that Kristin has an off-camera dependent in this universe) wants a snack on a stick. It can’t be as simple as a lollipop, though - that would be a one-way ticket to Licorice Lagoon. As she sends the captains back to elect their tribute to King Kandy, Kristin blows a kiss up at the forced perspective castle I keep hoping Guy Fieri will squeeze out of. Are Kristin and King Kandy dating in the Candyland universe? I need an explainer of how everyone is related to one another in this living board game.
Pink’s Mona, Red’s Ray, and Yellow’s Grace will volunteer as tribute, and with Ray making a snack, Red is down to two members working on the build. Ray’s snack will be a Strawberry Cream Cheesecake Pop (I think production is finally done naming these snacks cute names) inspired by the strawberry cream lollipops he’d get on trips to Mexico with his mother as a child. One element of this will be a coulis; I do not know what that is, and no one explains it to me, as if this is ubiquitous and I’m the fool for not knowing what it is (I will not be googling). Mona is making Coconut Fudge Balls, which will have Indian flavors, inspired by her home. Absolute banner week for the theme of home and family here in Candyland. Grace cleverly hides her stick in a slingshot with her Ultimate Color Bomb Slingshot (ah, production got their hands on one of these snack names after all).
The pressure is mounting, as both the intensifying music (metaphorically) and Nacho (literally) tell us. Everyone is worried about Red being down a member, especially Deavynne. Aarti loves their flower lollipop trophy, and Ray says they’re working to take the notes they’ve been given in prior weeks. Ray’s pulling double duty on the build and his snack, letting us know that his mom is his number one fan, beside his husband. Yellow is smoothing out fondant seams so the judges don’t call out a lack of attention to details yet again this week, and Jordan is making sugar bubbles for the chocolate mud on the build. He walks us through the technique, and I just have a few QUESTIONS about why Candyland will show me how to blow sugar but will not define a coulis for me (still will not be googling!). At Pink, Robert calls Andrew “sweetie,” Andrew calls Robert “sis,” and I pine for my days of being a carefree girl going to see a drag show in Hell’s Kitchen.
The King Kandy snack challenge ends, heralded by a Chenoweth costume change. She’s now in a blush formal length with pearls on the bodice, and that dress is stoned and sequined and slit up the leg for the GODS. Calling back episode two, Kristin again asks the judges to do their judgey thing on these snacks on a stick. Mona’s snack has great colors but is too sweet. Grace captured the happiness of Candyland, but her ganache is too grainy. Ray’s treat gets Nacho’s seal of approval, but he included too much presentational foil in his “wrapper” (presentational foil will get you every time).
As tends to happen in the snack challenges, flavor is the deciding factor, and Mona is sent to Licorice Lagoon. Kristin says Ray and Grace may return to their teams to keep score and makes little goalpost hands around her face, a gesture returned by Ray. I love friendship!
Kristin leads Mona by the hand to Licorice Lagoon - she always leads them by the hand to Licorice Lagoon - and reads the message from Lord Licorice. This week, Mona’s losing Pink must complete a team athletic challenge, in which they don licorice moustaches for ten minutes and complete a lap of their station each time a whistle blows. Yes, Kristin is in charge of the whistle; how insulting for you to even question that. After Pink’s first lap, Kristin declares that her whistle has broken so she will be doing high Cs to signal it’s time for a lap instead. A convenient excuse for singing gratuitous high Cs, Kristin. I cannot help but think she broke this whistle on purpose. Andrew tries to sing back a high C to Kristin, and bless the effort, but he is no Reva, our dearly eliminated soprano sing-along participant from Blue.
Kristin announces to the teams that they’re in the seventh inning stretch, and we love sports references. Deavynne thinks Red is an hour behind where they need to be, and Ray thinks they need a Hail Mary (Ray seems to understand this vaguely as a sports reference but is only familiar with the concept from church. He’ll light some candles.) Kristin hits everyone with another high C, an energy truly like what I would do in high school choir to unintentionally alienate my peers, turning them against me one by one. Pink runs their last lap and can finally take off their moustaches, and Kristin tells them they killed it. Can Kristin Chenoweth be my track coach and/or the voice that tells me to keep going in my running app?
Kristin declares five minutes left with one yard line, and all of these sports references are sailing over my head like the footballs I didn’t catch in middle school gym class. Andrew is installing a whole levitation device for Pink, but oh no! - the gumdrop initially designated to levitate is too heavy to get off the ground. Andrew is freaking out. Pink decides they’ll replace that gumdrop with a tiny little gumdrop, and the soundtrack is so intense that I forgot for a moment that no one is going home. Kristin calls an end to the challenge; at the last moment, Pink gets their teeny tiny little gumdrop to levitate, and you know what? I’m proud of them.
It’s time for Nacho and Aarti to pick a winner and no loser, which everyone has assured me is incredibly high stakes all episode. I think I disagree! Nacho doesn’t love Yellow’s monochromatic white Chocolate Mountain and thinks the sport behind the build is lost. Aarti disagrees about the mountain and loves the splashes of color on it. She does, however, agree with who she calls the “mighty Nacho” (another point in the “Nacho is secretly King Kandy” column): the sport here is confusing and not instantly recognizable.
Kristin is beside herself with excitement to see Red and so very impressed with what they accomplished with only three team members. She uses the word artistry, and I just love that. Aarti thinks making the dad character King Kandy is good gameplay, and it eases my mind always when King Kandy is pleased, because honestly I’m a little worried about what our monarch is capable of if provoked. Aarti and Nacho both call out unfinished details on the build, as we’re in the nitpicking stages of the competition, per Nacho’s reminder. There’s a lot of pink on this build, much to Deavynne’s delight and Jewel’s chagrin. Most important about this pink is that Kristin Chenoweth is beaming about it.
Aarti loves Pink’s levitation, but the elements at the build’s top aren’t as crisp and clean as the elements at the bottom. Nacho loves the transformed gumdrop bugs, but he doesn’t love the sportiness of this build. Honestly, the judgement around these sports being games seems unfair, because Kristin Chenoweth’s example of sliding down chocolate mountain was absolutely more game than sport, but maybe Kristin would be as bad at this challenge as I would be. Also, baking and dessert art are notoriously indoor kid activities, so to critique the invented “sports” of these now adult indoor kids as not sporty enough is harsh. LOOK, Nacho, balancing is a SPORT; it is a very athletic PURSUIT.
With no loser this week, we learn who gets to pick the obviously best land, Lollipop Woods, next week. It’s Red, and one player down! Kristin is SO proud, and I’m just happy everyone has at least one win to their names. Nacho makes sure the teams know they need to step up their game, Kristin instructs everyone to move their pieces, and I am left imagining what it would be like to be the pitcher in a candy baseball game on a hot summer day: you wind up for the pitch and the ball just, like, stays in your hand. You shake it, futility, until it falls off, collecting dust and dirt and stray bugs as it rolls across the mound. So anyway, I’m glad the theme next week is not sports again!
Also next week, Kristin will wear a blue sequin wrap dress and do a pratfall. At least I hope she will, because in last week’s teaser for this week, I distinctly remember Robert saying he has a suggestive nickname, which I distinctly know I did not hear him talk about in this episode. Where did that clip go? Alas, lost to King Kandy’s vault.
Ray reminded us that the game of Candyland is all about family, which is true, right up until you and your cousins get in a fight because no one understands you’re supposed to be the little colorful player pieces, and everyone wants to be the queen or the princess and someone’s mad they have to be the chocolate swamp monster, and you absolutely have secretly carried these grudges with you to adulthood. But I digress. Maybe if you can’t be with your own family right now, you can be here with the Candyland family, where the worst that can happen is a tiny blonde singing high notes at you as you run forced laps, laughing all the way.
Candyland airs on Food Network on Sundays at 9/8c. They didn’t pay me to type that. They are not paying me at all. I am doing this for free. Thank you.
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