The Great British Baking Show made a mistake this week. Either the producers straight up showed their cards and revealed that this season of The Great British Baking Show is “fixed” in favor of the younger, cuter, more press-ready bakers, or the production team did a shoddy job at explaining to the audience whose bakes were really the worst during “Dairy Week.” The episode spent all its time harping on the mistakes of Michael and Priya, only to save both at the end. The baker eliminated was left stunned, as were the other contestants, and viewers at home. Either way, this episode didn’t go down sweetly and it’s left an unusually bitter taste in our mouths.

Throughout The Great British Baking Show‘s first-ever “Dairy Week,” we saw a number of our favorite bakers stumble in major ways. First, last week’s star baker Michael Chakraverty suffered a terrible mishap with his dairy-based cake when it split in the oven. Though hideous to look at, it tasted good. Then, Priya O’Shea turned in what has to be the absolute worst technical bake in the history of The Great British Baking Show. Finally, Henry Bird whiffed on his mishti challenge, offering up treats he himself said you’d eat in prison. Nevertheless, all three of these beloved bakers were safe. Instead, the season’s oldest contestant Phil Thorne was sent home for being literally “a bit boring”?

If you’re surprised by this elimination, take heart in knowing you’re not the only one. For maybe the first time in the show’s history, the eliminated baker was absolutely stunned to be going home. Phil accused judge Paul Hollywood of pranking him. Not only that, but the rest of the bakers were taken aback by the judges’ choice. There were gasps a-plenty, and both Priya and Michael confided they thought they were going home (with Michael admitting he felt guilty to be staying). Finally, even Paul Hollywood said that Phil had a right to be a little shocked, since it was “so tight.” But was the elimination tight? What the hell just happened on The Great British Baking Show?

There are no hard and fast rules to how judging works on The Great British Baking Show, except that bakers who do poorly on the challenges should consider themselves up for elimination, and those who do well are in line for star baker. The Technical Challenge is the only ranked portion of the competition, and often, that segment of the show seems to be weighed the least against the other bakes. Generally, a mistake in the bake or messy design can be saved by good flavor, but that’s where the show wades into the scummy pond of subjective taste.

All that being said, going into this week’s Showstopper Challenge, Michael and Priya were in the bottom, and everyone knew it. Judges Paul Hollywood and Prue Leith explained this going in, and kept them in the danger zone after the final challenge. However, after tasting everyone’s mishti, Phil’s name wound up in the bottom. His big weakness? The flavors in his garden of mishti were a bit over-the-top and the style of treats were “same-y.” That’s it. Still, Paul and Prue elected to eliminate him over Michael, who had a massive issue with his first bake, and Priya, who had issues on all her bakes, including a veritable disaster of a Technical Bake.

Ironically, Phil might not have been the middle-of-the-pack baker who should have been in trouble. If you listen closely to judging in all three challenges, Michelle Evans-Fecci (the season’s first Star Baker) had a “claggy” dairy cake and disastrous rice pudding. Nevertheless, her name never popped up in judging. It was as if Paul and Prue had it out for Phil, from their snipe at him not being “classy” to Prue’s private commentary comparing his mishti to Play-Doh.

You could argue that taste always trumps design — and that Michael and Priya were indeed praised for their flavors — but still, Phil’s elimination confirms a pernicious pattern in the tent this season. This is the youngest season of The Great British Baking Show ever, and with Phil’s elimination, the oldest person in the tent is now 40-year-old new mom Helena Garcia. Youth doesn’t mean inexperienced, necessarily, but the judges now seem to prefer the ambitious, faulty bakes of bright, young things in the tent to the tried-and-true simple bakes of the older generation. It’s a huge shift from the early days of The Great British Baking Show, where bakers would be asked to produce traditional bakes and to focus on execution over style.

Perhaps Phil’s bakes were atrocious. Maybe there were more criticisms hurled his way than we saw on Netflix. Still, his shock at getting the boot suggests otherwise. Even if he was weaker than Michael and Priya, the producers should have edited the show with more clarity to explain his position at the bottom. Instead, he was just dropped for being “a bit boring.” If we’re being generous, that’s a note on his bakes. If we’re being cynical, it’s code for “he wasn’t hot and young enough for The Great British Baking Show in 2019.”

Watch The Great British Baking Show on Netflix