Song (Nile Chanidapa Sommitthanakul), an employee at 126 Food, has won the honor of Best Researcher three years in a row. When we first see her in the lab, she looks like a model dressed as a scientist, moving through the apparatuses as though they were makeup kits and accessories. One begins to wonder whether the criteria for winning Best Researcher include looking stylish in a white coat and posing well for the cameras.
Song is also a terrific badminton player, though whenever she plays, her body appears completely clean and sweatless, as if she had just been called out of the vanity van to score a point or two during the final minutes of a match for the sake of "sportsmanship" or whatever. What all this means, in other words, is that everything in Chasing Love feels about as real as a unicorn. The sets look like sets, the actors look like actors, and the lighting feels artificial. Even the sex appears rehearsed, unerotic, and mechanical. Call it ultrasoftcore porn—so soft that it slips right off the screen and out of your mind like a bad dream you'd rather not remember.
The best way to watch something like Chasing Love—that is, if you truly hate yourself—is to switch off your brain and let the badness overwhelm your senses. Submit yourself to the clumsiness of cartoonish sound cues and acting so exaggerated it makes overacting look Oscar-worthy. The show is so concerned with being a cute, cho-cho-cute romantic serial that it never stops to ask whether Piang (Namwan Natchaya Vongbut) is abusing her position to pursue Song, or whether Ploy (Fay Apisara Lertwisettheerakul) helps Piang uncover Song's relationship status partly in the hope of advancing her own career.
Maybe Chasing Love will venture into these pricklier territories in future episodes—or maybe it won't. What seems absolutely certain, however, is that aesthetically the show is unlikely to improve. Moreover, if the first episode of a series is meant to introduce the world of the story—a teaser for what lies ahead—then Chasing Love has made it abundantly clear that it was neither made nor meant for this viewer.
Best of luck to the target audience and to anyone intending to sit through all eight weekly episodes. I hope you emerge healthy, alive, and well. Have fun!
Final Score - [1/10]
Reviewed by - Vikas Yadav
Follow @vikasonorous on Twitter
Publisher at Midgard Times