Just because I’m not going to bake this Christmas season* doesn’t mean I can’t watch demented Food Network shows about gingerbread, right? After discovering the wonders of competitive gingerbread last year we decided to make this a holiday tradition, albeit a really lazy and cheap tradition, and we set up the Tivo to record this year’s extra-pathological gingerbread challenge, in which five past National Gingerbread Champions were given only eight hours to work their compulsive gingerbread magic. They had to work side-by-side and scurry around with their cooking tools. If Santa had a meth lab it would look a lot like this show. Awesome!

I was excited that the main objective for the contestants was to “create a gingerbread showpiece that best portrays their favorite childhood holiday memory.” So we were really hoping to see gingerbread scenes like “Daddy Was Sober for Once” or “The Dog Pooped Tinsel” or “I Played With My New Atari and Ignored Everyone.” Just think of the possibilities! But unfortunately they all sort of ditched the memory theme, because surely Valarie E. of Sanford, Florida did not grow up in a chalet perched in a giant chocolate tree. Not even if she had hippie parents. Everyone’s creations were confusing, really. But anyway (SPOILER ALERT! GINGERBREAD SPOILERS!) we were rooting for Jim R., who I think was the guy whose all-candy-moving-parts carousel was sadly overlooked in last year’s competition, and this year (SPOILER) he was robbed. It’s a shame, really, that the gingerbread world has no place for a man with power tools.

And don’t even get me started on the winner, who (SPOILER) is the same asshole who won last year with the same kind of inedible-looking knickknack made from sugar paste and only two little strips of gingerbread. I call bullshit. Bullshit on you, Christina B, and your fakey fondant McMansions.

*But oh yes, I’m going to build something again this year. I’ll put up pictures if it turns out okay…