Simple, Sweet but Ordinary

Gu Jing (Stan Huang) is a good chef who owns a creative and retro restaurant. He opens his restaurant anytime he wants. Gu Jing finds that there is a young man who always gets the quietest seat, and that is Liu Li (Chen Xuan Yu). Liu Li is a gay-themed novelist who rents a room upstairs from Gu Jing’s restaurant. Gu Jing starts to send Liu a bowl of spicy beef noodles. Slowly, Gu Jing becomes the person that Liu Li confides in, the person who keeps him company during his hard times. Gradually, Liu Li realizes that his fantasies may be different from reality.

I have always considered Taiwanese BL dramas to be one of the best and unique ones that come out. Most of the time, they take your breath away from with their phenomenal storylines, and they never fail to experiment in a good way but unfortunately that wasn’t the case with “VIP Only”. The show seemed plain and repetitive to me. I am not saying that the show is bad. No, it wasn’t bad, it was cute and is a one-time watch, but what affected me while watching the show was how predictable everything was, right from the first episode.

It seemed like lots of basic plots including family issues, jealousy and other things were written randomly and thrown together to form a BL drama. In the beginning, I thought the main lead’s relationship would move in a positive direction but somewhere in the middle I got bored with their repetitive dialogues; the actors are pretty talented and when provided with a better script, they could have created a fantastic drama.

Now, if you are in the mood for a simple, sober drama without too many complications, this might be a good recommendation; the direction and production was good and the writing was cute and sweet. It’s just that the show was plain and ordinary. Stan Huang as Gu Jing does a commendable job, and Chen Xuan Yu as Liu Li was also decent; they did their best in creating a nice chemistry between the characters which felt comfortable and natural to watch and not pretentious.

Rating- 3 out of 5

Streaming on- Gagaoolala/Viki