What Zabb Man! (2022)

I was entertained...

Overall: this was what I'd call standard Thai BL with an enemies to lovers plot. Though it had some flaws, I was entertained. Watched on YouTube.

Content Warnings: voyeurism, manhandling, fight, non con touch (sleeping), manipulation

What I Liked
- the sweet brother relationship
- the food looked delicious
- the cute moments
- the funny moments
- the dynamic of an aggressive flirt and a feisty guy
- how Poon made Athip see how Athip's niece was feeling
- Athip's assistant (can we get a series with her and the assistant from Cutie Pie?)
- good production value

Room For Improvement
- cliche wannabe girlfriend although it wasn't the worst example that I've seen of this trope
- trans woman used as comedy
- continuity error in ep 3 with stains that magically vanished
- the drama in episode 6 was stupid and Athip was dumb
- brother and niece weren't in the finale
- kiss partially blocked
- the blur filter is pretty high with everyone's faces
- the subtitles said "partner" a few times which is confusing because they could be talking abou business partners however I think they meant "boyfriend"
- odd title isn't explained until episode 4

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So disappointing.

This series started off reasonably well. It was clear from the start it was't going to be a masterpiece, but it was entertaining. But it quickly bogged down into a really negative and unpleasant mess.

Ahtip and Poon have the usual enemies-to-lovers banter and conflict at first, but then they descend into moderately psycho jealousy, misunderstanding, and lashing out to hurt each other constantly. It's not fun, and there's no chemistry between them to compensate - and even if there were there's no opportunity to see it because they're always in a fight, and not the "you didn't put the toilet seat down" type of fight - it's the "you are a controlling psycho" and "you constantly quit your job and break up with me" type of fighting.

There are no less than four villains. 1. The woman who is after Ahtip, who has more screen time than either lead, and she's awful - it's so unpleasant. 2. The handsome chef from a rival restaurant. 3. Teng's weird boyfriend and 4. The OTT evil landlady. Do we need all this? Especially with two surly and unpleasant leads, and two surly and unpleasant secondary couple characters, there is just nothing bright and fun about this series. With the secondary couple, one is in an unhappy LTR but delibrately leads someone on, and that someone is pursuing someone he knows is taken and all three make themselves (and the audience) miserable. TBH, I've never gotten the appeal of BankBonus, and I'd be surprised if you do after this.

Ahtip's friend Tewit is charming, but it's hard to think much of him as he's obsessed with Amy, who is a horrible, selfish snob.

On top of that, the writer appears not to have any experience with day-to-day life, as really basic details are wrong and take you out of the story. A hotel restaurant has nobody but a head chef to clean the kitchen and nobody is ordering ingredients. Except the head chef. Landlords can cancel leases with no notice and kick out tenants, and Ahtip is such a terrible, terrible boss that there's no chance he could have achieved any success. Etc.

Even the cutesy ending fell flat - all these people were practically trying murder each other the whole series, and now they're all best friends. Amy's redemption arc was to stomp all over everyone and then with no effort or reason ends up with the richest and best-looking guy in sight. Even after he had a drunken gay orgy with half the cast, which is weird since Poon won't let Ahtip even kiss him (until he gives him a hugely expensive gift. Nice messaging there).

It feels like punishment to watch this - it's entirely unpleasant with no romance or couple chemisty to keep you going. Honestly, I'd rather watch 45 minutes of people falling into accidental kisses than watch this.

I can't recommend this at all - there are lots of bad BLs, some of which are fun. This is just joyless and dreary. I had really looked forward to this because I love Peter - maybe someday he'll be in something good.

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Who writes these series?

I watched the whole thing only because Peter/Poon was an engaging and likeable character. But he was the only one. And it wasn't because the actors weren't up to the task, it's because the series was just written really badly.

Now first of all its a rich boy poor boy enemies to lovers BL. So it requires some nuance right? Some introspection and character development? What makes a rich guy fall in love with a poor guy anyway? What is love?

Well in this case it's just papaya salad. Which sounds delicious, don't get me wrong. But I'm old, it takes more than papaya salad for me to ship a couple.

The decisions the writers made in this series were so baffling. And the casting. Actually all the decisions. Peter was the only good choice. Wait, no, Phirada was also cute.

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Does some great things most other BLs refuse to do

I honestly loved this little show.

As the title states, the greatest thing about this show is that there are great moments where the characters break some BL stereotypes, such as not giving the bottom much of a backbone and having them agree to everything their top says. Now, I would give the story a 10/10, but I didn't because there are times where the writers did falter and add in unnecessary, unhealthy BL tropes. My theory is that unfortunately some people love these tropes, so maybe they felt like they had to add them to make the show more appealing.

But anyway, lets get to it.

(spoilers)
STORY/CHARACTERS

This is a very simple, lighthearted story. There are bits of angst here and there, but overall, it's very easy to watch.
Both main couples are in an enemies-to-lovers situation, but even though the trope is the same, each plot is handled differently and that was honestly great to see! It didn't feel redundant or boring to have to switch between the couples.

As I mentioned earlier, one aspect I really liked was that Teng and Poon (the bottoms of the relationships) stood their ground a lot of the time. See, it's common in BLs to have the bottoms, or "ukes" if you're used to yaoi, give up and do whatever the top says. Maybe they fight a little bit, but then they go along with it anyway. Teng and Poon were refreshing to watch because neither does that with their eventual love interest. In Teng's case, we see that he does do it with his current boyfriend, but the show does a fantastic job showing us that he current boyfriend, Tan, is a piece of shit and that we're supposed to see this couple as unhealthy. Hell, there's even a point when Teng refers to their relationship as toxic, which is rare to do in BLs.

So a lot of the times, the dialogue and actions are FANTASTIC. There's even a moment when Mayom tells Teng that he doesn't have to tell him anything and that he's fine with him meeting up with Tan because he trusts him. This may seem small, but once again, in BLs we'd have moments where the bottom is speaking too much to try and convince the top. It's a trope I'm so very tired of seeing. But hearing this conversation and seeing Mayom being the one to simply state that was so very nice to see.


I also loved most of the characters and their relationships with one another. In BLs, it's common to not see strong friendships between the main character and his friend(s). Usually, the friend(s) disappears from the story and so does the importance of the friendship. In real life, having a good friend help you with your relationship problems is important. And I loved that they kept that in this show. We got a lot of good moments between Mayom and Poon, who have been friends since high school. We even see the three comic relief chefs have cute, wholesome moments with Mayom and Poon.

And about Tan and Teng's relationship: I thought it was handled pretty well and realistically. I've ALWAYS wanted a BL story where the person (it's almost always the bottom) finally breaks up with their toxic boyfriend and ends up with someone much better. I did like that they spent a lot of time with Tan's behavior, because some of the stuff he did was similar to stuff you'd see the top (or "seme") do in just about any other BL out there. They really honed in the idea that his actions are not okay and how manipulative that person can be to the point where they have someone wrapped around their little finger for *FIVE YEARS*.

Now, aspects of the story I did not like:

I was fine with Athip's and Poon's plot and I felt like they had a good start. However, Athip, who's this annoying guy that seems to have some control problems (hinted that it has to do with having to raise his niece), never really gets reprimanded for some of his actions. When they do start dating, Athip changes. But then half way through, he goes back to his old ways. Which is fine. So long as when they do get back together, he apologizes, sees what he did wrong, and actually change.

Except that doesn't really happen. When he says sorry, for some reason Poon is also apologizing? For what?? Poon did what he had to do which was break off the relationship and get another job else where. I thought having Poon apology was gross.

I also was not crazy about how Amy's character was represented. I don't mind the Evil Female Character trope where the girl tries to break up the gay relationship. At the same time however, I can see how it can be misogynistic. And, once again, I didn't mind her character at first. But then they kept up with the "bumbling, annoying" girl schtick for way too long. I would be even more peeved if she was the only female character or if there weren't other great female characters like Pirada and Ping.

Also, as I mentioned before: there are some really strong moments, but then there are some weak, trope-y as hell moments. For instance, we had the great conversation about trust with Mayom and Teng, and soon afterwards, we get that adorable video from Teng. But then soon afterwards, without Teng's permission, Mayom takes Teng's phone and starts a live stream on Teng's YT channel where he announces that they're dating. It's so out of the blue because for a good chunk of the story, Mayom respectfully maintains some distance between him and Teng. So for him to suddenly do that felt very off and pretty much out of character. It is something a top would do in a stereotypical BL though, and I feel like it was the production just trying to add some dumb tropes in there.

There's also the part when Athip was trying to win Poon back. That felt out of place and cheese-y as hell with the whole colored sugar idea that his niece very randomly came up with. The issue with Athip is that he was constantly in his niece's business. He learned not to do that anymore early on and it seemed like he learned his lesson. So it honestly made no sense for Athip to now hunt Poon down the way he did. They had him revert back to his old self. At this point, I didn't really care for their relationship anymore.

But they did have this great moment where even after getting back together, Poon maintains his independence and decides not to go back to work at Athip's. Because of how BLs/yaoi works, I totally expected Poon to go back. But he didn't! And that was a great writing choice. But their relationship writing-wise was pretty much all over the place in the last 2-3 episodes.

MUSIC

Nothing to write home about. It was good enough for the show, especially for a small production show.
As you can probably tell, Mayom and Teng were my favorite character- hell, their actors are my favorite too. So unsurprisingly, I really like their theme song.

However, the use of piano and/or guitar renditions of Christmas songs in some BLs lately is so very weird to me. And there's one guitar song they played during the more woeful moments in the show that was so very obviously a Christmas song. As a westerner in a very Christian based culture (USA), I thought that was a weird choice lol.

ACTING

Once again, for a small production, I thought the acting was great! Some of them I could totally see being in bigger, more costly productions, like Tay's actor for example.

Now, I watched Gen Y 1 and 2 before watching this show. That director clearly loved stunting some of the actor's talents, because I thought Bonus's (who plays Teng here and Tong in Gen Y) acting in Gen Y was pretty stiff at times. Same with Tora, who plays Mayom here and Pok in Gen Y. I think they did great with Gen Y being their first acting gig and having to work with that director, but like I said, I thought they could've used more work.

But then seeing Bonus and Tora in this show made me realize they were better at acting than I thought, especially Bonus. Mind you, this show was filmed *before* Gen Y 2.

There are a lot of actors I'd love to see in BLs again. Or just about any show period. I loved Boss (Athip's actor) and Pete (Poon's actor) as well as Pirada's actress.

SUMMARY

I highly recommend checking this show out! Especially since it's short and easy to watch. There are some bumpy moments, but the great and cute moments are totally worth it.

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I get everyone's entitled to their opinions...

Listen, im not saying this was a BL masterpiece like no other , nor am i saying the acting snd writing was brilliant ....but i really enjoyed it , the big reason why is that its really unlike most BL's - i liked the setting , and it is a BL that followed a very differnt theme in my opinion. I really enjoyed the charecters - and really liked the villians in this one , although i was hoping that Amy was not redeemed , shes ghd type of charecter like ....NamNing in La Cuisine whose only care is their own selfish endgamd....and to me chatecters like that are not redeemable , especially bc she was just awful and in less than a few scenes it was like ..hey its all good ..so that annoyed me. I just wish sone writers would realize that every chatecter does not need a happy ending, every charecter does not deserve one ...and thats the realest story you could depict to an audience.

Other than those things , i rather enjoyed it i think thr actors were really cute , especially Taywich and Athip as well as Mayom and of course my little bean poon ...im saying before you totally poo poo it , give the series a chance for what it is.

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Bad yet oddly entertaining

This drama has literally nothing particularly good about it yet I found myself oddly drawn to watching it and wanted to see how it would end...

The acting: Bad, like really bad at times
The music: elevator meets 8os porn?
The kisses: mediocre
The friendships: ok
The story: meeh
The romance: straight forward but meeh
The necklines deeper than the ocean...
The pace: fast...
The PPL: was there any PPL?
The food porn: meeh
The cinematography: meeh
The second couple: pretty and odd
Even the clichés here are meeh

So what can i say, I watched it, I won't really recommend it but I a not going to discourage people from watching it as it obviously does have something, I just do not really know what that something is, but it is there and it kept me entertained...

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The Foodie BL I Always Wanted Thailand to give me

Main Tropes: enemies to lovers, tsundere seme, rich/poor, foodie romance

It's like Star Hunter has FINALLY grown up with this show. WZM was better than we have any right to expect with decent pacing and a foodie theme threaded through the narrative as both love language and plot driver - which I have been WAITING for. Basically CEO falls in love with a street vendor’s food, recruits him to work in his hotel, falls in love with him, and that’s the beginning. Class struggles! Kitchen drama! Papaya pounding (not a euphemism)! Chef poaching (not literally)! Spicy scenes (yes literally)! Food puns! It’s all so delicious.

Star Hunter... did you serve this one up just for little old me? Sure seems like, since no one else consumed it. Well... I do have a high space tolerance.

I think I have finally figured out Star Hunter’s brand: CHEEKY.

Will this review be full of food puns. Oh yes indeed.

Sure this show gets absurdly over cooked and falling apart messy in tone, it's like Star Hunter just CAN'T help but over egg the plotting (see what I did there). I imagine their workshopping is a hoot, it's a bunch of young actors being ridiculous, and the chaos just leaks onto the screen. But all the acting is on point, and ... FOOD! (Yes I have eaten my body weight to som tum. Why do you ask?)

The leads are actually pretty good (previous in Hidden Love). Poon is a great character because he is tsundere WITH good reason. And he’s portrayed with depth and sweetness for all his salty pride. Also I'm not opposed to a bit of a CEO romance in my BL. Alpha being won over by love and som tum, tasty. But what I really loved was that Athip loves Poon first for his food. When Poon runs away Athip finds him because of his food. Arthip begs forgiveness by eating Poon’s food.

But it’s BankBonus (who play Teng & Mayom) who once more steal the bacon. Honestly they dominated Gen Y 2 and now they are doing it again. Just give them their own show already! They absolutely crackle on screen together and it’s such fun to watch, who cares about plot?

In the end, this was the foodie romance set in the Thai Restaurant industry I have always wanted. The machinations of being in food service formed not just setting but also plot. Perhaps if Bite Me, Love Area and some of the ones from Korea (My Sweet Dear, Tasty Florida, Ocean Likes Me, To My Star) hadn’t disappointed me in this regard, I wouldn’t be so generous with this show. And to be fair, it probably should get a 7/10 by my normal standards. But What Zabb Man was cooked up exactly to suit my palate (and apparently no one else’s) so it gets a 8/10.

RECOMMENDED, especially if you like Thai food.

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what should i say

Seriously after reading few review i thought okay it might be good but where is their standard. people are supporting any kind of BL series just because it is BL series. They criticize series like love in the air which bring topic like depression, trauma and they support series like this which have nothing to offer. As hotel owner he have right to angry because customer rating can be very important for Hotel for their brand but chef poon is asshole, idk why I get so irritated by his behavior. what if same thing we do real life? we would have get fired and pay compensation but hotel owner wont do anything because he like him, where is equality?

Even he is raising his voice when it is very clear that what his is mistake, he try save everyone like he is superman. at starting it is good but later it is so irritating. it is a show of food, I thought I can see wide range of Thai regional and national cuisine but I cant see any other food except papaya salad. we know papaya salad is very famous but it is all about papaya salad really? make your own sit if you like it. Hotel owner what should I say oh god, fucking irritating.

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A cute cliché...and what's wrong with that?

PLOT: The story is about Poon, a cute poor guy that has a small food stand to support his brother through college. Everything starts when he meets Tian, a "fierce" (a tsundere tbh lolol) rich hotel/restaurant owner, after an almost dangerous incident. It is a classic story of enemies to lovers....there are some cute moments between the lead couple TianPoon, but they barely kiss (maybe 2x in the whole series and it gave "dead fish" vibes). This BL is very light on the kissing and has zero spice (for those who are wondering). However, it is a sweet love story....it's not a great series, but it is definitely not a horrible one either. It's nice for what it is...a cute and innocent 8 episode romantic/foodie series to pass the time. And I'm fine with that! Of course there are some slightly problematic things about their relationship - controlling issues - but nothing uncomfortable to watch, just a tad annoying.

The second couple is also cute, but it's a slow burner, FYI. Tengnueng, a food critic youtuber, has a shitty closeted boyfriend, Thaenkhun, that gatekeeps their entire relationship for 5 years and treats him like crap. He literally made this poor guy (Nueng) pretend they were only business partners for half a decade. After a lot of events Nueng meets Mayom, Poon's friend and also a chef and he puts this guy through a lot lololol. But their arc was cute - but zero kisses.

The villain of the story is a bitchy rich and extremely annoying girl, Amy - Tian and Tewit's friend. She is out for Poon's blood since the 1st second onscreen. It made me VERY angry that Tian basically just let her treat his love like shit and didn't do much about it. Also giving her a happy ending was the worse decision ever! Not every character needs to be redeemable. It's okay to let the villains be unhappy by the end of a series ***sighing in frustration***

ACTING: Well, it wasn't horrible...like I mentioned before, but it isn't great either. Oddly entertaining is the way to describe this series. Don't expect much tbh. It is a very silly innocent romance story with not much to offer. The script also didn't help the cast...there wasn't much to work with. Every arc was very superficial and silly.

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Please give it a try!

I'm actually a bit surprised by all the negative reviews.
Because of them I went into the series with no hope really and I absolutely enjoyed the series.
Yes, it isn't as high standard as the famous BLs but I think it is a nice one to watch if you want a slightly lighter story. The only 8 episodes guarantee that you won't get bored and yet is the development of the characters at the right place and things don't feel rushed.

All I can say is, please give it a try and get into a few episodes. It is a light and heart warming story which has got its rightful place amongst all the other BLs.

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