To reviewers here who brag about Ree's profits: so what?Phillip Morris is worth billions. That doesn't make the product a good thing.Her recipes are Junior League cookbook knockoffs, and that has a certain appeal to a swath of America unconcerned with obesity and its effects. It really is that straightforward.

Aside from the ever-so infamous 'Mystery Diners', this show is probably one of the most scripted on the whole Food Network. Sitting through and listening to Ree's voice in this show is a punishment in itself. Her little jokes that she throws in? Nope, I didn't even crack a smile. It just left me staring at the screen, saying to myself, "...Why?!" . When she's on camera with her family, she acts in this way that is almost unsettling, and you can tell by the looks on her family's faces. It's not only Ree's personality and delivering of lines that makes this show so awful, but her recipes aren't the best thing in the whole world. They're decent at best, bland in the middle, and full of sugar and things terrible for you at worst. Hopefully, you'll be smart and wait until an actual quality show comes on. At best, this show is background noise for whatever you're doing.

I hate to give this show such a low score, but the "Pioneer Woman" title is way off. Ree is personable and I enjoy watching her....however the food she cooks has way too much fat and sugar. In one episode, she was making food for her son and his friends who were making a place of their own. Her recipe for Brownies contained about two pounds of candy!....M&M's, peanut butter cups, etc. I see Diabetes in anyone's future if they fix this. There's way too much fat and carbohydrates in most of her dishes too. There isn't enough variety from the heavy-handed foods. She lives on a Ranch and feeds hard working men. Even so, they'll keel over with heart attacks if they keep eating this. I don't think ANY Pioneer Woman ever cooked this way....they couldn't afford it. How about a bit of change and make something healthy and not enough to feed a small army.

I have dipped in and out to read some of the Pioneer Woman's blog and found a couple of her recipes enticing and enjoyed the whimsical writing style dotted between her photo breakdowns. As a result, I was keen to see this low-key humour and some insights into southern-ish cooking reflected in her "cooking show". What a let down. Whatever sparkle exists in her writing is devoid, and her presenting style (I don't know if this is scripted: if it isn't, it's time to pay someone) is inane, patronisingly repetitive and utterly uninspiring to anyone interested in learning to cook or broadening their repertoire through the show. But presenting style isn't everything, and we all know cooking show formats are contrived. What saddens/irks me the most that the food network has given a show to someone who doesn't appear to appreciate food or show skill in preparing it. I like the occasional shortcut recipe (I'd never make my own puff pastry and prefer shop bought hummus to homemade) but this show seems to provide a cavalcade of the sort concoctions the toddler puts together when he is left home alone or students when they first leave home and have no idea what they are doing and ultimately end up eating baked beans out of a tin. Take for example the recently demonstrated dump cake (or excrement cake, if we are translating British idiom_. This cake mixed cherry pie filling (the one ingredient which Nigella, who is open to a shortcut or two, begs viewers not to stoop to) and tinned pineapple, covered in a cake mix and sliced butter. If she wants to follow this route and be "one of the people" Drummond's time might have been better spent demystifying cake mixes into flour and baking powder and showing viewers how easily they can make their own mixes. That might have been slightly resembling of a cooking related topic.Other recipes included opening "pork n bean" tins and baking them with bacon on top. This 2am drunkenly thrown together student food is about as revolting as I could imagine, even without thinking about the quality of the sausages. The throw into a bunch of butter, stir and occasionally bake method is pretty the much as taxing as it gets from cakes to casseroles. "Great!" I hear folks cry, "We don't have time for anything more difficult". Here's the thing. Eat the way this woman cooks, and you won't need time. You'll be being happily squashed into your own coffin, wondering why it didn't taste better on the way.Hey, even Ina has the occasional episode where she makes one dish and and shows us how to shop for three others, but they are an anomaly, and a useful tip in combining flavours. She experiments, she highlights freshness and flavour and buying the best your budget allows. Her recipes are both homely and sophisticated. She even likes butter. She does not however, drown every item on the plate in butter, because she knows it would detract from flavour by overkill. Here we have cheese, bacon, beans and butter on an turntable of anagrammatic recipes. Undoubtedly these are tasty ingredients in the hands of an experienced home cook or chef, but no cook worth their salt never ventures outside their comfort zone pyramid of four main recipes. Especially not those with shows on Food Network. I love cooking shows, and will pretty much sit through any cooking show, or have it on in the background as a source of inspiration and comfort, but for the first time on food network, I have to switch off when I see this starting. So there you go, toddlers and clueless teens, this one's for you. Foodies, walk on by.