Full Bloom

Full bloom is a very good and unique competition show. There are very touching stories throughout and a lot of talent on display, but it was about 4 episodes too long. If they do a season 2, they should lessen the amount of competitors or cut a couple contestants each episode.

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.

Wow, Seasons 1 and 2 could not be more different. All the issues I had with Season 1 were

(1) bad structure of competition. One of the contestants placed first several times, but she was eliminated because her teams didn't do well in the group competition. This is dumb. It means they penalized her basically for being successful individually. And naturally she was very upset being eliminated. Rightly so and not fun to watch or fair.

(2) the judges asked really awkward questions about how contestants feel that are pretty obvious. Like someone will be crying and they judge will be like "how does that make you feel?" and it's pretty obvious how they feel. It's like they were doing things just for TV drama. Like why ask a contestant "who do you think should be cut from the show"? Unless you want a cut-throat show, that's just unnecessary. The contestants clearly like each other. So there's no need to put them on the hot seat. No one wants to say "Take me, kick Adam off" and kind of unfair to expect them to do that.

(3) I like when contestants show emotions, but sometimes it got a bit stale. Perhaps this is partly the judges' fault. Would have felt more natural if it had been more human instead of cold. I personally blame the directors. The contestants were overall very compelling. There had to be a way to keep that, but make the show feel more entertaining. More natural empathy would be better instead of like an interview.

But WOW season 2 did a 180. They fixed all those things. So rare. Rarely do shows admit they screwed up and fix the issues, but they did just that.

Season 2 is amazing and I loved it.

Contestants still super compelling, but now it's competitive in a good and fair way. They also stopped asking for contestant advice on who to send home.

I'd say

Season 1 = 4/10 Season 2 = 9/10.

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.

It's just so frustrating to watch because the contestants are amazing, however, the judges seem thirsty for drama and cut some of the most talented people early. The talent is amazing but the judges seem out of touch with reality and over the top. HBO could do way better.