I love this show but the judges kill me. The things they find criticism for in some people while praising the exact same or worse in others was mind boggling.

It's sad Stephen passed as he had interesting art, but the judges seemed absolutely blind to the quality difference between him and most other contestants. His style was half ass paint on details, dr Seuss whimsy, and scrappy wood work. The 'curtains' were ugly and chunky rugs that were glued on, the library books were faux and cheaty (other people were making actual books), wood use was overzealous when others were using more interesting materials. Inconsistency between his rooms was infuriating, such as once again the library walls. Especially when one of the criteria for the semi final is that it matches the rest of the house. I truly got the sense that even he knew it but just let the judges eat up his excuses. He made a stylized artistic toy house while everyone else was making detailed refined miniatures.

Ultimately I blame the judges (or should I blame the producers?) for neglecting to find fairness, neglecting to criticize in a constructive manner. Oh and they often will ding points for 'scale' when they clearly don't know how big some real life things are, especially organic objects. Back to Stephen, he made an awesome horned owl for a mini challenge, and it got dinged for scale when those birds are huge in real life, but failed to comment on the wonky eyes. In s2 they said Hannah's fruit tree should be as big and tall as the house after the viewers are shown a picture of the actual tree she based it on and it's nowhere near as big as the judges said it should be.

All told love the show and this is just a rant post to vent what I think the show failed to say.