Cake Boss Marathon

I'm currently ODing on Cake Boss. I started at season 1 and I'm now on episode 3 of Season 3. I have lovingly nicknamed it the Real Housewives of Cake. Because oh my goodness they whine and complain a lot. There is always screaming and shouting at someone. Buddy's sisters are ridiculously annoying and Buddy has a nephew whom I'd like to pull aside and teach some manners (oh, and feed some vegetables).

The show can be very scripted. You can see when they have set up various scenes and it just doesn't feel natural at all. There are always playing practical jokes which is fine. I like the tradition of a pie in the face on someone's birthday but the dumping of water and flour gets old. There was one time when it was so obvious that the water/flour dump was a set up. There was no reason for him to position himself right where he would get dumped on. Anyway, they pull all these jokes, wasting ingredients, yet Buddy threw a tirade when someone burned a cake. Why? "It's a recession! You can't be burning cake in a recession!" Well, you probably should not waste flour and other ingredients on practical jokes either. Unless, that's in the budget. They made a large 24 inch cake just to test the flavour. Uhm? How about you make a small test cake?

My friend has been getting an earful of my Cake Boss rants. Why don't I just stop watching? I could, but then I'd need a replacement drug. Plus, I know you all have shows that you watch just to rant about. It's a little more than that for me though. I am really interested in cake decorating and ever so often, I pick up a tip from them. I wish I was writing these down because I think I have forgotten the main things that intrigued me.

One other thing, oh my word, they use a lot of cereal treats!! Do all major cake decorators do this? Sometimes there's more cereal treats than cake. I understand that you can't use cake in some cases but it seems like there's an overkill here. Maybe I'm just naive to the world of making 3D cakes. I rarely see them use dowels in their cake (that part may just not be shown) so I do wonder about the structural integrity of some of their stacked cakes. Maybe there's enough cereal treats to keep things from toppling. I wonder if they tell customers - don't cut here -it's all cereal - cut here for your photo op.
Upfate: Buddy just screamed at Mauro for wanting to send out a crooked stacked cake. The problem? Lack of dowels. I guess they do use dowels...sometimes.
I'm off to watch more Cake Boss.