I started watching this, by which I mean, I skipped over the first 30 minutes of the contestants feeling each other out, and jumped straight to the first game. It's VERY Squid Game like in its aesthetic, so I kind of love it, but it does do that annoying thing where there's tons of cuts so you can see different people react to the same two seconds over and over. I've only finished the first episode so far, though I'll watch the second one tonight too.
As far as I can tell so far, it's basically a physical competition with Squid Game aesthetics, lol. So it's more fun, naturally. I should add, at least in the first episode, the competitors aren't mean spirited at all, so there's lots of cheering on these other people they just met, so I kind of like that too.
As far as I can tell so far, it's basically a physical competition with Squid Game aesthetics, lol. So it's more fun, naturally. I should add, at least in the first episode, the competitors aren't mean spirited at all, so there's lots of cheering on these other people they just met, so I kind of like that too.
Okay, so the first episode is half introductions to the show (what I skipped) and then the first "game" which is a contest to hold onto bars using just your upper body strength.
The second episode goes into the second game, where the results from the first game ranks the contestants from 1 to 100. The second game is a 1:1 brawl where the loser has to go home. The contestants got to choose their opponent based on order; so the top ranked contestant got to pick first and so on until everyone had a partner.
I have to say: I'm really enjoying these dorks. Sure, some of them are arrogant af, but for the most part, they're genuinely impressed with each other's skill sets, and they mostly chose competition that was on the same level as them. (As in, big brawly bodybuilders chose other bodybuilders, not the tiny CrossFit lady.) One of the pair-ups was a famous choreographer against a gymnast, so you can see how they're both lean and move quickly. At the end of the match, they both did a little stunt that they were famous for, and everyone cheered them on. It's fun and light-hearted in a way that I think if this was an American TV show, it would be much more ruthless and mean-spirited.
I intended for it to just be background noise while I played Persona 5, but I ended up getting sucked in. Can't wait for the next episode to drop!
Still working on getting caught up but I finished episode 3 yesterday and started episode 4.
So far, it's just a continuation of the 1:1s, so we're down to 50 competitors now. It looks like episode 4 will have a new game with bigger teams. Episodes 5&6 are already out, and episodes 7&8 will drop tomorrow.
Okay! Episode 4 really mostly sets up the new team game. There are 10 teams of five, where the team leaders are voted on, and then the other 40 get to pick what team they want, and if there are more than four people interested in a particular leader, that team leader gets to pick their final team.
Then two teams of five will go against each other. They have to pick who they will go against before knowing what the game is, in order of the first leader down to the last leader. So leader 1 picks leader 9, but leader 2 picks leader 10, who by default got the least votes for team leader and got the people who weren't wanted on the other team.
I didn't like what leader 2 was doing, because up until then, people had generally been picking people they felt were of equal skill to them, so even if they lost, they could go home with their head held high. Leader 10's team was three women and the remaining two men were slender: an MMA guy and a gymnast. VS a bunch of super bulky men, and leader 2's team just starts talking shit because they deliberately picked the weakest team to have a curbstomp battle win against.
The episode shows us the battle, which is to finish laying planks down on a partially completed, but rickety bridge, and then carry sand in bags across the bridge. Whichever team moves the most sand wins. They get some time to strategize with their team, and then 12 minutes to actually execute. They finish, and it looks like leader 2 might be doing well since he gets four more bags in the last ten seconds and....
Episode 4 doesn't reveal who wins, on to episode 5!
The underdogs win!! Mostly. But also screw leader 2.
Leader 2 vs. Leader 10 = Leader 10!
Leader 6 vs. Leader 7 = Leader 7!
Leader 1 vs. Leader 9 = Leader 1 (In fact, I think Leader 1 would have lost had they not adjusted their strategy when they realized just how important getting the bridge built was. The margin was REALLY close.)
Leader 4 vs. Leader 5 = Leader 4! (Leader 4 specifically chose his people for speed, because he felt he could contribute the strength and wanted a better balanced team.)
Leader 3 vs. Leader 8 = Leader 8!
It turns out speed is REALLY important for this game. Yes, you need strength too, to be able to fill and move the sand bags quickly, but all that strength doesn't matter if you can't build the bridge quickly in the first place. And then you need stamina to keep up that work for a long period of time, so it's not a simple power exercise where you have to deadlift 500 lbs for a second before dropping the bar.
So I think we see that reflected in that the better balanced teams fared better, which generally were the "straggler" teams who didn't just get all the super muscular dude bros. Interestingly, because of how important a well-rounded team was, 6 out of the 9 remaining women made it through (compared to 19 of the remaining 41 men).
I really like that this isn't a physical competition that rewards just one type of fitness.
Episode 6! There's a quest 2.5 to allow 5 people to stay in the game.
So of the 25 eliminated, they all get a chance to come back to the game IF they can hold a plaster (?) torso equal to 40% of their own body weight longer than 20 of their competitors.
It's interesting because it prioritizes a mix of strength AND stamina, and it's basically a call back to the "pre-quest" where they had to hold up their entire bodyweight longer than everyone else. This is only 40%, so you'd think they'd do better, but some of the ones who did really well in that pre-quest round are sucking now. One of the competitors mentioned that it's because they still have the "pain of defeat" so it makes you wonder how much they've gotten into their own head that they've already lost.
It's kind of funny, because the pre-quest kind of didn't matter, while this is their one shot back into the competition for the winnings.
One of the eliminated women, Eu-ddeum, made it back, and that made me happy because she's one of my favorites. Her sport of choice is pilates, so people are constantly underestimating her, but that experience helped her to do a mindful focus and outlast 20 men.
On to the next quest! So now we're back to 30 contestants. The 5 survivors form a team, and we now have 6 teams of 5. These 6 teams have to pair up to work together (forming three teams of 10) to move a 1.5 ton ship. Because this is a pure show of strength (one of the burliest dudes mentions that the strongman competition has a pulling contest), the other teams are back to being dismissive to leader 10's team and the stragglers who won a second chance from last time. I kind of can't blame them, since you definitely need explosive power in this one, not necessarily sustained stamina, agility, or speed.
When they get into the arena, they find out they first have to dig up and then load ten heavy barrels onto the ship, and then arrange a bunch of logs to use to roll the ship onto a platform. And of course, there aren't enough logs to get from the ship to the platform, so they have to constantly take from the back and run to the front.
Leader 4 & 8 team up and we watch them do their run together. They won their previous games by identifying members' strengths and assigning them to tasks they're all best suited at. This match-up has one of the strongmen competitors, so he directs them on the best way to set the ship up for pulling. They're set up really well, because the strongman guy knows how to adjust things when the ship wouldn't budge. They may not be the strongest team overall (that's probably the leader 1 & 7 team), but that experience and everyone's willingness to immediately adjust based on that guy's experience made them an impressive team to start with. They don't spend much time talking, but just identify something that needs done and work together to get it done. When the ship gets skewed, one side called for help, and the strongman ran over and someone takes over calling out "1, 2, 3!" One of them gets trapped under a log, and ALL of them descend to help her.
It's these heartwarming moments where you can tell they're all ultimately rooting for each other that makes me really like the show.
Funnily enough, I think leader 4&8 team probably did better than leader 1&7 team despite 1&7 winning on sheer muscle mass, because of things like assigning people to the tasks they would succeed at and making sure EVERYONE had a role. Like they had a baseball player tackle getting a barrel out of a box, and he was smart enough to take the hammer to the hinges, rather than destroying the whole box, but the 1&7 guy actually didn't see (?) or understand how much easier taking the hinges off would make things, so he took WAY longer.
We see the stragglers and leader 10 teams take on the ship challenge. They divided up the work well, but ultimately, you can tell they won't win. They just don't have the explosive power needed to shift the ship easily. Although team 1&7 wasn't as smart as team 4&8, when they finally got the ship all loaded, they could literally yank it forward in huge shifts. Stragglers&10 aren't weak and you can see their teamwork, but their fitness skillsets just aren't in explosive power. They were the only team that worked to keep the momentum going while people shifted logs, so they actually made up for lost time in moving the ship from its starting place to the platform's edge, but that damn last slope requires nothing but explosive power to shift it. They tried to make up for their lack of power with speed, so it's a really impressive effort, but after seeing the other teams in episode 6, you know who's out before it's even called.
They were so cute, though, because they were just excited and relieved to have actually finished the challenge. And even the other teams were impressed that stragglers&10 only lost by 2 minutes despite having no super strong men on their team and having one person with a knee injury.
Onto quest 4!
They announce that quest 4 will cut the final 20 down to the final 5. It's an interesting setup! There are five games, so each of the teams will send one person to represent the team to one of the games. Each match is a winner take all, so it kind of no longer matters if the "team" does well. You want to be positioned to do well in whatever match you are sent in, knowing that four other people have to agree to send you to that specific game. Each game is themed after a myth:
Atlas: Hold a giant boulder over your head without dropping it or squatting. A test of pure strength and endurance.
Prometheus: Complete an obstacle course to get a flaming torch; you have to complete it successfully three times, as one person is eliminated each round. An all-rounder kind of test, since you need speed, stamina, and strength to overcome the obstacles fastest and keep doing it over and over.
Icarus: Climb an endlessly descending rope without letting your feet ever reach the floor. I've done rope climbing before. It's an interesting skillset, and even when I went to a special fitness class at the gym, it wasn't one we trained deliberately. I expect this one will do best with whoever has the most experience rope climbing; it's not a pure strength or core exercise.
Tail of Ouroboros: Run around a race track and tag the people in front of you. Everyone starts out spaced evenly around a track. This requires a great deal of long distance endurance and short distance speed, since you'll need to maintain pace for probably a long time and be able to catch up to three other people.
Sisyphus: Roll a 100 kg (220 lbs) boulder up and down a hill over and over. Where Atlas needed strength and mental endurance, this one requires a lot of stamina too.
And onto episode 8 to watch them compete!
They set up the games so they're all in the same arena for everyone who isn't participating in a particular game to watch, so you can get strength (or be discouraged by) how your fellow teammates do.
They are played in the order that I bulleted them above.
Atlas lasts over an HOUR; they are insane.
Prometheus was really unexpected! One of the contestants so was tall, he was almost the height of the first obstacle, but that actually worked against him because his long legs got caught on the way down. TBH, I had expected him to compete in the last one, because his long legs would give him an advantage on catching the others.
Icarus has a professional ice climber competing, lol. I forgot that was his occupation. Based on the reactions of the competitors (and one of his own teammates who tried to do it instead), I wasn't the only one who forgot. It was fun to see someone who was truly skilled at this show how to do it properly. He wasn't even tired at the end.
Ouroboros - They don't tell us how long they last or how long each lap is, but they make at least 21 laps before it's over.The last place guy made it more than 5 laps with a broken rib. I want his perseverance.
Sisyphus: Instead of requiring that they keep moving constantly, like the rules implied, each round is timed to move the boulder up and over the hill within 40 seconds. Speed doesn't really matter, because they easily complete one round in 15 seconds, but any time you get leftover from those 40 seconds before the next round starts, you get to catch your breath. So it's a matter of finding the right balance of being able to catch your breath, but not going so quickly that you exhaust yourself. I do wish it would have told us how many rounds they made before having to dip.
Episode 9 drops Tuesday to see who won the last game and for the finale!
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