Hot Blood, Episode 1: Someone call the cops.

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(Written May 7, 2024)

A little heads-up before we begin.  For this series, I’m again relying on a kind soul who uploaded subtitled episodes to YouTube.  The episodes are sometimes split into three or three segments, and in the case of Episode One, I could only get the first ten minutes.  But it looks like I’ve got full episodes after that, and besides, there’s a LOT to unpack in these first ten minutes of Episode One.  Let’s start by talking about tone.

We open with the following:

• Black & white images of people walking away from the camera on a desolate-looking beach while a man on the soundtrack gasps for breath and screams, “ENOUGH!” 
  
  
• Another male voice yells “CONCENTRATE!” as the footage goes from black & white to black & blood red.  We see part of a face twisted in anguish. 
  
  
• The images keep switching back and forth from black & white to black & blood red as another male voice yells, “GET THROUGH THIS!” and then screams in pain.
  
  
• Finally, we get the title screen.

If I had just turned on my TV and randomly came across this, I would think it was a trailer for a new found-footage horror movie with an all-Asian cast. 

We cut to the JYP Entertainment Building.  We get a time and date stamp of 11am on January 2^nd, 2008.  This is an emergency conference between Mnet Productions (the TV network airing this) and JYP, which I now see stands for Park-Jin-Young, the Korean star who founded the company.  He’s a singer/songwriter, producer, actor, and reality show judge.  (According to his Wikipedia page, he was a judge on the survival reality show that brought us Stray Kids.)

We cut to a conference room.  For a building that is so light and cool-looking on the outside, the inside looks like a police precinct from a 70s American cop show.  (I had to lighten this screenshot quite a bit.)  I keep waiting for a gravelly-voiced narrator to say, “Previously on Law & Order, Boy Band Edition…”

Park Jin-Young himself sits at the head of the conference table.  He looks very concerned.  The people around the table ask him if the kids will be able to get through this.  They remind him that these kids are young.  JYP says, “They have to be at this level, or there’s no point.”

Everyone looks anxiously at JYP, who is so distracted by whatever this problem is, he appears to have accidentally styled his hair with an industrial leafblower.  The camera zooms in on him dramatically as he says (according to the translation), “I will subtract.”  I’m think he’s about to eliminate some trainees, but based on the tone so far, I could easily believe he’s going to murder them.

We now cut to a practice room a few hours later.  Trainees are playing music and looking confused, like they don’t know why there are cameras pointed at them.  Some trainees try to stay inconspicuous in the back of the room.  Others attempt some tentative dance steps.  I seriously don’t think anyone told them they were going to be doing a documentary.  My suspicions are confirmed when JYP strides in and tells them to turn off the music.  He tells the shaggy-haired kids that the cameras are there because Mnet will be documenting their lives as trainees. 

I want to believe that this is staged, but the trainees aren’t that good at acting yet.  JYP introduces them to Baek PD.  Baek PD asks the trainees to introduce themselves on camera.  Our first volunteer is Jang Woo Young, one of the eventual members of 2pm, and a living example of why a stylist’s job is so important.

Woo Young gives us some of his dance moves.  We only get to see a few seconds of each trainee’s introduction.  One by one, each nervous-looking trainee stands up to introduce themselves and do some kind of performance.  They are all very self-conscious. 

As I watch these very young men try to make a good first impression, I think about how even the best stylists can’t turn the actual person into an idol.  So many times, I’ll be amazed at how godlike a boy group will look in their music videos, and then I watch interviews or fan footage, and they’re a bunch of socially awkward kids.  They get better at maintaining the idol image as they get older, but catch them when they first debut, and their confidence and maturity level hasn’t caught up to the image.  It doesn’t help that trainees aren’t allowed to date and don’t have time for social activities outside of training, so they don’t know how to talk to people.  

Back to our introductions, and now we get someone very interesting.  This is twenty year-old Nichkhun.  He introduces himself as Khun.  He struggles to speak Korean and says he just came from the States.  He does not sing or dance as part of his introduction.  He does a goofy little skit with another trainee.  Then we continue with the other introductions, but we will be keeping an eye on this foreigner who is clearly very good at pivoting to humor when he’s nervous.

Someone else who catches my attention is Lim Seul Ong.  At first, I’m thinking he’s pretty much just like all the others, but then he surprises me with his song choice:  George Benson’s 1976 hit “This Masquerade.”  In just the few seconds we get to hear him, he sings it beautifully.  A bit too high and fast, probably due to nerves, but I can hear the soul in his voice.  I check my band list, and he will make it into 2am.

We get some other standouts.  Li Swee Chi learned acrobatics in China and does a perfect handspring and backflip.  Twenty year-old Ok Taec Yeon, who will make it into 2pm, does an impression of Darth Vader saying “Luke, I am your father.”  (Again, young and socially awkward, just the kind of thing a boy would have done to try to impress girls back in middle school.)  Eighteen year-old Lee Jun Ho, our King the Land dreamboat from 2pm, does something a little like beatboxing and a lot like spitting and gasping on a pretend microphone. 

After the introductions, Baek PD tells the trainees the documentary project will be called Hot Blood.  They all put their hands in and do a cheer.  Episode One is officially off and running, at least the six minutes left of it I’ll get to see.

We cut to the next morning in front of the JYP Building, as all the trainees get into a van.  They are headed off to a photo shoot.  On the way, they quote movie lines and do impressions, mugging for the camera.  I have to wonder how much of this Khun understands.  I remember being an exchange student in Barcelona, barely speaking the language, just smiling as everyone around me laughed and talked, while I had no idea what was going on. 

We arrive at the Yang Pyung Factory.  From what I can find online, this is a Costco factory in Seoul.  Our trainees are told that the concept of the shoot will be “strong guy, tough guy.”  They are told not to look like gentlemen.  

Again, I’m imagining this from Khun’s perspective.  From watching an interview he did with DIVE Studios in 2020, I learned he was a teenager living in the Los Angeles area and was approached by a Korean-speaking woman at a music festival.  He learned through the woman’s translator that she was inviting him to come to Seoul and be a trainee, even though he had zero performing arts experience.  Fast-forward to right now in the documentary.  He’s been put into a van and is currently standing on a Costco warehouse loading dock, being told to act macho so people can take pictures of him.  I’m pretty sure most murders on Law and Order happen like this.

Thankfully, this appears to be the one time in human history that this isn’t something illegal.  Our trainees are put into nice suits and do their best to look tough.  Mostly, they just don’t smile.  Instead of tough and strong, I would describe them as suave and cool.  Then I realize that what they’re trying to do is get away from the cute K-pop boy band aesthetic.  They’re not doing finger hearts or other cutesy things you see in early photos of young boy groups.  These are men.  I mean, technically they’re barely out of their teens (and a couple are still teens), but that’s not the message they’re trying to send.

 

The ten minutes of this episode end here, but I get more context from 2pm’s Wikipedia page.  The photo shoot in this episode is actually pretty significant.  Most young K-pop groups were showing a pretty boy image at the time, but these trainees were the first to show a tougher image.  They are credited with creating a new boy group image called “jimseung-dol,” which means a beast/animal idol.  This style would be adopted by many boy groups that came after them, most notably Monsta X.

In fact, I would argue that subsequent boy groups perfected this jimseung-dol image that 2pm/2am started.  The pictures I’m seeing from the Costco warehouse could be of your average JCPenney catalog model.  The ones below are examples of bands who followed them, Monsta X and ATEEZ, which definitely create a different vibe.

Defiant, sexy/cool images like this are pretty common now, but back in 2008, idols weren’t emphasizing their masculinity like this.  Abandoning the cutesy image also meant not looking so safe and approachable, which was a risk for JYP Entertainment to be taking.  It’s frustrating that I can’t see the rest of this episode, because I’d love to see if they talk about that at all.

I guess we’ll have to pick this up next time with Episode Two.  In the meantime, if you are a teenage boy in the United States, and a stranger approaches you and tries to convince you to go to a foreign country with her so she can make you a star, run away as fast as you can.  Khun may look like he got lucky, but I can’t get this show’s opening credits out of my head.  This will not end well.     

Episode 2:  Beware the nice guy of DOOM.

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