Full Bloom

The contestants - and the floral deliciousness they created - were inspired and inspiring! It gave me such joy to see what the contestants could imagine and bring to life with flowers and other plant materials given the out of the box judging scenarios. Having said that, the judging was heavy-handed and figured way too prominently. Maurice, particularly, had obvious favorites and he gave them specific help to give them an edge during judging. Please, please focus more on the contestants and the flowers in future seasons.

The show feels like a parody of reality shows. It would only need minor tinkering to become an awesomely comedic parody. The hosts feel like SNL skit characters who are badgering serious contestants. HBO could have had a comedy hit on their hands if they hadn't insisted on being serious.

I really wanted to like this show as I love most competition reality shows. Especially those about artists. The more niche, the better. This is as niche as it gets, but I was intrigued. I loved the artists and what they created. Sadly, the judging is absolutely absurd. In every single episode they actually cut the most talented one and keep the one who should have gone home in the first weeks. It's so stupid I don't even know what they were thinking. It is not worth watching. Unless you like to see the arrangements that win get worse and worse over the weeks becsuse they cut the best ones early. This has so much potential. But, they really need to fix their judges.

Really disturbing how they make the competitors turn on each other. It's ugly and had to turn off. Could have been great to watch but to much meanness.

I absolutely LOVED this show, don't get me wrong. The skill of these florists and their work is inspiring. However, the way the competition is set up, some of the eliminations are predictable and in other ways, I feel they tried to compensate for that predictability by eliminating contestants that by no means should have gone home. So, by the time they got to the finale, there were contestants that I was baffled at the way in which they were able to fly under the radar even though they didn't quite have the skill set to stand up to earlier eliminated contestants. Again, these are just my opinions coming from a reviewer that could never put together a bouquet regardless. Additionally, I loved that even though this was a competition it wasn't toxic, you could tell the competitors were inspired by each other, and HBO didn't create drama for the sake of drama. I could watch another 5-10 seasons of this. So, I just hope the creators adjust how they do eliminations and maybe end the team challenges earlier on as to let the competitors' solo work speak for itself.