No benefits in watching this
As a premise, I will be transparent and say that I mainly watch BLs but I very much enjoyed both Jan and JingJing's performances in Hide & Sis so I decided to come out of my comfort zone and give this show a try: much to my chagrin, this did not go well at all.
Being a very standard, predictable office romance (not a critique per se, just a statement regarding the genre), I wasn't expecting much plot-wise but I at least wanted to enjoy the characters and their development. While Lal is an ok character (whose main flaw is just being a total simp for reasons that I am still trying to grasp), Wine was the bain of this whole show: an egocentric, contradictory, entitled spoiled brat, she had the potential to be a very interesting character based on her backstory and trauma; in the end, if her indecision was kind of reasonable in the first half of the series, later on her constantly going back on her footsteps became a chore to watch (I don't know how many times in ten episodes she stormed out of the room after arguing with Lal). The general romance plot is, in the end, reduced to a bunch of trite tropes that are not even well done nor endearing to watch (them being enemies for like one episode, the secret relationship made way more complicated than necessary because they refused - I don't know why - to at least be friends at work, the useless lies and cheap break up in the last episodes and I could go on).
The latter part of the show, also, introduces a main villain whose only trait is being a sexual predator: from his introduction onwards, Wine is further reduced to a damsel in distress, while Lal has to constantly save her until the very end. This boils down to another main flaw of this show: the sheer heteronormativity of it all, with Lal always acting like the "man" of the couple and Wine being the fragile woman who needs to be saved and protected. I thought we left this kind of writing behind years ago, but here we are, I guess. On a positive note, I enjoyed the commentary on the role of women in the workplace and, more in general, the feminist message that the writers tried to send (message that, oddly enough, clashes with the aforementioned heteronormative structure of the romance).
Production wise, the show doesn't do anything particularly well or bad; the supporting cast was fine, occasionally funny, but nothing more. The side couple is, in my opinion, sudden and unremarkable.
As a whole, Enemies with Benefits is mediocre at best, with no real highlights: I've seen worse, but I've also definitely seen way better.
Being a very standard, predictable office romance (not a critique per se, just a statement regarding the genre), I wasn't expecting much plot-wise but I at least wanted to enjoy the characters and their development. While Lal is an ok character (whose main flaw is just being a total simp for reasons that I am still trying to grasp), Wine was the bain of this whole show: an egocentric, contradictory, entitled spoiled brat, she had the potential to be a very interesting character based on her backstory and trauma; in the end, if her indecision was kind of reasonable in the first half of the series, later on her constantly going back on her footsteps became a chore to watch (I don't know how many times in ten episodes she stormed out of the room after arguing with Lal). The general romance plot is, in the end, reduced to a bunch of trite tropes that are not even well done nor endearing to watch (them being enemies for like one episode, the secret relationship made way more complicated than necessary because they refused - I don't know why - to at least be friends at work, the useless lies and cheap break up in the last episodes and I could go on).
The latter part of the show, also, introduces a main villain whose only trait is being a sexual predator: from his introduction onwards, Wine is further reduced to a damsel in distress, while Lal has to constantly save her until the very end. This boils down to another main flaw of this show: the sheer heteronormativity of it all, with Lal always acting like the "man" of the couple and Wine being the fragile woman who needs to be saved and protected. I thought we left this kind of writing behind years ago, but here we are, I guess. On a positive note, I enjoyed the commentary on the role of women in the workplace and, more in general, the feminist message that the writers tried to send (message that, oddly enough, clashes with the aforementioned heteronormative structure of the romance).
Production wise, the show doesn't do anything particularly well or bad; the supporting cast was fine, occasionally funny, but nothing more. The side couple is, in my opinion, sudden and unremarkable.
As a whole, Enemies with Benefits is mediocre at best, with no real highlights: I've seen worse, but I've also definitely seen way better.
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