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(Written September 23, 2024)
Time to see the beginning of Won Bin’s reign. If this goes the way I think it will, he will begin with a depleted budget and a band that will be greeting its fourth BOSS in less than two days. Let’s do this.
The teams for the next Battle for the Ballots have been chosen. They will start with a tube relay, a race in which two teammates push a third, who is riding in an innertube. The winning team members will get two ballots each.
This relay is fun to
watch, especially since each team is allowed to sabotage the other as much as
possible.
Huge props to the camera crew for getting such great footage. This is my favorite segment of the series so far.
Eun Seok really is the hero for his teammates Won Bin and Sung Chan. They win the relay after he repeatedly knocks the other team out of their innertube.
My favorite part of this
relay is watching these guys having fun together as the band brothers they
are. It’s like they’ve forgotten about
the cameras, the show, and the stresses of the K-pop industry. They’re just six friends having crazy fun at
the pool. They’re having so much fun,
they’re ready for the next game, which is water rugby. The first team to get to five points
wins. Again, the winning team members
get two ballots each.
Some viewers in the
posts are overanalyzing this just a bit.
I just think Won Bin’s team is better. His team wins again, 5-0. Another two ballots for each team member. This episode is going by way too fast. I could watch this for a full hour.
The crew offers the losing team one last chance to win through a final round. Won Bin’s team wins yet again. This has to be embarrassing for Anton – he’s the water sport king, and his team has lost every round. Because Sung Chan made the winning goal, he alone gets two more ballots, for a total of six.
The boys are bummed that the water sports are over, and so am I. That was so much fun.
Night falls over RIIZE
Village. The boys dry off and regroup in
the café next to the pool. The crew
tells them about a mysterious legend in the area. Our band will have to solve a scary
mystery. Or do a scavenger hunt. (The translation is kind of all over the
place.) There are three missions
involved, and the member who successfully completes all three in the shortest
amount of time wins five ballots. The
current BOSS, Shotaro, will get 30 seconds taken off his time.
The group volunteers Won Bin to go first, because they’re all scared, and this will probably be a horror story thing with someone dressed as a ghost, because that’s another popular thing in these K-pop shows.
Won Bin steps outside into the darkness with his lantern. He’s scared to death, talking nervously to himself. He makes it to the first marker, where he finds the message, “I lost a shoe … I want to leave … find it and put it here.” Okay, this is kind of creepy. Especially since that looks like a child’s shoe.
Misunderstanding the
instructions, Won Bin puts the one shoe on the marker and moves on, not
realizing he’s supposed to look for the other missing shoe. My bias, ladies and gentlemen.
He dashes over to the second marker, and on the way, a ghost appears in his path. I like the dramatics here. Our ghosts whips open a fan and tells him to guess the title of a song that’s about to play.
A song starts playing, but it’s been drastically slowed down. Won Bin is able to make out some of the lyrics and recognizes it as the RIIZE song “Siren.” I would have loved for it to be a more appropriate scary song, with Won Bin standing there in complete confusion, saying, “What the hell is a monster mash?” But he gets it right, and now he’s sent along to his next mission.
Meanwhile, back at the house, the others start shuffling fate cards, which work kind of like a Magic 8-ball. Sung Chan asks if he will be able to complete the missions quickly, and he pulls a card that says, “Haste Makes Waste.” So Hee asks if he will be the next BOSS, and he pulls a card that says, “Follow Your Heart.” The correct answer in this case would have been, “Depends. How many extra ballots did you NOT WIN today?”
We go back to Won Bin, now
approaching his third and final mission site, which looks like a sauna. He goes inside, and suddenly that chick from The
Ring enters behind him, scaring the daylights out of him.
The chick hands him a scroll. What I think is going to be a frightening proposition instead is just a challenge to a game of Rock Paper Scissors. What is Korea’s obsession with that game? They play a few rounds, and he wins. That’s it. He’s done. He blew the first mission but won the other two. Back to the house he runs, where he rejoins his bandmates.
The episode ends here. I can’t wait to see the look on Won Bin’s face when he finds out he only completed two missions.
This was my favorite episode yet. I’d be fine if the series did away with the whole BOSS thing and just had them play sports for the remaining five episodes. But we do have another election coming up, along with more scheming and missions.
So until next time, remember, if you’re told to find the missing shoe, and there’s already one shoe there, THE OTHER ONE IS STILL MISSING.
Sheesh.
See you next episode.
Episode 8: Profiles in Semi-Courage
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