Produce Camp 2020 (2020)

I am an huge fan of chinese produce shows. I've pretty much watched them all, so I have a solid idea of how they work. If I had to be honest, Chuang 2020 was a huge letdown. Don't get me wrong, the trainees are talented and production is great, but the show REALLY could've been better.

If you are new to chinese produce shows, let me explain to you first the gist of things. If you're not, skip this paragraph LOL. So basically, these shows invite around a 100 trainees from different companies and make them compete to debut into the final lineup. The final lineup usually ranges from 7 spots to 11 spots depending on the show. For Chuang 2020, they narrowed it down to only seven debut spots. At the very start of the show, each of the trainees first have to go through a evaluation by the show judges. (in this case were Victoria, Tao, Luhan, and Mao Buyi.) Then they go through a theme song evaluation, where each trainee is given the same amount to time to learn the lyrics and dance to that certain theme song. As the show progresses, the trainees split into many different groups to perform on evaluation stages with an audience. These stages allow the trainees to showcase their capability as an idol and the audience get to vote for their favorite picks. HOWEVER audience vote does not determine final rankings. The final rankings are actually determined by online fan voting, and the audience vote only give bonus votes in addition to that online fan voting. After each evaluation stage, trainees get eliminated based on their vote rankings. Eventually, trainees are narrowed down to top 15 and there is a show finale where those 15 trainees give a final performance to a live audience. The final debut lineup is also announced in the show finale.

Okay time to give the actual review on my thoughts on Chuang 2020 by listing the pros and cons:

Pros:

1. Production quality was very high.
Tencent is LOADED. The trainees in Chuang 2020 literally lived like princesses. The entire living complex was a castle design, and the trainees took buses to the practice rooms?? Living that dream. Their stages were very well decorated too, everything just looked expensive. Tencent really put a lot a money into the show and trainees.

2. Power vocals everywhere.
Chuang 2020 has sooo many power vocal trainees. The amount of good singers in the show were insane, props to Tencent for finding them.

3. Episodes were long, so there was a lot of content.
This could be a pro or con depending on the viewer, but each Chuang 2020 episode was around 6 hours long. Tencent gave a lottt of content. It was pretty nice watching the many different trainee interactions, but it did occasionally get draggy.

Cons:

1. The environment was extremely toxic.
I understand that it was a competition to make it into the debut lineup but these girls WERE NOT messing around. It got to the point where you could sense the tension as a VIEWER. I do have to admit that the judges played a part in creating that tension, but even so, I did not sign up to watch a bunch of girls be passive aggressive with each other??

2. Screentime was 100% biased.
I've never seen such bad screentime on a chinese produce show. It got so bad that the CENTER for the theme song had almost zero shots in the last few episodes. Instead, there were a couple of select trainees who got an excessive amount of screentime, making the Chuang 2020 look like [blank] and friends. :/

3. Performances did not stand out.
This is slightly biased since its my own opinion, but none of the performances stuck with me. I'm not saying the trainees weren't talented, they were more than a few power vocals and dancers. I'm not sure what was missing because the quality of the production was perfectly fine; there was just something about the performances themselves. And don't get me started on the last stages with the male celebrities, it was so awkward to watch because (almost) all the guys literally just stood there and looked cute. I know its a Produce Camp tradition but I still can't help but cringe when I watch them.

Now, I'm not discouraging ANYONE from watching the show. Please go ahead, there are so many talented trainees. I tried to be as unbiased as possible when writing this review, and hope future viewers will find it helpful!

I do recommend everyone try watching the first episode before deciding whether you like the show or not. As for exo-ls, there is a Luhan, Tao, and Kris interaction if you're interested ;)

ps. this is my first review, hope i wrote it well enough !!

Thank you for reading and hope you have an amazing day ♡

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