This is a fun show, but a ridiculously long one. At 2.5 hours PER EPISODE, it's way too much of a time investment. There's a lot of filler-like content in the elimination episodes, for example, where the contestants play games instead of just showing the entire elimination process. In addition, the sheer number of trainees in the first half of the show (prior to being eliminated to 60 and then 35 people) made it very hard to see the trainees beyond the ones that the show was clearly pushing already.

Recommended watching process: Watch ep. 1 with the auditions, then only the performances until ep. 8. After that it's worth watching entire episodes (minus filler content).

Overall, this wasn't a bad show - I had a lot of fun with it and cared about the trainees. It was very fun to watch them perform and grow. In particular, I loved Nong Nong. The mentors were all amazing too!! However, Idol Producer was way too long for me and while I watched the first ~4 episodes in full, I was skipping parts of the other episodes because they couldn't keep my attention for the entire time. 7 stars.