VIP Only (2023)

Cute but also cringy. Watch for the leads.

General spoilers only at bottom of review.
Ep 1-6: Not much plot but cute and sweet with great attraction-tension between leads. A simple, fairly enjoyable, light and easy watch.
Ep 7-10: Cringe-fest! Cliched tropes kept popping up, higher suspension of disbelief required to get through, cheesy moments, corny lines, and more telling vs showing.

The lead actors are good and their chemistry is great; they kept me watching. There was slow building romantic and sexual tension, a decent amount of skinship, and realistic making-out. The actors seemed comfortable with each other and the growing interest and attraction of their characters was believable. Most of the time they managed to elevate the weak screenplay. I would readily watch them if they had another project together.

The plot is basic and extremely predictable, the script is mediocre, and the theme song is decent but over-used and I didn't like most of the rest of the music (either didn't feel like it fit well or it just came across as cheap or cheesy).

Good for binge-watching one time; it's cute and light but the 20min episodes don't have enough of a storyline arc individually to feel satisfying on their own. I won't re-watch it.

Stan Huang is great as Gu Jing and held a lot of energy in his eyes. I found him compelling to watch, even when the character wasn't doing much.

Liu Li is naive to the point that some suspension of disbelief is required to like him! Xuang Chen is good with his doe-eyed innocence. I think whatever annoyances I felt were with the way the character was written, not with the actor. It does take some skill to act so believably clueless.

The lead couple in You Are Mine have a mini cameo in this series. I personally felt like it didn't add much, either to their story or to this one.

Ep 7-10 really lowered my enjoyment with this show. If you can shrug things off and roll with it, you may fare better than I did (I could only do so up to a point).

GENERAL SPOILERS on CLICHÉS below.

In broad strokes, here's what's in store for Ep 7-10:
A love triangle, jealousy hijinks, the "burden" of a family member completely (and ridiculously) getting in the way of the protagonists being together, Gu Jing all of a sudden losing his spine and Liu Li abruptly getting one, characters doing things that impact two people without communicating with the other first, public approval/validation when handling a family matter, public gawking over light PDA, secondary characters getting closer romantically (though no time is really spent on it), and a childhood connection (which is told, not shown)!

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Boo

I really don't have much to say other than the fact that this bored the shit out of me. It wasn't bad, but it's definitely not memorable. I guess I would say it teeters on the line of being decent and also not good. Skimmed through the last three episodes and only kept watching cause Stan Huang looks incredibly too sexy with a goatee.

Let's Dive In.

Again, not much to say cause not much happened. It's a very simplistic story of a man who writes and a man who cooks who live in the same building and fall in love. The End. Stacks are very not stack-y, and objectives feel lost somewhere in the middle. But I don't hate this only because the leads are adorable (Stan Huang knows how to rizz) and I'm intrigued by that out of everything. The paper origami was the best little tidbit about this -- super creative and now I wanna learn.

The chemistry between the leads is good, not groundbreaking, but good enough that I didn't drop this. However, this series just drags which is kind of bad cause this is only a 10-episode series that lasts about 20 minutes. The waiter and the best friend and the ex all just feel like filler and again, nothing feels like genuine conflict cause you know that the leads will get together in the end, so who cares? I skimmed through the last three episodes and still got the jist of what happened. They do kissing great though (Only in these last few eps, the ones before were ehh).

Ratings:

Story:5/10 - boring! not bad, just draggy. Romance is decent and yes Stan Huang makes this score go from a 4/10 to a 5/10 for simply existing (that man is too fine).

Acting: 8/10 - It's okay, nothing groundbreaking, and they did good.

Music: 6/10 - Didn't pay it much attention but it wasn't distracting.

Recommendation Value: 2/10 - Watch simply because Stan Huang is the sexiest man in Tawan. Otherwise, forget this series exist (like I will).

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