Wild Idol, Episode 6: Beef and Circuses

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(Written on April 12, 2024)

OK, we are back.  I have taken a 24-hour detox from K-pop.  I switched to watching YouTube commentary videos and learned that sometime over the past six months, while I’ve been obsessed with K-pop, we all started hating J-Lo.  Also, there was an eclipse.  And an earthquake.  And today I learned that Donald Trump will very likely take my home state of North Carolina in the November election. 

So I’m just going to take refuge back down the sometimes ugly but always distracting K-pop rabbit hole again.  The recaps will continue to give me something to focus on and help preserve what’s left of my sanity. 

Some quick housekeeping first.  When I was recapping No Mercy, I included a reference chart to help readers keep track of who the players were and how the eventual winners were faring.  With so many contestants on Wild Idol, I haven’t been doing that, but I’m going to try to help everyone keep track with this current chart.  I’ll only update it when people get eliminated or team info changes, because the team rankings and individual rankings are too much to keep track of.  So, as of right now, here are the teams:

The Episode Six opening montage is about cuckoos, which is appropriate, because that’s what this show has turned me into.  We learn that they fly long distances to lay eggs in other birds’ nests before flying back.  When the eggs hatch, the baby cuckoos have to compete in dance, rap, and vocal competitions so they can debut.  What can I say?  Nature is weird.

Our panelists open the show by telling us that things are about to get really intense, and that the idols have, and I quote, “been too friendly with each other up to this point.”  I’m sorry, what?  Were there secret bonus episodes that got slipped in during my brief hiatus from recapping?  As if to prove my point, we get montages of our past conflicts.  Gun Wook and The Brat arguing over who gets to rap.  Jooan’s decision to move teams.  (“We still don’t know his intentions,” says a panelist.  Deeeeeeeep breath.  Unclench those fists.)

We now resume the show that the panelists clearly haven’t been watching.  Endurance coaches Jung Kook and Minho are still here.  They tell our idols that today’s goal is to have fun. 

I love that the idols’ immediate collective reaction is suspicion.  They ask questions like, “What are we doing?” and “What mission could it be?”  These guys will never trust anything good in their lives again.  At this point, you could wish any of them a happy birthday, and they’d demand to know what you meant by that.

“This time, there will be no points,” Jung Kook tells them.  Some idols cheer.  Others, like me, are waiting for the other shoe to drop.  But no, he’s right.  The winner of this next challenge will get a Korean Beef Set.  I looked it up, and I think they’re just offering them beef.  Raw beef.  But the contestants react like it’s a good thing, so … yay? 

Everyone is calling it a Korean Beef Party.  You showrunners have been feeding these guys, right?  You’re not making them live on half an apple a day?  (OK, sorry, I’ll let it go.)

One of the coaches brings out the beef set, and okay, I guess they’re going to have a barbecue.  “Look at that marbling,” someone exclaims.  I’m glad they’re happy about this, but looking at a pack of raw meat is making me feel queasy.  Let’s keep this show moving.  Someone needs to win and ingest this thing before it’s been out in the sun too long.

Now it’s time for our “Wild Idol Athletics Championship” to begin, and here’s where I do have some background.  One of the most wildly popular and still-running reality shows in South Korea is called Idol Star Athletics Championships.  For GenX Americans like me, do you remember Battle of the Network Stars in the 1970s?  It’s exactly like that.  Celebrities competing in swimming, running, javelin, gymnastics, bowling, archery, you name it.  

In fact, our buddy Minho, who is currently offering our idols enough beef to bring the entire state of Texas to orgasm, set a record in 50-meter freestyle swimming on this show in 2011.  BTS won three gold medals and one silver in the 100-meter relay in 2015, 2016, and 2017.  The group Seventeen set an archery record in 2019.  And now we’re about to get the Wild Idol adaptation of this show.  It’s already making me nostalgic for Battle of the Network Stars.  I loved that show, and I’m jealous that South Korea has kept their version going all these years.

First up in the Wild Idol Athletics Championship (WIAC) is the Four-on-Four Group Arm Wrestling.  Teams B and D will play against each other, then A and C will play each other, and I’m still waiting for them to be told they have to wear oven mitts or dance to the Wild Idols theme song while arm wrestling, because I refuse to believe this is just a good time with a marbled meat prize.  This show is always up to something.

Sunghyuk winds up winning the event for Team D.  He’s beaten everyone, including Baby Hercules.  It’s funny how Baby H is so physically intimidating but gets beaten in arm wrestling by people smaller than himself.  For fun, Sunghyuk arm wrestles Minho and wins.  Then he arm wrestles Jung Kook and loses.  In the meantime, his teammates are carrying around the rapidly-defrosting package of beef.  The next challenge should be who can survive E.coli. 

Next up in the WIAC is full-on wrestling.  The players write letters on the soles of their feet, put on socks, and then wrestle to see if they can pull off each other’s socks and put the letters together to guess what word each team is spelling.  You have to know the Korean alphabet to follow this game.  The prize for the winning team is … hoo boy … another Korean beef set!

We spend the next several minutes watching these guys wrestle while trying to pull each other’s socks off and form words, which is a sentence I can’t believe I just typed.  Let’s cut to the end.  Team A wins.  They get their beef set. 

Next event.  The contestants have to fill up containers with water from the river.  They have to carry the water to the containers using their hands or clothing only.  They fill their shoes and soak their jumpsuits to wring out.  Team C wins the beef set and probably salmonella at this point.

In the end, Jung Kook and Minho bring out grills, and everyone eats tons of beef.  I can’t imagine how they are going to do any more competitions after eating all that red meat.  This is a trap, isn’t it?  They’ll all get meat sweats and pass out so the Tower can give them all zero points in the “Run ‘Til You Die of a Pulmonary Embolism” Challenge.

Thankfully, there are no more challenges today.  Night falls.  Everyone is in their tents, hopefully monitoring their blood pressure.  We see that Team A is bummed again.  They say they came in last again today, and they’re feeling down even though they got a meat kit and points didn’t matter.  Wait, didn’t they win the sock wrestling competition?  What’s wrong with this team?  We see on the other side of the tent that Hyung Seok is sound asleep.   Good for him.  After beating leukemia, he probably doesn’t consider today a big deal.  Plus, he’s eaten the equivalent of a small cow.

Night passes.  The next morning, Wild Idol gives us a great shot of the Tower in the fog with video of a waterfall on its screen.  All the screenshots I tried to get of it came out too hazy.  It’s worth a Kocowa subscription.

The new day brings pouring rain.  The drums start beating.  I love that none of the idols move.  They sleep through the drums because they are in beef comas, and the coaches have to come to the tents to find them.  Oh, wait!  It’s the Bickering Brothers!  Okay, now I’m really glad I kept going with these recaps.  I’ve missed them.

The Bickering Brothers go from tent to tent, demanding in irritated voices that everyone get up.  The Spark gives my favorite confessional quote so far:  “I thought for five seconds that they looked familiar.”  The poor guy can barely move to wipe the sleep out of his eyes.

The Spark also calls them twins.  I Googled it, and they’re identical twins.  I squint at the screen. It’s hard to see if they look identical.  The only similarities I see is that they’re both always soaking wet and yelling.  One of them is meaner, so I thought he was the older brother, but nope, he’s just grumpy.  

The idols do their morning run in raincoats before gathering for a Team Mission in stamina.  I feel sorry for the guys wearing glasses in this weather.  The first challenge is called the Human Baton Relay Race.  Three team members have to carry the fourth while doing a 100-meter lap around the field.  They run the lap four times, each time with a different person being the baton.  In the pouring rain.  These poor guys.  When Team D has Baby H as the baton, they can barely hang on to him. 

Team B wins (yay Jooan!), followed by Teams A, D, and then C.  Good for you, Team A!  You got second place!  Now please cheer up.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled Mission to do a blatant product placement.  Everyone gets packages of something called Masitdak Pork Tenderloin Snacks.  Right after a beef dinner the night before.  These guys will be dead by thirty. 

On to the next challenge.  The Bickering Twins point to the other side of the river.  On the riverbank is a pile of logs.  I don’t know why the twins are so obsessed with logs, which have now become a recurring nightmare for our contestants.  They will have to move the logs across waist-deep rushing water in the rain.  The team that moves the most logs without drowning wins. 

Changsun, true to form, is developing a strategy for Team B.  He’s just the best.  He’s the Jooheon of this show.

Taehoon, an experienced swimmer, gets to the other side first.  Every member of Team B is strong enough to carry logs by themselves.  It is kind of funny that they’re still wearing raincoats while swimming.  Meanwhile, their nemesis, Team A, is working in pairs and struggling.  Jooan is on the team that is beating his former team, so he’s gotta feel conflicted, even though both Keanu Reeves and I agree he did the right thing.  In the end, Team B beats Team A, ten logs to six.

Now for Teams C and D.  Team D tries passing the logs to the strongest ones to carry back across the river.  Sunghyuk is one of the strong ones, but the river is taking everything out of him.  In a moment that makes my heart stop, he loses his grip and falls in the rushing current, but thankfully he gets back up. 

Meanwhile, Team C is getting creative.  They let the river do the heavy lifting.  They float the logs, ride on them, whatever takes the strain off themselves.  They’re using the current to their advantage.  Of course, Aquaman is on this team.  I wonder if this was his idea.  Team C wins.

The logs are counted.  Team C carried the most.  Teams D and B tie, and Team A is in last place.

The rain is coming down so hard now, the camera crew can’t keep it off the lenses.  The Bickering Twins lead the idols in a chant about healthy bodies and minds, and suddenly the drums start up again.  Our waterlogged idols race back to the Tower.  It’s another Golden Box.  Back into the water we go. 

Except it’s not “we,” it’s Baby H.  His team yells at him to run, and he’s off like a cheetah.  Now that he’s not being held back by water, he’s running faster than I’ve seen anybody run on this show.  Of course, he gets the box.

He earns twenty extra points for Team D.  He opens the box, and we see cup-o-noodles and fish cake bars.  Our boys on Team D are jumping for joy.  I sure hope someone in the wild can dig up a microwave oven.  Maybe the next challenge is to build one.

Apparently they do have a microwave on set, because next we see them enjoying the food in their tent, out of the rain.  They do the math, and Baby H has earned 80 points just from getting all the boxes.  I’m not sure the math is mathing.  Isn’t this the third box?  I’m not going through my notes again.  If they want to say 80 points, fine.

Over in Team B’s tent, they’re happy with how well they did today, and I’m happy to see the future bandmates bonding like this. 

Now we go to Team A’s tent, and they’re in sourpuss mode again.  I guess the production team is fed up with them also, because we immediately cut back to Team D, who are putting on their shoes and venturing back out into the rain.  Somehow through the loud noise of rain hitting the tent, they can hear the drums again.  The other teams follow.

The Tower tells them that it’s time for the individual rankings.  I’m hoping they read the rankings instead of just showing them, because I have made zero percent progress in learning Korean, other than the brand names of popular meat snacks.  Fortunately, they do spell it out for us.

Number 1:  Gun Wook, leader of Team C.

Number 2:  Changsun, Team B’s leader and future CEO and great dad.

Three idols tie for third place.  Taehoon, Jaejun, and Aquaman.  Oof.  Everyone on Team B has been ranked so far except for Jooan.  And no one from Team A yet. 

Number 6:  Sunghyuk, leader of Team D.

Number 7:  The Brat.  They’re right by the river now.  Someone hit him with a log.

Number 8:  Ki Joong.  Sorry, my non-TAN guy, I can’t come up with a nickname for you.  You haven’t been getting a lot of screen time. 

Number 9:  Baby Hercules.  Really?  Only number nine?  After he got either three or four Golden Boxes?

Number 10:  The Cadet, from Team A.  Oh, no.  Jooan’s going to be at the bottom again, isn’t he?

We have a tie for eleventh place:  The Spark … and Jooan.  He did move up a bit in the rankings, but still.  After all that, he’s still near the bottom.

Rounding out the bottom, we have Surfer Dude at Number 13, and then the rest of Team A.  Number 14 is Hyung Seok, 15 is Hyunyeop, and 16 is Jiseong. 

Our TAN men are all over the rankings.  Just as I’m processing that, we find out we’re getting ANOTHER TEAMMATE TRADE.

The show really did it.  Those magnificent bastards.  I thought I was over my rage at a show that went off the air two years ago, and now that my guard is down, everything the wise Keanu Reeves taught us has gone right out the window.  No wonder he wound up doing that last Matrix movie that no one liked.  He knew we had lost faith in him.  May Neo have mercy on our souls.

Just look at Jooan’s reaction.  LOOK AT HIM.  Look at what you did to him.  I hope you’re happy with yourself, show.

Everyone is pissed off, and it starts raining harder because even the clouds have had enough of this.  The Tower, seemingly oblivious, tells them to consider the following in their trades:  coming up are two talent missions, and the second mission is for their second title song, whatever that means.  He tells them to start their discussions. 

Over at Team D, they ask Baby H if it’s time for another adventure, and the Indiana Jones theme music starts playing again.  I wonder how much that music has cost the show in licensing fees.  It was a waste of money this time, because Baby H immediately says he’s not ready to trade this time and proposes they play Rock Paper Scissors to decide. 

Team B is having a tough time as well.  Jooan has the lowest score on his team and has not lifted his head since the team trade was announced.  And just as he was starting to climb back up in the rankings.

Team C is struggling to decide.  So is Team A, but it’s not like they needed another reason to be total grumps.  The Cadet is the best vocalist on Team A, but he says it’s time for him to be selfish now and think of his individual score, which is being dragged down by a losing team.  (He tries to put it a bit more tactfully than that, but fails by using the word “incompetent” instead of “losing.”)  Turns out all members of Team A want to leave, except for Hyung Seok, who is disappointed in the lot of them.

Time’s up.  The Tower tells the players who will be leaving to remove their name tags and step forward.  In a stunning move, everyone in Team A except Hyung Seok steps forward to leave.  Hyung Seok, who was added to this group against his and their will, is now watching them all abandon him.  Look at his face.  I just know he’s thinking that he did not beat cancer for THIS.

The drama gets intense.  Both The Cadet and Jiseong fall to their knees to show they won’t budge and to beg to be chosen to leave.  Hyunyeop hesitates and then falls to his knees as well.  They are all fighting for a chance to get higher in the rankings and will not concede.

As if Hyung Seok hasn’t been through enough, the players on their knees now tell HIM to choose the person to leave.  You know what?  Now that the decision has been shoved at the guy who isn’t even the leader, he should choose himself to leave, just out of spite.  That is legitimately 100% what I would do.  You can’t leave me because I’M leaving YOU.

The three kneeling players stand back up, probably because those rocks look really uncomfortable, but they still refuse to back down.  They tell Hyung Seok they’re desperate.  He tells them, “All sixteen of us are desperate.”  I fist-pump in response.  He really should be the one to walk away from them.

But Hyung Seok is way more mature than I am.  He chooses The Cadet, maybe because he was first across the line, and tells him to make sure he makes it to the Top Seven.  Out of the three who want to leave, he picks the one non-TAN member and tells him to win in the end.  We need a moment of silence to process the irony.  (Is this actual irony?  I don’t care.)

Hyunyeop and Jiseong give up and walk back to the Team A line.  Hyung Seok stares straight ahead in resentment while his two remaining teammates sulk behind him.

Others choosing to leave:  The Brat from Team C, Surfer Dude from Team D, and … Jaejun from Team B.  Wait, how did that happen?  We get the answer during a flashback to Team B’s discussion while the Great Team A Escape was taking place.  Jaejun volunteered in the best interests of the team.  He’s the polar opposite of the three deserters on Team A.  I’m so glad he wins in the end.

The teams pick their new players, and once again, Team A is left with the last choice.  It’s The Brat.  I love it.  Here’s what the teams look like now:

The new team rankings are announced, since the traded idols took their scores with them.  The order is C, D, B, and in last place, A.

Team A, the show tells us, is in a gloomy mood.  YOU DON’T SAY.  As opposed to when else on this show?  And it’s not going to get much better with The Brat on their team.  To prove my point, as the other teams hug it out by the tents, Team A walks sullenly by without even looking at The Cadet.  Real mature, guys.  

The contestants gather at the Tower again, now that the traded players have moved into their new team tents.  Two more people are approaching.  It’s our vocal coaches again.  Panelist Kim “let me harp on your age” Sung Kyu and Kim “the other one” Jong Wan.  It’s time for a singing mission.  The winners of this mission will be considered for vocalist positions in the final winning K-pop group.  

The teams will each pick a song.  Three R&B-influenced K-pop songs I’m not familiar with, and … “Dynamite” by BTS.  One of my favorite BTS songs.  Unlike the others, it’s a disco song sung in English.  It’s a fast-paced, difficult song for native Korean-speakers to sing, even if they’re talented singers and know enough English.

The groups huddle to decide what song they want.  None of them want “Dynamite” because they’re all idiots who wouldn’t know a great song if it smacked them with an oar.  Sorry – I meant because it’s too hard to sing.

The teams get to choose songs by order of team rankings, so of course, Team A gets stuck with “Dynamite.”  You’ll never guess how they react.  If you said, “by moping and complaining,” you win a great big “well DUH” from me and a lifetime supply of fish cake bars.  (We have to get rid of them somehow.)

Then, suddenly, the stakes go way up.  One of the panelists casually mentions that ARMY will be watching these performances if they watch the show, and all I can think is if Team A messes this up, ARMY will find out which mountain they are filming on and destroy them.  Team A might actually die if they don’t do justice to this song.  ARMY is the most psychotic fan base in existence.  If you sing a BTS song badly on television, they will infiltrate the North Korean military and drop a nuke on your head the second you hit a wrong note.  These guys are SCREWED.

Our teams have one hour to prepare, and in Team A’s case, notify their next of kin.  ARMY is mobilizing as we speak, so this show needs to pick up the pace.  I’m already getting text messages from someone called JHope4Eva111 because last October I dropped a “like” on the BTS Carpool Karaoke video, so I guess I’ve been drafted.  Sorry, Team A.  It’s nothing personal.

Team A is having a collective anxiety attack.  They’re all rappers, not vocalists.  They lost their only vocalist, The Cadet, to Team C.  As for Team B, Jooan is fired up again and leading the team.  This is where he shines.   Team D is also moving along smoothly and sounding good.  

In other news, ARMY has already reached Seoul and is racing toward the mountains in those protest trucks they keep renting whenever they think Jungkook is dating someone.

The episode closes out with scenes of Team A still struggling with lines like “shining through the city with a little funk and soul.”  As they sing, it rains even harder.  It’s like they’re trying to rehearse under a waterfall.  Like God is trying to drown them.

Oh no.  ARMY got to God.

We’re all doomed.

Episode 7:  Lookin’ like a true survivor

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