Big Bad Budget Battle

I love the creativity and the ideas I can pick up from this show. I have even cooked some of the recipes they come up with. The recipes are indeed affordable, simple to prepare and nutritious. The hacks the contestants use are ingenious.

I like Ree and the judges. Damaris is cute and funny. Darnell is always welcome in any show he's in. Justin Warner doesn't have to even say anything to be entertaining. All he needs to do is show up.

Not to give away the identity of the winners, but a certain demographic has a good success rate. I've seen tastings where the judges clearly like someone else's dish and the favored demographic wins.

While I'm not a fan of Ree Drummond (she's a good cook, but not as fun as, say, Alex Guarnaschelli), this isn't a bad show. While it does use the Food Network supermarket (so it would be fun to see a cross-over with this and Guy's show as contestants battled one another for ingredients), this is a good show.

I emphasize "good".

The cooks are entertaining to watch and it's fun to see what they come up with. They act as regular people just making dinner under some interesting limits. However, the limitations feel just too artificial for even this kind of show, and it drains part of the life out of it. The leftovers are just too good, and the challenges just seem more like fraternity hazing than someone having fun.

It's not a bad show. It's just not an awesome one.