my fault for expecting something, i guess

i knew from the very first minute of the show that this was little more than an excuse to film two hot guys attempt at acting attracted to each other.
it's perfect, it's pretty, the guys are hot. it doesn't matter that it's perfect to the point of unauthenticity, or that it's pretty but is as shallow as the pools of water those shells the main characters collected at some point live in. the guys are hot, so why does it matter that there is so little chemistry between them, that when i watch the show all i see are not the star chefs choi jungwoo and yoon dogun competing for laura dining and falling for each other, but the actors jang euisoo and lee chanhyung reading their lines?
honestly, they were so detached from their characters that i felt uncomfortable watching them "flirt". their unnatural closeness was weird. don't look far and take the very first interaction they have, of jungwoo turning dogun around and tying his apron. all i could think about was how wildly uncomfortable it would be, to have a complete and total stranger do this to me. you'd think dogun would get defensive, push him away, call him crazy. somehow, it seemed like he was completely okay with it happening. because, well, it's a korean bl drama, and characters in korean bl dramas aren't real humans, and they don't try hard to convince you they are.
it's not completely hopeless, and i wouldn't say either of them are horrible actors. choi jungwoo has acting experience and you can tell he puts it to practice; i feel like he genuinely tried to make something out of nothing here, when he wasn't told to stand in front of the camera and look perfect and sexy and hot. i'm sure that under a good director he could pull a praise worthy performance. lee chanhyung is rather unremarkable.
i'm not even going to talk about the plot, because it truly doesn't make a difference. it's a setting, it's a background image to put the actors against, it's a setup for the enemies to lovers dynamic.
what i can't fault the show for is its low budget and how rushed it is, or for when lee chanhyung spilled broth on the table trying to feed jang euisoo's character and they didn't reshoot it. there is no excuse for bad writing, though.

tl;dr: i mean, the show is only 8 episodes long, and i could only stomach 6 of them, skipping five seconds forward more and more often until i gave up.
skip this one if you're looking for entertainment with any substance to it or a compelling relationship. watch if you're a girl that wants to see hot korean guys pretend to be gay men that are into each other, which is the target demographic of this anyway. but, hey, bet those screenshots came out pretty.

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