Ten years ago, the screenwriter Audrey Shulman whipped up a quirky plan to find a boyfriend in LA: an amateur dessert enthusiast, she would bake one cake a week – 50 in total – and offer them to patrons at bars around the city. The practice, which she called cakebarring, became an ever-surprising tour of joie de vive, even after Shulman’s best friend, roommate and cakebarring partner Chrissy was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer.
That’s the explicit basis, clear from the trailer and the source material, for Amazon’s Sitting in Bars with Cake, starring Yara Shahidi as Audrey’s counterpart Jane, a shy and hyper-organized mailroom assistant who bakes during her LSAT study breaks, and Odessa A’Zion as her childhood best friend turned LA roommate Corinne. This is a tale with a set mold, an arc without surprise: you know the cakes will lead to some romantic interest, and you know Corinne’s headaches, then seizures, aren’t heading anywhere good.
