No, that doesn't work. It's not like a normal row, there's no left bubble and minus. If go up to it (the home screen defaults to the original top row), all you can do is scroll round the recommendations endlessly. Hitting "left" or "right", just scrolls round the recommendations in either direction, and it simply loops round, scrolling off the end just takes you back to the first recommendation. There is no way to get off the list of recommendations except by hitting "down" to go back down the the main home row.
What's worse is that the row takes up the same amount of space as about 3 regular rows, so when you hit home, the recommendations start by taking up half the screen until you scroll down below them (then they disappear off the top).
This is a consolidated effort by Google to be in your face with things they are probably getting paid for.