Not sure if I agree with your remarks about (not) zooming in and tackling noise…
When working on noise reduction zooming in is rather essential. At the beginning of that process I often times zoom to +/- 400% (or higher). This is the only way to get the correct demosaicing method dialled in and, if the noise allows it, set the correct capture sharpening.
If you (also) use the wavelets module to denoise you need to zoom in to 200% or 300% to be able to set the best results.
The other options, impulse noise reduction and noise reduction should be done at 100% view. RawTherapee does not always show accurate results when you do not do this. The modules that are sensitive to this have the 1:1 token next to it.
About things turning out plastic, waxy ,lifeless or fake; Here’s an example of a rather high ISO image (20K) that was posted here on pixels that I tackled: Hockey game under lights: 20k ISO on m4/3
Only using the noise reduction module to tackle noise is often times not enough to get the job done. Most (all?) of the above is covered in the videos by Andy Astbury that I linked to in my previous reply.