Cake (2019 TV series)

Did You Know?

• In Canada, the first three seasons were released on Disney+ via the Star hub on February 22, 2021.
• In Latin America, the series was released on Star+ on August 31, 2021.
• The first season has been described by the creator as similar in tone to 500 Days of Summer, with the second season having a more traditional comedy vibe.

Recurring segments

The series includes multiple recurring segments. "Oh Jerome, No" is considered the anchor series of season one and the only segment with continuity between episodes; it follows the overly-sensitive Jerome (Mamoudou Athie) as he searches for love, written and directed by Teddy Blanks and Alex Karpovsky, adapted from their 2016 short film, with original music by Natalie Prass. "Quarter Life Poetry" explores a young woman's struggles in social and professional life, with some episodes featuring spoken word or musical elements, written, starring, and created by Samantha Jayne, originating as Instagram poems later published as a book in 2016. "Two Pink Doors" presents vignettes about happenings in two neighboring residences, created and directed by Phil Burgers and produced by Abso Lutely Productions. "Shark Lords", the predominant segment in season two, documents an extreme sports enthusiast and his support team attempting to copulate with a shark, created by Alex Anfanger and Dan Schimpf and starring Alex Anfanger, Ditch Davey, Deb Filler, Hayley Magnus, and Rhys Mitchell. Other segments include "Greetings From Florida" (written and directed by Tyler Falbo), "Nine Films About Technology" (interconnected stories about people and devices, a successor to the 2016 short film "5 Films About Technology", written and directed by Peter Huang), "Words With Ike" (a look at language starring Ikechukwu Ufomadu, created by Ufomadu and Graham Mason), "Troll" (follows a troll in New York City through therapy sessions), "Joe Bennett Collection" (directed and animated by Joseph Bennett), "Symphony No.

Reception

Steve Greene of IndieWire described Cake as an "ideal variety series for TV in its current form," noting that most of the series occupies a "valuable middle ground of surreality" that allows creative visions to flourish. Greene highlighted "Oh Jerome, No" as a standout element, an ongoing catalogue of anxieties and small successes and missed opportunities of the titular New Yorker, and remarked that the constant push and pull between expectation and reality is what Cake is built on. Tim Goodman of The Hollywood Reporter called Cake an "intriguing mishmash of live-action and animation," questioning whether the concept would work but stating that it is worth checking out future episodes. Goodman observed that the series presents a grab-bag of visual goodies where if one thing does not appeal, something else follows, and noted that this format plays into shorter attention spans, though he found the material sometimes funny and sometimes not original.