07222023
This review may contain spoilers
Cooking Crush didn’t crush it
Except for ‘Not Me’, Off in ‘The Jungle’, and cameos, I don’t have much experience with OffGun’s acting but I know their history and have seen their chemistry in Safe House 3 and how cute they are off-cam. However, if I were to watch this as a first-timer, I would think Gun either doesn’t like or care about acting. When in reality, he’s one of GMM’s most seasoned, highest-demand, and paid actors. I just couldn’t feel his passion in here.
- Pros:
- The cast could act, for the most part.
- The cast, OffGun, Neo, Dome, Victor, and Tum, man is talented and natural!
- Samsi. He’s the only character I cared for from start to end.
- The friendship group for both Doc and Chef. I love healthy friendships and Cooking Crush did a well and natural job in this area.
- Cons:
- The cooking & food. Despite this being a show about cooking and food, I never once looked at any of the dishes and thought “OHHH THAT LOOKS YUMMY”. Oh wait, I stand corrected. Chef’s pepper looked pretty tasty in EP 11.
- Borderline boring. It felt like no one cared. The romance between Doc and Chef and Fire and Dynamite were both fast-paced with little to no chemistry. DocChef weren’t characters, they were OffGun in costumes. I can’t even remember their characters’ names even if someone were to hold a gun to my head.
- The university plot became an afterthought early on and didn’t come back until the very end.
- The 3B or 3 BULLIES gang is overutilized in a university setting. I feel like this show was trying to check off every old stereotype you can find in series in the early 2000s to late 2016s i.e. bullies in universities, closed-mouth kisses, the camera spinning around closed-mouth kissing, running onto filming sets with no security whatsoever, older characters attending college is frowned upon, an abundant of flashbacks, and the list goes on.
- The poor camera work and music killed this series for me. Most of the time, the background music/sound is NOT supporting the scene. Funny scenes are dryer than deserts and it’s because no one cared to add an upbeat soundtrack to go with it. This wouldn’t be a problem if most of the time the series was a heartfelt, serious series but it wasn’t, and was trying to go for comedy a lot of the time. It’s like the show is trying and they’re self-aware to a point but they’re also doing all the wrong things because they know the actors’ popularity will overshadow the lackluster effort.
- The heavy time skips only to use flashbacks to explain what happened. I despise series that use flashbacks for shock value. DocChef suddenly kissing and then having almost one entire episode showing ‘what happened earlier’ was simply boring. I don’t understand the abuse of flashbacks in this series.
- A lot happened and there was a lot of predictable drama but most of them were uneventful. The show should have cut out most of them. The whole separation to improve Doctor’s grades made me lose brain cells and it was such a brainless decision on the characters and production part. We never saw the result of it other than Doc himself saying his grades improved in the last episode. You could have just said that without the whole separating thing. The separation was so short-lived too, it wasn’t even funny. To be fair though, if Doc’s dad had just been upfront from the get-go, we probably wouldn’t have to see Doc acting like a teenager always throwing a hissy fit around daddy and new step-mommy. I wouldn’t have minded Doc’s immaturity if he was at least responsible and independent for a medical student in his third year but he has no part-time job, acts like a clown for the most part, relies on his dad for financial support, and still dares to get mad when he overpaid Chef for cooking courses he no longer needed and daddy found out. ‘Doctor’ was not the profession they should have given Off’s character. I’m not even going to talk about that horrible subplot of Doc meeting another Doc who looks identical to his mom and when he took her to the hospital and saved her life, he was no longer traumatized by his inability to save his mom back then. What. The. Heck. And for him to say ‘we’re not busy today’? I feel that’s something every medical student just knows.
- Gun’s acting. As I said before, it felt like he didn’t want to be a part of the show but did it for Papi. His energy was so low I found myself dozing off whenever he was on screen. For a character who likes to see other people happy, I thought he should start with himself…
- Changma's out-of-the-blue crush on Chef was a big ‘HUH’? Stop it, GMM!
- The whole social media shenanigans were a waste of screen and viewers’ time. For Doc. to apologize ON HIS KNEES and then still act possessive right after was so dumb. It was so middle-school behavior.
- The storyline I hated most is that the staff openly admitted to passing Chef’s group into the second round because they were lame and the show needed that for views...like wtf? I was so glad when Chef opted to withdraw but then he was so easily talked back into it, it was so lame. The fact that his team didn’t end up dropping out when it was an entertainment show and not a cooking show, made me question if it was their cooking skills they wanted recognized in the first place.
- Dynamite was so cute but he did a 180 towards the middle of the show. I liked that he respected Fire and Jane getting back together but since then, he seemed like a different character. We also never know what’s become of his place after his neighbor was murdered.
Overall Cooking Crush gets a 5 from me, in terms of OffGun’s series.
- Pros:
- The cast could act, for the most part.
- The cast, OffGun, Neo, Dome, Victor, and Tum, man is talented and natural!
- Samsi. He’s the only character I cared for from start to end.
- The friendship group for both Doc and Chef. I love healthy friendships and Cooking Crush did a well and natural job in this area.
- Cons:
- The cooking & food. Despite this being a show about cooking and food, I never once looked at any of the dishes and thought “OHHH THAT LOOKS YUMMY”. Oh wait, I stand corrected. Chef’s pepper looked pretty tasty in EP 11.
- Borderline boring. It felt like no one cared. The romance between Doc and Chef and Fire and Dynamite were both fast-paced with little to no chemistry. DocChef weren’t characters, they were OffGun in costumes. I can’t even remember their characters’ names even if someone were to hold a gun to my head.
- The university plot became an afterthought early on and didn’t come back until the very end.
- The 3B or 3 BULLIES gang is overutilized in a university setting. I feel like this show was trying to check off every old stereotype you can find in series in the early 2000s to late 2016s i.e. bullies in universities, closed-mouth kisses, the camera spinning around closed-mouth kissing, running onto filming sets with no security whatsoever, older characters attending college is frowned upon, an abundant of flashbacks, and the list goes on.
- The poor camera work and music killed this series for me. Most of the time, the background music/sound is NOT supporting the scene. Funny scenes are dryer than deserts and it’s because no one cared to add an upbeat soundtrack to go with it. This wouldn’t be a problem if most of the time the series was a heartfelt, serious series but it wasn’t, and was trying to go for comedy a lot of the time. It’s like the show is trying and they’re self-aware to a point but they’re also doing all the wrong things because they know the actors’ popularity will overshadow the lackluster effort.
- The heavy time skips only to use flashbacks to explain what happened. I despise series that use flashbacks for shock value. DocChef suddenly kissing and then having almost one entire episode showing ‘what happened earlier’ was simply boring. I don’t understand the abuse of flashbacks in this series.
- A lot happened and there was a lot of predictable drama but most of them were uneventful. The show should have cut out most of them. The whole separation to improve Doctor’s grades made me lose brain cells and it was such a brainless decision on the characters and production part. We never saw the result of it other than Doc himself saying his grades improved in the last episode. You could have just said that without the whole separating thing. The separation was so short-lived too, it wasn’t even funny. To be fair though, if Doc’s dad had just been upfront from the get-go, we probably wouldn’t have to see Doc acting like a teenager always throwing a hissy fit around daddy and new step-mommy. I wouldn’t have minded Doc’s immaturity if he was at least responsible and independent for a medical student in his third year but he has no part-time job, acts like a clown for the most part, relies on his dad for financial support, and still dares to get mad when he overpaid Chef for cooking courses he no longer needed and daddy found out. ‘Doctor’ was not the profession they should have given Off’s character. I’m not even going to talk about that horrible subplot of Doc meeting another Doc who looks identical to his mom and when he took her to the hospital and saved her life, he was no longer traumatized by his inability to save his mom back then. What. The. Heck. And for him to say ‘we’re not busy today’? I feel that’s something every medical student just knows.
- Gun’s acting. As I said before, it felt like he didn’t want to be a part of the show but did it for Papi. His energy was so low I found myself dozing off whenever he was on screen. For a character who likes to see other people happy, I thought he should start with himself…
- Changma's out-of-the-blue crush on Chef was a big ‘HUH’? Stop it, GMM!
- The whole social media shenanigans were a waste of screen and viewers’ time. For Doc. to apologize ON HIS KNEES and then still act possessive right after was so dumb. It was so middle-school behavior.
- The storyline I hated most is that the staff openly admitted to passing Chef’s group into the second round because they were lame and the show needed that for views...like wtf? I was so glad when Chef opted to withdraw but then he was so easily talked back into it, it was so lame. The fact that his team didn’t end up dropping out when it was an entertainment show and not a cooking show, made me question if it was their cooking skills they wanted recognized in the first place.
- Dynamite was so cute but he did a 180 towards the middle of the show. I liked that he respected Fire and Jane getting back together but since then, he seemed like a different character. We also never know what’s become of his place after his neighbor was murdered.
Overall Cooking Crush gets a 5 from me, in terms of OffGun’s series.
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