The Great British Baking Show Season 12 on Netflix continues to be one of the most persistently chaotic seasons of the beloved show yet, but “Dessert Week” went somewhere I could never imagine. No, I wasn’t floored by the incessantly cheeky Spotted Dick jokes. (Like, come on, folks, The Great British Baking Show has been dabbling in double entendres since the beginning!) What had me screeching and screaming and picking my jaw off the floor was a radically tense showdown between host Alison Hammond and the tent’s “Boy Wonder” Dylan Bachelet. When Noel Fielding‘s reference to a 1970s TV character goes over the 20-year-old baker’s head, it sparks a wildly innocent roast of the older hosts, that touches topics ageism, death, and the fragility of life. All on The Great British Baking Show!?!

**Spoilers for The Great British Baking Show “Dessert Week,” now streaming on Netflix**

The Great British Baking Show “Dessert Week” marks a hectic turning point for the competition. Only six bakers remain and early frontrunner Dylan counted himself lucky to have made it past last week’s Autumn-themed challenges. However, Dylan almost immediately snapped back into Star Baker mode. His Signature Challenge meringue nests earned him a Hollywood Handshake and he came first in the Spotted Dick Technical Challenge. All the pressure was on to make it a rare hat trick with three winning bakes in the Showstopper.

For the Showstopper this week, judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith wanted the bakers’ take on tiramisu. Dylan kept it mostly classic, but was counting on presenting his tiramisu in a tempered chocolate box colored carefully to resemble concrete. When the time came for him to do the delicate work of assembling the chocolate box, both Noel and Alison visited his bench to pester him. You know, as they do.

“Yeah, can you stay away from it?” Dylan says, motioning them to move. “Because I frankly don’t trust you.”

Noel fires back with an innocent enough joke that will soon derail The Great British Baking Show like I’ve never seen before.

“I mean, you’re telling me not to be clumsy,” Noel says. “You’re like Frank Spencer.”

Alison laughs, but Dylan doesn’t get the reference. I didn’t either. Apparently Frank Spencer is an accident-prone British sitcom character played by the O.G. Phantom of the Opera, Michael Crawford back in the 1970s. The show’s ludicrously English title? Some Mothers Do ‘Av ‘Em. Check out Frank Spencer below:

“He’s so young, he doesn’t know who Frank Spencer is,” Alison says. “We’re so old now!”

Dylan then kicks a hornet’s nest by telling the two hosts that his parents were surprised to learn that The Great British Baking Show presenters were both 50 years old. Alison immediately takes offense. 

“Can we just rewind? I’m 49,” she insists.

Dylan defends himself by saying together, if you average Noel and Alison’s ages, they’re both 50. Noel Fielding is, in fact, 51, so from a mathematical perspective, Dylan’s logic makes sense, though I wouldn’t necessarily tell a 49-year-old woman that.

“HELLO. I’M NOT 50!” Alison says. “Do you know what? All it means is I’ve been in the queue a little bit longer than you, Dylan. It doesn’t mean —“

“A little longer?” Noel cheekily jokes with his arm around Alison in support. She laughs at that, but then Dylan keeps up his maths. (They call math “maths” over there, okay?)

“You’ve been in the queue 2.5 times the amount I have,” he says. Alison and Noel are both laughing, but then the conversation takes a hilariously grim turn.

Dylan asks, “Do you feel, like, closer to death?”

“Do you feel closer to death?” Alison counters. 

“Well, no,” Dylan says. “My body’s not decaying. After 27, it starts decaying.” 

Noel Fielding loses it so hard at this point — specifically at the word “decaying” — he throws his head back and turns away from the camera to stifle his expression with his fist. 

Alison then points out that Dylan could get hit by a bus! “You could die before me,” she argues. 

“That’s morbid,” Dylan concedes. 

And then it’s back to watching the bakers make tiramisu. Like, none of that just happened.

I realize that everyone else might clutching their faux pearls about all the Spotted Dick jokes this week, but this felt radically bizarre from The Great British Baking Show. First, I’ve never seen Alison turn on a baker like that. She maintained her playful disposition throughout, but it got dark, y’all. (She told Dylan he might get hit by a bus!) Second, even though I don’t think Dylan meant to roast Noel and Alison for being old, he sort of did. “Do you feel closer to death?” is going to haunt me for the rest of my life, which may not be too long since, as I’m older than 27, my body is decaying.

It was absurd, it was bleak, it was the 2024 season of The Great British Baking Show.