#ggang

We pick up at 1:07:14 with a brief montage of the boys rehearsing.  I know most of ya’ll can’t read Korean so I’ll help you know who said what, especially since often who we see onscreen isn’t who is talking:

D-7: 

Na Kamden: “It was a bit difficult this time. For real.”

D-6:

Choi Woo Jin: “Everything was all mixed up in my head.”

Park Hanbin: “I wasn’t sure if I could do a good job.”

D-5: 

Yoon Jong Woo: “It was pretty tough for me.” 

D-3:

Park Hyun Been: “As though I’m burning the last passion I’ve got without regrets.” 

D-2:

Na Kamden: “The most impactful performance in the history of these programs ever?” 

Keita: “We’ll create a legendary performance…”

D-1:

Chen Kuan Jui: “...that people would want to see again.”

Finally, it’s D-day! Crowds are lining up around the block, holding up signs and stuff. The boys are getting ready. The 95% female crowd files in, and they are all Kermit-meme level crazy and shrieking like banshees. That’s fun! I bet they had a great time. 

The boys come in, in order of rank I assume, led by Sung Hanbin and Seok Matthew, who are holding hands. 

The judges are again sitting on folding chairs in that room with the single small window with the broken blinds, which I assume is on Minhuyn’s space station. I can’t get over how the producers don’t even give them a table, so the judges have to keep their clipboards in their laps. Poor Solji wore a short skirt and has to keep her knees super close together the whole time. My inner thighs are tired just thinking about it.

The judges pretend not to know who the host will be, but it’s still Huta from BTOB, who informs us that only 28 trainees will survive the next elimination. 

Then he explains the live voting system. It’s a bit different this time. The audience members were each given a thingy dingy with two buttons, A and B; Huta say that they can press the “A” button if they think the team did well, and the “B” button if they think the performance was disappointing, and do the same for each trainee. So instead of voting for a favorite, the audience members basically vote pass/fail for everyone and everything. If I were in the audience, I’d be of no use to anyone in terms of assessment because I’d just wear out the A button.

In any case, it’s Time to Shine!

1:11:41 Gang by H1GHR Music 

This is spelled onscreen as 깡, which is better transliterated as Ggang, as opposed to 강, which would be Gang. The little symbol top left is the K/G symbol, and see how there are two of them in 깡 and only one of them in 강? Just your little Korean lesson of the day. The on screen translation on Viki says that “ggang” sounds like the word for “guts”, which is 끈기, or Ggeungi. I guess it sounds similar, sure. 

As the camera pans around, we keep seeing a trainee in glasses and a light green sweater that says Serenity on it, and I was like, who is that -- and it’s Jung Mingyu, better known as “Red House”! Wow, that’s a different look. 

Anyway, on to Gang! 

I’ll remind you that these are the members of the gang: 

Trainee name (rank)   Star Level test / Challenge 1 /age final star level

Kum Jun Hyeon (14) Nunu Nana / Backdoor - K /19 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Lee Seung Hwan 🍑(20) Mirotic / Danger - K /22 ⭐⭐⭐

Mun Jung Hyun 🧁(23) The Real / Very Nice - K /17 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Lee Jeong Hyeon (39) The Real / Love Me Right - K /20 ⭐⭐⭐

Chen Jian Yu (45) Call Me Baby /Back Door - G/ 24 ⭐

And Lee Seung Hwan 🍑 is their leader. I use a peach symbol next to his name partly to help you remember who I’m talking about, and partly because I think he’s just peachy. 

Left to right, that is Chen Jian Yu, Lee Jeong Hyun, Mun Jung Hyun, Kum Jun Hyeon, and  Lee Seung Hwan.

So, is stylist noona angry at Lee Seung Hwan🍑, or….? Because those sparkly MC Hammer pants are a choice. An incorrect choice. On the other hand, his hair and makeup look amazing. 

Normally, the host will talk to the leader of a group, but this host talks to my little cousin Kum Jun Hyeon. Then again, I think Kum Jun Hyeon would have answered even if the question had been addressed to someone else. 

Huta says, “I heard that the atmosphere was not good when this team was first formed.”

Kum Jun Hyeon yells, “When we got Ggang, I was perplexed. I thought of the opportunity as a crisis.” He almost certainly means that he tried to think of the crisis as an opportunity, referring to that old chestnut about the same chinese character being used for both words, but he gets the order wrong and it ends up not quite meaning what he meant.

And, at 1:12:52 we head into flashback mode. Woobly woobly woo!!

As we recall from earlier in the episode, their whole deal is that this team is mostly people who got kicked out of the song they wanted. Since no one really knew how to make choreo, my little cousin Kum Jun Hyeon stepped up, yelling, “Although I can’t guarantee the quality, if I didn’t do it, I didn’t think anyone else could do it.” 

Ok, this team has a Jun Hyeon, a Jung Hyun, and a Jeong Hyeon, so I’m going to call them by their family names -- Kum, Lee, and Mun🧁, the latter of whom you may recall is my little muffin. 

So, Kum has in fact stepped up to choreograph! That peach, Seung Hwan 🍑, says of Kum: “Jun Hyeon is always shouting, and he says ‘moe moe kyun,’ that’s who he is. But when he started creating and practicing the choreography, I saw a new side of him.” 

We see what he’s talking about -- Kum is taking it really seriously and seems to be doing a good job, not being satisfied with it until it’s perfect. We also catch snippets of his singing and it’s really good, which is something that’s so easy to forget about my little cousin, that he’s actually a really good singer as well as a good screamer. It’s cute to see Kum completing something and being proud of himself. 

In fact, late at night in the dorms, Kum is still yelling about the choreo with leader Seung Hwan 🍑. He’s thinking about the choreo, yells that he needs to go to sleep, then lies down and keeps doing the hand/arm part of the choreo. Awww. 

But I had to show this screen shot to point out a few things. 

The matching pajamas are gone. Whence did the pajamas originate, and whither did they disappear? 

Kum has given up on sheets, which is such an 19-year-old guy thing to do. 

Seung Hwan has a stuffy of a yellow duck or chicken, as well as a very dapper set of pjs.  

We cut to the big trainee-self-eval day. 

Basically the Ggang group does a great job. The rapping and dancing are all great, and people especially compliment the “two-jung-hyuns”. The phrase refers to Mun Jung Hyun 🧁and Lee Jeong Hyeon, who are both WakeOne trainees and who will likely (I hope???) debut in the same group as Kim Tae Rae 💖and formerly-blue-haired Park Hanbin.  I mean, seriously, just debut, you’re already perfect. Anyway. Mun and Lee apparently are good friends, but it’s awkward for them since Lee is super talented but ranked pretty low (39) while Mun is ranked 23. Aww. 

Lee is really great too -- all five members of The Real were near perfect in my opinion (including the already eliminated Park Min Seok, who gained a ton of fans as leader of the Burn it Up team but just couldn’t quite get up to #52). I think the thing about Lee is that he’s just great so there’s no… hook? He’s great on stage, he has all the skills. He seems like a nice guy who everyone likes. And he’s good looking in a way that if you think he’s good looking, you’ll also think that a lot of other trainees are good looking. Meanwhile, Mun🧁 is sort of distinctive looking, so you remember his face later. A face like Mun’s or Tae Rae’s is sort of polarizing, I guess -- but at least it’s memorable. Lee could absolutely be the visual member of a group, and yet, it’s by looking for Tae Rae and Mun that you’ll recognize the group when you see it. At least that’s my take on it.So yeah, Lee Jeong Hyeon, I think you’re great and I am so looking forward to being a fan of your group once it debuts. Fighting!!

Seriously, the WakeOne group is the one I’m looking forward to most out of all of this, which is why I keep talking about it. Imagine, the five trainees I mentioned -- Mun, Lee, Tae Rae, Park Min Seok, and Park Hanbin -- plus possibly Haruto, Anthonny, Min, and Cha Woongki. Right? That’s fucking STACKED. You have a main vocalist, many capable lead and sub vocalists, some excellent rappers, some amazing dancers, and 100% lovable fellas. I want to just end the show now and start stanning that group.  

Ok, anyway. 

It’s show day. The boys are back stage doing some pushups before the set, so that their arms and abs will be tired and sore, I guess. Someone in the audience shouts out, “Thank you for giving birth to [Kum] Jun Hyun!” Somewhere, his mother yells, “I didn’t have much choice in the matter!” We also see a young man in the audience -- I think -- holding a sign for Mun 🧁. 

At 1:16:52, the performance begins. They introduce themselves as “Korean Chipmunks,” which is hanguk daramjwi, which kind of sounds like “hundred dollar bill”, which is a recurring lyric in the song. (You hear it, sorta, when they chant their team name.)

The performance

Link

Original song

Apparently pH-1, the extremely alkaline rap judge on Boys Planet, is one of the rappers on this song, which the show never mentions once. Weird. 

Since the boys wrote their own lyrics, I really did care what they were saying, and since the show didn’t give us translations, I had to look them up. These are the translations I found for the rap parts -- they’re a three way blend of several different sources, along with some of my own translation, but my main source is a Reddit post I found.

🍑Seunghwan: 

It reeks of cowards in here

Even if I’m not invited, today I’m a VIP

I wonder if he’s going to die after I pushed him

No need to go back and forth, I’m dogged Hey!

Lee Jeonghyeon (there’s a lot of word play in this verse): 

Hit it and go to the top, No cap (no lies) woo,

Too fast. too fast, brake, Step on it more like it’s broken

Turn and flip over the falling numbers, Starting from the bottom there’s only up,

Chill, like back when I was a kid, Keep it in your heart, Peace

🧁Mun Junghyun:

Yeah the next unexpected start, It’s our time to receive their will

It’s different from the time when I was ignored

Because I’m ready to carry on the will of those who left

We know how to go higher (Higher)

My heart is burning like fire (Fire)

To go higher you need modesty, passion, and style

Kum Junhyeon: 

Give me a song to sing, I don’t want to rap, I’m scared of how I’ll look in the gang, stage I’m whoo…

Jianyu:

Sometimes cute, sometimes sexy, There’s something to get from here

Look at how I can make you scream with my skills, here I am alone

You know I don’t wear no new (shoes)

So you know how hard it is to get what I want, shut up

My take

This was never going to be my favorite performance of the rap and vocal groups because it just isn’t my favorite song. It’s not anyone’s fault -- it’s totally a matter of taste. But overall, this was good. Yeah, some of the dancing was a little un-synced up, and some of the moves were a little boring, but it ended up looking fine. I wish I could appreciate all the word play and other poetic elements, but I can’t, so  I’m not able to really analyze the quality of the rapping. But in terms of delivery, I think that 🧁Mun stood out a bit. I also think 🍑Sunghwan did great as the center. It helps that he’s the most “manly” looking. And every time I hear Kum sing, I am surprised anew at how nice his voice is. I understand why he wanted a song to sing, and loved that that was his “rap.” 

Semi side note: So, I was watching the performance, and at about :37 in, when Mun is in the center, the team does this sort of fall-sideways-down thing, and I said to myself, “self?” I said, and I answered “yes?” and I asked, “Was Kum on the team Very Nice?” As an extremely unpleasant person in my asks pointed out, he wasn't, and I had just thought he was because hours of staring at my screen making these recaps made my vision blurry. But whether he was on Very Nice or not, that exact fall-sideways-down move in Very Nice, so, that’s where Kum got the idea. Please don’t mistake me, I’m not criticizing. If people could never repeat a dance move ever, we’d have run out of dance moves ages ago. He found a good place to put that move and make it work with the overall routine. I just thought that was kind of interesting, to be able to trace it back like that, given that Very Nice has such a different feel overall. 

(Also, I do welcome feedback if I make a mistake! Just be nice about it, is literally all I ask. If you've never said anything kind to me, please don't start our conversation by being mean. I feel like that's not too much to ask, right?)

I did notice Chen Jian Yu in the back having trouble getting up with the rest of the team after they all fell down. Aww. In fact, he was kind of behind the team a lot. Must be hard to try to keep up with this mostly very well trained team. 

Ok, this bit in the middle, where Kum puts sunglasses on upside down and lifts up his shirt to reveal fake abs, I mean, it’s not my sense of humor, folks. Sorry. 

I bet a lot of people enjoyed it a lot and I appreciate his enthusiasm. If you really enjoyed this, feel free to message me. I assume some people did, right? I hope some people did. It’s just not for me, and I found it slightly irritating, the way I find a lot of what he does slightly irritating. That’s why I call him my little cousin -- he’s irritating but I kind of love him anyway, the same way I love my irritating little cousins. Like, can you NOT, you little shit? But also, come over here and let me give you a hug and $10 to spend on junk food-- don’t tell your mom. 

I’m tender hearted and want to give everyone a passing vote. If I were forced to press B (disapprove) for one of them, it would have to be Chen Jian Yu, who as I noted, seemed to struggle with some of the choreo. But I’d press A for all of them if I were allowed, and overall, the team earns an A for approve from me. 

The editing

The MNET editing is pretty kind -- it doesn’t focus too much on any mistakes, and mostly seems focused on making the four Korean members look good. 

The judges applaud, and LipJ throws down her clipboard in approval. They call out 🍑Sunghwan the most, but also appreciate Kum’s performance. 

The voting

We cut to backstage, where the boys all hope they come in first. Kum yells that he’s expecting first place, and 🍑Sunghwan says he expects that too, but it’s Sunghwan who comes in first, with 700 points. 

And poor Kum feels dumb for having thought he might win. Aww. We’ve all been there, sweetie! The audience voted for the sexiest one, not the funniest one. That’s how it be.

The team does a final cheer for itself, and Chen Jian Yu accidentally bumps Kum in the face. 

This is just not his day, huh?

They don’t tell us who scored the lowest on this team.

We end with 🍑Lee Seunghwan, who says that he expected Kum to win, but he’s thankful for coming in first. “I don’t know what the final result will be, but we made a great performance together. I’ll remember our team as a team that brought out miracles.” Aww, you really are a peach.

1:21:55 Zoom by Jessi

Huta introduces the next team, and they come out, looking real…

…. “urban”?? Is that what we call this style?

God, the stylist noonas must hate them. I mean, can we all agree that idols shouldn’t wear shorts?

Mini rant: 

Poor Xiumin. Stylist noonas are like, “We’ll make Xiumin look awful so that the other boys will look better.”

Obviously, Chen is one of the most beautiful men on the planet, but here from the waist down he looks like he’s made of assorted whole fruit shoved into a pair of opaque beige tights. It’s not his fault. WHAT WAS THIS? STYLIST NOONA, WHY? Why do you hate Chen? Why do you hate all of us? 

Anyway.

So, here is Keita’s team, dressed like “what if Peter Pan’s Lost Boys got lost in the year 1991” and they’re going to put on an amazing show because they’re a great team. Sorry, I should say, “they’re a great team, yo!” 

I’ll remind you that these are the zoomers:

Trainee name (rank)   Star Level test / Challenge 1 /age final star level

Keita (8) Conduct Zero / Kill This Love- G /21 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Haruto (16) Glitch Mode / Love Me Right - G /18 🌟🌟🌟🌟

Ollie (28) Kick It - G / Hot Sauce - G /16 🚫

Wumuti (43) UN Village / Love Me Right - G /23 ⭐⭐

Park Hyunbeen (49) GBTB / Hot Sauce - K /17 ⭐⭐⭐

The judges are confident that Keita will carry the team. 

Haruto tries trash talking, but he’s too cute for it to work. 

Flashback time. 

You may recall that they made Keita the leader, and gave the killing part to Hyunbeen, who wants it so desperately that it made me worried that the judges were going to tell his team to give the killing part to someone else. Let’s see if I was right!   

Park Hyunbeen is working as hard as he can on his dancing, but knows he still might be lacking. At the big group evaluation in front of all the other trainees, everyone is excited to see that Hyunbeen has the killing part, and overall seem to really like the performance, especially Keita’s part. But then Hyunbeen goes blank and forget the lyrics and choreo -- oh no!

Afterward, the feedback is mostly good, but there are some harsh words for Hyunbeen, including this: “I don’t know why Hyunbeen has the killing part -- the other team members are much better.” Ouch! Oh no, is my premonition going to come to pass?

Hyunbeen talks it over with Wumuti, saying that he is worried he’s dragging the team down. Wumuti is honest and says that he himself wants the killing part too, but asks, wouldn’t you be upset if you lost it? Hyunbeen is also mostly honest and says that it would upset him. I say “mostly honest” because the real truth is, I think, that it would devastate him. Hyunbeen isn’t really fully equipped to deal with this show, emotionally. I think most people aren’t, to be fair.

The next day, the boys talk in their training room about whether or not to replace Hyunbeen. Keita asks the team, “if anyone thinks the killing part should be replaced, raise your hand.” There’s a dumb momentary cutaway to the D-day stage, and we see that Hyunbeen is still the center. We go back to the meeting, and see that the boys trust Hyunbeen and want to let him keep working on it and keep the part. He’s grateful and vows to work harder.

The Performance

The lyrics I found online are:

Haruto (mostly in English)

Ay yo lookin at me? Probably wondering what's it like to be me

Just like all the wannabes, keep on talk talk

I’m your boss boss  Out of your league  Sorry you’re Not even close

Wumuti

Baby I was born with everything Do you know what “Know your place” means?

Don't hold back and call me Wumuti-ti-ti  It’s not that hard, then follow me

Keita

Back on the stage ready microphone check, Spit out a word and turn a page right away

Guess who's the best, It’s about time, I’ve been stuck studying since When I was 13

Never, You can’t, An unexpectedly talented guy, Without a break, I hit your ears good

Do or die, I’m abnormal when I hit the stage

Now everybody knows me, get out of the way

Ollie (mostly in English)

Get out of the way I’m from the Outer space, Just arrived, Want me out your face

I have no time to lose, so Listen close, Oops never mind Ollie Wonka gotta go

Park Hyunbeen

We gotta go and Kill this track, My braggadocious just gets bigger and bigger

I’m gonna change my Category, Heads, shoulders, knees, toes Swag check

Ooh geez, Everybody say cheese

My take

Well, this is great. I watched it a bunch of times and enjoyed it every time. First, I just really enjoy listening to their version of the song. The original song has good bones to work with, the arrangement works, and their vocal performance really enhances the material -- so much so that I added their version to my current playlist. But it’s also fun to look at -- their choreo and stage vibe are energetic and fun and expressive, without being cheesy in a bad way. My one negative is that it really kind of grossed me out that Wumuti was eating a lollipop a lot of the time. Just this gross sticky thing in his mouth while he's singing and dancing, that he then throws on the stage where someone could step on it? No thanks. Yuck.

That aside, I liked listening to the song enough that I figured I might as well watch some of the fancams, and doing so really made a few things more obvious. One obvious deduction is that Ollie did not belong in 0 stars, ever. He must have had a breakdown or something the day of the final Star Level test and performed to an uncharacteristically low standard. (That, or he had serious issues with the Korean lyrics.) Seriously -- he’s such a natural on stage. He’s always having the best time and really executing well, with so much charm. I’m not sure he’s 100% there yet but he’s already a lot of fun to watch. On an unrelated note, I’m fairly confident at this point that Ollie speaks English better than he speaks any other language, unless someone can tell me I’m wrong on that. It really seems like English is the language he defaults to.

Keita’s performance is great, to the point that you might watch the fancam more than once, as long as you’re emotionally prepared to look at him in that fucking hat for almost 3 minutes. Haruto also -- he’s such a great dancer. 

I really enjoyed their rapping too -- it helps that a lot of it is English, to be fair. They each brought a different personality to their rapping, and all of it was fun. I liked Haruto’s flow, I liked Wumuti’s sing-rap style, I liked Keita’s power and precision, I even liked Ollie’s cute talk-rapping for whatever reason. It actually kind of gave me Del Tha Funky Homosapien vibes. Stage presence wise, I think Hyunbeen was a little weaker than his teammates, but not in a way that made him or them look bad. I mean, the only thing that made them look bad was their outfits. Seriously, zoom in, camera guy so I can’t see their legs. Then zoom out so I don’t have to see Wumuti’s hat or offputting shiny thing on his lower lip. 

The editing

When it comes to the performance itself, the MNET editing is extra irritating, but also extra kind -- we gets lots of reaction shots of the audience loving it and all the trainees dancing along, along with tons of unnecessary instant replays. They also don’t show Haruto’s awful ending fairy that’s on the youtube video, and that’s all for the good. The performance edit makes everyone look good, and that's rare on this show.

But I wish we knew more about how the boys actually made this track. The sung vocals are clearly re-recorded -- that's not a ding on Wumuti, who sang live as well and sounded great both live and pre-recorded. But when did they record this? To what extent were they involved in the production of the songs in general? How long were they in the studio, and who directed them? I also really want to know who actually wrote the lyrics. Did they each write their own, or did they help each other? I’m asking this now of this team but I should note that it applies to all 12 performances.

Also, to what extent were they involved in the staging? Did they pick out their outfits? their backgrounds? And whose idea was it to have those flashes of light on stage with the first two drumbeats, so that it looked like Hyunbeen had sort of "bounced" the other trainees up onto their feet? That had such an impact on the performance because they started so well and had some room to coast from there. So, whose idea was that? I can imagine a world where it was Keita’s idea, but it also could have been the producers’.

The pre-performance package -- the flashback of them preparing for the stage, etc -- is so focused on Hyunbeen that almost no time is spent on what the team actually did to prepare for the show. I know that the show hardly ever really tells us how any team actually prepared, but it bugs me.

The voting

You know, from the start of this series, the judges basically have never stopped talking about how good Keita 🔥is, and this is the first time I really, really got to see it. I really get it now. He’s as good as you would want an already debuted idol to be, and that’s saying a lot, especially on a show with a few other debuted idols who aren’t 100% up to his standard. So when they get their score, it’s not really a surprise to find out that Keita 🔥won with 736 points.

It’s really easy to tell who cherished hopes of winning themselves, and who knew Keita was going to win. 

It’s also not a surprise to find out that Park Hyunbeen is (a) the worst on the team but (b) also pretty high scoring, with 656, only 80 points lower than Keita (and only 44 points lower than Sunghwan from team Ggang). Hyunbeen was just “really great” on a team full of excellence. That’s reflected in the scores. 

Speaking of scores, what’s up with finding out the last place score as well here? For the first group, they only showed the first place score, and here it was first and last places’s scores. I guess they had to show Hyunbeen’s score to finish his storyline. 

I really wish they would tell us all the different scores, and I assume that the reason they don’t tell us all of them is that it doesn’t work with their narrative goals in some way. As an example, imagine that Wumuti got a score of 730. Imagine how it would look if we at home just watched that long segment about Park Hyunbeen and then Wumuti scored only a few points lower than the winner. Wouldn’t it be weird? Like, wait, since when was Wumuti important on this show?   

Well, since Keita 🔥came in first and was the leader and all that, surely we’ll hear from him about how proud he is of his team, and how honored he is to come in first place, that kind of thing, right? Oh no, wait, we don’t. We just hear from Hyunbeen again. He’s proud of his performance and thanks his teammates. 

To be clear, I don’t dislike Hyunbeen. Not at all! I think he’s a good performer and a sweet kid, and I think he has a ton of potential and I’m excited to see where he’ll be in a few years. I just don’t think he’s ready to debut, emotionally as much as anything else. Also, we could have been spending time with Ollie and Haruto and Wumuti and Keita 🔥too, getting to know them better, seeing how they felt about things. And we didn’t get to do that. It’s a bummer. 

So, that’s the end of this part of the recap. Thanks for reading! The next one will be about Home and Love Killa!