Running Man: and then there were none!

Well, only days after I write about Gary leaving the show, I found out that the series would finally end in February 2017.

(EDIT 30/01/2017, Well, it seems that it will continue after all.)

This announcement came at the end of a confusing week in which SBS, the channel which makes the show, revealed that Song Ji Hyo and Kim Jong Kook would be leaving the show to make way for new cast members in Running Man 2 in January 2017.

Was this when they got the idea

for Running Man 2? (From ep 305)

Unfortunately, SBS didn’t reveal this to Song Ji Hyo or Kim Jong Kook until the day of the news release, which left them hurt and the fans angry. In the end, plans for Running Man 2 were dropped and the two regulars were reinstated with the announcement that Running Man would end for good in February 2017 with no second series.

My feelings on the series ending are mixed: I was still enjoying it, but at the same time I’m quite relieved. The cast aren’t getting any younger and both of the two mentioned above have had recurring injuries (Song Ji Hyo’s wrist and Kim Jong Kook’s knee). I’d been wondering how long it could go on for.

RM national rating 2010-2016

It seems that the high overseas sales wasn’t enough to save Running Man’s poor run (a ha ha) in the rating’s battle. As I mentioned previously, RM hasn’t been able to shift much from 6%-7%, no matter what it does.

There was a sudden drop in November 2015 when RM got squeezed between two shows: the massively popular new show Real Men 2 and the suddenly revitalized long-running 1 Night 2 Days. Since then, RM has never been able to claw back its share of the viewers.

Former regular Lizzy let's slip that she was sacked.

She's not the only one.

It’s not as if the show suddenly got worse. In fact, I thought that period (272 onwards) saw some very imaginative episodes. But public taste had left it for other shows and eventually SBS thought something had to be done.

It’s just a shame that they did it so badly. Sacking and then un-sacking members of the cast is never a good idea. However, The Korea Times says that the news was leaked and wasn't actually part of an official statement. Even so, it's a grand example of miscommunication. All of this nonsense happened around the 16th of December, so in a couple of weeks I’ll be looking very closely at those episodes that were recorded soon after the scandal broke for any signs of awkwardness. I hope they’ll mention it on air and have a good laugh about it, but I don’t think they will.

Whatever happened to this attitude?

Running Man: And then there were six

Ah, remember when there used to be nine regular members of Running Man? You know, back in the days when water was clean and bread was cheap. Well, those days are long gone and now we have to boil our water, slice our bread really thin and make do with only six regular members in Running Man. Something like that, anyway.

Once we were legion!!

Now... not so much.

Recently one of the regulars, Kang Gary, bid us all goodbye to concentrate on his music career and possibly also try to save his back which had, on and off, given him problems throughout his Running Man career.

While it was sad, it wasn’t a huge surprise. He’d made statements about leaving before and, apparently, he only stayed as long as he did after he was asked to do a few more months before he finally quit.

The finale was very sad and made me shed a tear, but it was slightly spoilt by the very end which suggested that Gary would be in the following episode, too. It kind of ruined the moment. Like winning a heated argument and leaving the room in triumph, only to have to sneak back in again and get your coat.

Mind you, the next episode (with Gary as a guest) was pretty funny and it was entertaining watching people squirm with having to meet him again so soon after a tearful farewell.

Since then, a Gary-less Running Man has carried on much as before, which I'm a bit surprised by. Ratings haven’t changed at all, seemingly stuck on 6-7% no matter what happens. Perhaps the biggest winner in terms of air-time has been Song Ji Hyo who now seems to feature more prominently.

So, no jumping the shark, no sudden drop in quality now that the seven cast members have been reduced to six. The chemistry is still there, which is a big relief.

Currently watching: Society Game

This new reality game show, a collaboration between Endemol and TvN, pits two teams against each other for a single cash prize at the end which goes to one person. Each team lives together for twelve days (during which the twelve episodes are recorded, making this a very efficient piece of TV) with one team working as a democracy, while the other is a benign dictatorship. Which will create most harmony?

It’s very addictive, as you might expect from TvN who also gave us The Genius and Crime Scene. Each episode is split between showing us how the players interact in their living quarters and the actual games between the two teams. With moments of levity and a lot of scheming, this part is an essential aspect of the game showing that the power struggles within the team are as important as the struggle between teams.

If a team loses the game, then they have to lose a player and this is decided by the leader at that time.

So we have it all: subterfuge and scheming, games, and all in a reality show setting that is self-contained. No islands or anything messy like that. The cynic in me sees it for what it is: a format designed to make profits in overseas sales. However, I can’t deny it’s my favourite show right now. And that’s down to the contestants.

These have been chosen from a wide range of backgrounds and none of them are particularly famous, which is probably a lesson that TvN learned from The Genius where people of similar professions/level of fame tended to group together.

The “stars” so far have been the comedian Yang Sanggook who’s managed to be the dictator of one team for the first four episodes.

Also there’s MJ Kim, a female MMA fighter who is basically a tiger in a woman’s body. She’s proven herself as a valuable team-member and – at the time of writing – a team leader.

But everyone has something to add. Macho Yoon does not live up to his name of macho, and is fairly ineffectual at everything. Choi Seolhwa is one of Yang Sanggook’s confidants, but she seems a bit paranoid and is constantly wondering if she should start a rebellion against the dictator.

It’s delightful nonsense. In episode one it tries to dress itself up as a sociological experiment, but its true purpose is clear: to entertain. And it does that so well that you can’t help but be carried along in its gossipy back-biting. Enormous fun.

You can keep up to date with English subs here thanks to the wonderful Bumdidlyumptious.

You know you’re a k-pop fan when...

Actually, my infatuation with all things k-pop has died down a bit in the past couple of years. I still keep an eye on the scene, but not with the same sense of anticipation as before.

But since I spent a lot of this weekend listening to Girls' Generation, I thought I’d sit down and write a list describing the signs that you’ve finally given in to the allure of k-pop. These lists are all over the internet, but even so they never really reflect how k-pop affected me. So here’s my personal list and maybe it’ll strike a chord with you.


1. When you listen to Western pop, you imagine a Korean act is singing it

Once upon a time, when I listened to a song, I used to imagine myself in the pop video. Not any more. Now I imagine acts like BigBang or Miss A instead. It depends on who I’m listening to, of course, but I’ve definitely noticed a tendency for me to imagine song X is a particular act’s first English release, and then I wonder what the video would be like, their appearance on Music Bank, etc etc.


2. You listen to music every day but you have no idea who is number one in your country

I used to have my finger on the pulse of the music biz. I worked for EMI for four years and I was quite the expert on upcoming acts. Then I lived in Italy for several years, but I still had an idea of who was big in the UK. Then I came back to England, discovered k-pop and then suddenly the UK top forty just seemed unnecessary. I was so out of touch that I didn't even know when a couple of bands I liked (The Lumineers and First Aid Kit) became successful.


3. You get annoyed when people confuse Korean, Japanese and Chinese pop cultures

Seriously, I never used to give a shit about this stuff, but then it started to really get to me (now, not so much. I just assume they’re being ironic and laugh it off). Even stuff like confusing Soju and Sake would annoy me. They’re completely different! If they weren’t different they wouldn’t have the different names! I mean, come on!


4. Saying “aishh” or “aigoo”

This is one that I’ve seen on other lists, and personally I thought it wouldn’t happen to me. But I must admit, if I get annoyed enough with someone saying something stupid, I find myself saying “aishhh” before explaining exactly where they’re wrong. Slightly embarrassing, and I hope nobody notices.


5. You feel sorry for people who don’t like k-pop

This one’s a bit patronizing. I mean, snobbish dismissal of other people’s tastes in music is common in school children, but just looks absurd when coming from a grown adult. This means when I meet someone who says they don’t know about k-pop, I have to bite my tongue to stop myself from saying “Really? So you have no fun at all?” Western pop tends to look like a dour mix of greys compared to K-pop's dazzling palette of primary colours. Having said that, I genuinely do feel sorry for anyone who hasn't seen The Genius and that's not patronizing: that's a genuine feeling of remorse for someone's misfortune.


6. You get far too excited when Korean TV shows a Korean brand that you use in real life

I admit when I saw episode six of My Love From Another Star where Jun Ji Hyun offers someone a coffee of the same brand that I buy, I felt strangely elated. Like it somehow validated my interest in K-pop, making me feel a little bit more... authentic, somehow.

7. You start feeling like you’re in some kind of social experiment

Ever stopped to think about how weird your situation is? You’ve decided to divorce yourself from the culture that surrounds you and adopt a different culture instead. Your conversational skills drop off rapidly as you can’t discuss the latest TV/music/films that everyone else has seen. In fact, it’s not that different from being old. You find that no one understands your cultural references and when you do speak, people wait patiently until you’re finished and then change the subject.


8. You’re surprised when people say they don’t like songs in a foreign language

This depends on where you grew up, of course, but in the UK foreign pop music has always been patronized, probably due to its connection to the Eurovision Song Contest, which is now more popular for the fancy dress parties it inspires that the actual music. But after years of listening to foreign music, it comes as a shock when I’m reminded that some people have a real issue with songs in another language. Maybe it’s because they can’t sing along. I don't know.

- - - - -

So that's my list. No idea idea if anyone else feels the same and I guess it's applicable to any xenophile, but I thought I'd put it out there anyway.

Currently watching: The Genius The Grand Finale

* Spoilers for episodes one to three! *

* Don’t say you weren’t warned! *

There’s good and bad about this series. On the down side is the contestant Kim Kyunghoon. His character seems to be a desperate-to-please underling. A sort of Gollum to the other contestants’ Frodo and/or Sauron. I hope this will change in episode four. It's a little undignified.

But the good bit is that the games (so far) reward minority alliances. In series three, it seemed too easy to put together a reliable set of more than half the players and then steamroller the other remaining players. Not this time. In each of the first three games, it’s even been possible to survive without joining a team at all.

And this brings me to the real surprise of the series: Lee Junseok. Last time I wrote about The Genius, I said he’d probably go out early. But he has been a strong player and one who relishes the idea of a minority win. I admire that.

He’s also given us the best moment of the series so far. In episode three, the game revolves around ordering one of three types of food, and also guessing how many people ordered the same thing. In order to save a team member from coming last, he discovers his opponents plans and then goes against his own team’s plan in order to stop them. This kind of maverick thinking has made him an early favourite with me.

Another event of note is the crushing defeat of Lim Yohwan (second in season two, but notoriously bad at team games) by Yeonsung. I’m glad Yeonsung has retained his ruthless edge, and I hope he’ll go far.

Excellent subs by Bumdidlyumptious, as always.

Looking forward to: The Genius season 4

And so series four of The Genius begins on June 27th and judging by its subtitle “The Grand Final” it could be the last we see of The Genius. At least for a while.

The contestants for this series are notable players from the previous three seasons. I decided to put on my best sports journalist hat and give a list of who’s competing, along with how well I think they’ll do.

From season one:

Hong Jinho

The winner of season one, he found himself unable to get going in season two as he was excluded from most of the negotiating: people were just too wary of him.

This might be a problem again, but since season one his career as a TV presenter has improved and he’s worked with two opponents: Choi Jungmoon and Jang Dongmin so I imagine it’ll be easier to form alliances this time.

Chances: Very good. One of the favourites.

Lee Sangmin

Third in season one and winner of season two, this is the man to beat. His form in season two was exceptional: he went through the entire season without having to compete in a single death match.

Chances: Excellent. The favourite to win if past performance is anything to go by.

Kim Kyungran

Second placed in season one, Kyungran matched a keen intellect with an ability to build alliances. Not easily swayed by others and very quick to spot weaknesses. She beat Lee Sangmin in a head to head death match, so is clearly a threat to anyone.

Chances: Good. But she may be an early target as someone who easily builds teams, especially if she sticks to those players she knows best (ie, those from season one) at the expense of others.

Lee Junseok

He was eliminated in the first episode of season one and, as such, is a bit of an unknown quantity. As a Harvard graduate, he’s clearly no idiot, but his lack of experience may be decisive.

Chances: Poor. I think he’ll go out in the first or second episode.

Choi Jungmoon

Despite having an IQ of 150, she’s seen as a weaker player because she lost in season one by a simple trick. It was people vs zombies (selected randomly by drawing cards), and another player casually asked her if she was a person or a human. Since she was a zombie, she didn’t know the wording on the card for people, so she couldn’t answer. This sealed her fate.

Chances: Poor. Will probably be an early target for death matches.


From Season 2:

Lim Yohwan

Second place in season two, and what an odd player he was. Hopeless at team games, but very strong in the one vs one death matches. He was unable to build alliances, and when he did he usually annoyed them.

I think he only got through to the final by being so bad at the games that he never won any garnets and so was never a potential choice for a death match.

Chances: Middling. He’ll need to find a way to beat each game alone, or start trusting people.

Yoo Junghyun

Talk about underestimating someone. This politician jovially stumbled through the first half of season two without anyone taking him seriously. He was excluded from alliances, but also he was never targeted as an enemy.

That changed in episode seven. After a strong showing, followed by a series of victories in death matches, he revealed himself as a strong player before finally going out in episode 11.

Chances: Middling. He went a long way in season two because no one saw him as a threat. He can’t do that now.

Lim Yoosun

Lost in a death match to Lim Yohwan in episode five, so is one of the least experienced players. Nevertheless she had a strong presence and an ability to quickly build alliances.

Chances: Middling. In her last appearance, she was undone by a spy in her team. That shows a bit of a blind spot when it comes to building alliances.

From Season 3:

Jang Dongmin

Winner of season three, and must be one of the favourites. He’s also shown in the TV show Crime Scene that he has a keen eye and a quick mind. He and Oh Hyunmin formed an early alliance to get both of them to the finals, and they complemented each other excellently.

Chances: Good. I expect him to go a long way.

Oh Hyunmin

Second place in season three, he was the brains of the Oh Hyunmin/Jang Dongmin alliance while Dongmin supplied the brawn, rounding up people to join their team. I don’t expect them to team up together again, but the experience he gained in season three will make Oh Hyunmin a very strong opponent.

Chances: Very good. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was a finalist.

Kim Yoohyun

A poker player who reached episode nine of season three. However, despite doing so well, he was kind of anonymous and he lost the death match quite easily.

Chances: Middling. Typical poker player: hard to tell.

Choi Yeonseung

This doctor demonstrated a mean streak in season three. In episode three he was betrayed by a team of people and sent to the death match. He survived to fight another day, and in the following episodes, each member of that team were eliminated one by one. Some fell by chance, but some of them were targetted by him.

Chances: Good. He lasted until episode eleven in season three, and I expect him to do well again.

Kim Kyunghoon

This player was sure of victory at the start but, like so many others who were over-confident, he fell early. Clumsily, he betrayed his team mates in episode one, which made it hard to get people to trust him again and he went out in episode two.

Chances: Middling to poor. Another player with little experience, even if he did show some potential with his betrayal skills.

----------------

I am quietly excited by this series. I’m surprised that it came around so soon, though. I hope they’re not rushing into things. Season three was the weakest one so far, so I don’t want to see the decline continue due to lack of preparation.

Still, it should be essential viewing.

Currently watching: Crime Scene 2

This is the second series of the remarkably effective murder-mystery game show in which five regulars and a guest try to work out which of them is the murderer for that week’s mystery.

Only two cast members remain from series one, which is a shame, but they’re the two strongest: Hong Jin- Ho and Park Yi-Joon. They are joined by the singer Hani, the film director Jang Jin and the shouty comedian Jang Dong-Min. I was a bit disappointed when I saw that Jong Dong-Min would be in the cast because he became a bit insufferable in the third series of The Genius, but thankfully he’s kept the shouting down to a minimum this time.

Apart from episode one, which was mostly about introducing the cast with a mini-murder mystery set in one room, the format is almost the same as before. The only big change is that one member of the cast is given the role of The Detective, which effectively means they can’t be the murderer. This has helped a lot, since in series one there was always one character who clearly had nothing to do with the murder. Not so much this time around, which is nice.

The new cast have gelled together very well very quickly. Hong Jin-Ho and Park Yi-Joon are comfortable in this situation, as you’d expect, but I’ve also enjoyed Jang Jin’s over-reliance on his own powers of story-telling to help him solve the crime, and Hani has proved to be more than a pretty face. Since she’s a singer in the girl band Exid, you might think she’d be an intellectual lightweight but so far she’s been a match for the others. Even Jang Dong-Min has impressed me with his detective skills.

So I’m really enjoying the new series. They’ve kept the format as it was, but changed the cast which has done enough to keep things new and interesting. The crimes are so well-staged that everything is a clue. If you think something doesn’t matter because the set designer maybe bumped something or put something in the wrong place, then you’d be wrong. I’m amazed how detailed some of the sets are.

It's a great piece of TV, and I remain bemused as to why it’s not on UK screens. Out of all the variety formats Korean TV has come up with, this is the most international. And this would be such a big hit here. It’s funny and tense and interesting and everything you want from a murder mystery. I remain eternally in the debt of the subber Bumdidlyumptious for their work.

Just finished: The Genius: Black Garnet

Spoilerish...

It’s only had three series, but watching the final of this game show already has a certain ritual attached to it: Phone off, curtains drawn, lights off, sit away from keyboard and mouse in case accidentally moving them gives away how long is left before the end.

Despite all that care and attention, I must admit that series three has been a bit flat compared to the previous two. Maybe I was too caught up in how new the show was to me during series 1 and 2, but series 3 didn’t have the same kind of zip as before.

The games seemed to have one way to win, and no way to counter-attack. Once a team had been formed and the right strategy devised, they were pretty unstoppable unless someone betrayed them or changed sides. And in this series, the two players who first did this both got eliminated in the first two episodes. Perhaps that persuaded others not to do the same.

The main story of this series was a true bromance between student genius Oh Hyunmin and comedian Jang Dongmin. The two of them formed a team in episode six with the aim of both of them getting to the finals, and it worked.

It robbed the show of something, though. Their mix of strategic expertise and charisma (and shouting) was unbeatable, and then on those occasions when their plan went wrong and one of them went to the Death Match to see who’d be eliminated that round, they came through. Choi Yeonseung came closest to breaking up their alliance, but couldn’t manage it.

So, it was fun, but not as incredible as it once was. I hope that it regains some of its tension and skullduggery next time.

Just finished: Liar Game

Yes, we have spoilers.

This series based around games of bluffing and bargaining ended on a very open note, clearly pointing towards a second, darker series. And, by episode 10, I thought that this series would increase the tension for the series finale. At the end of that episode, one contestant was last seen trapped in an elevator, apparently free-falling to his death. But at the start of the next episode, nobody seemed to be that bothered that he wasn’t around to film the next game or even answer his phone. They just carried on without him.

The other drawback of the final episode of this series was the amount of talking that went on. The motives and events behind everything that happened were explained in quite a bit of detail, and I was somewhat disappointed to see the old storyline of “we were all in an orphanage together but I forgot” to explain why nobody had realised the link between the contestants until the end. This was a plot device I last saw in Final Fantasy 8, and I remember thinking at the time that I hope I never see it again.

Then there was the kidnapping of the main contestant’s father. This sub-plot really came out of nowhere, and wasn’t terribly well thought out. It ended with a rather silly fight between a good guy and a bad guy while the father, tied to a chair, wobbled about a bit in the foreground. I suppose he must have forgotten that he was doused in petrol and he was about to knock a lit Zippo lighter onto the pool of liquid around him. An easy mistake to make.

So that’s the bad news.

The good news is that this remained entertaining despite the slightly shaky finale. And it was better than the Japanese version, by quite some distance in the end. The real life setting of a TV reality show meant that events of the game had some kind of repercussions outside the game. I liked the scenes about debt collectors and how the public were reacting. It put everything in a world I recognised.

I enjoyed the games, too. The Contraband game was far clearer in Korean version. The Japanese version involved taking out the opponents' money and then making them think they were smuggling it back in again. The Korean version was mostly about who to trust and how to trick the game. Plus, it had this shot in it.

It was far better, too, to have the enemy as another contestant instead of some faceless group of enigmatic criminals. Shin Sung Rok was great as the evil mastermind determined to destroy his rival. He was by far the most interesting character in the series – a seething pit of hidden disgust at those around him. Nicely underplayed.

And, perhaps the Korean version’s biggest triumph over the Japanese drama concerns the final episode. In the original Liar Game, it was a two-hour recap of the previous ten episodes followed by a fifteen minute epilogue stuck on the end. You can’t imagine how disappointed I was when I first saw that. I was expecting a feature length Battle Royale to end the fantastic first series. The Korean Liar Game at least sticks to one hour per episode and doesn’t waste too much time with flashbacks.

So, although it wasn’t perfect, I really enjoyed this series and I look forward to the next.