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boysplanetrecaps · 8 months

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The Great Produce 48 Rewatch: Ep 4, Mamma Mia (Kara) Challenge

Welcome back to the Great Produce48 Rewatch Recap Project of 2023-2024! I have run into difficulties, in that the original site I was watching it on went down for a day or two, but I fought back with the help of a different site that still houses the P48 episodes, just with Spanish subtitles. My Spanish is pretty good so it’s not that big a deal, plus I have google translate on my side when I need it (which is surprisingly not that often -- thanks, Spanish department of my high school!). And YOU CAN’T STOP ME from doing this. No one wants or needs me to do it, and yet, I must. So, I continue. Also, when I was almost done with this particular post, the original website came back! What a journey. Let’s go on that journey together, my dear ones!

In the previous post, Jo Yuri and friends performed Short Hair by AOA. It’s time for the Mamma Mia teams to perform! Check it out.

Lee Seungki calls the two teams up to perform the song, noting that the choreography was done by Dance Bae herself back in the day. Backstage, the girls say that they are really looking forward to this performance.

The teams come up -- Team 1 in black, and Team 2 in white.

Murase Sae, Nakanishi Chiyori, Park Minji, Park Jieun, Kim Hyunah

Miyazaki Miho, Cho Sarang, Bibian, Choi Soeun, Shinozaki Ayana, Shin Suhyun

Team 1 introduces themselves as “The Eyeshadows” (in English) --and add, first in Korean and then in Japanese, “We’ll paint your hearts lots of different colors!” -- and Team 2 introduces themselves as “OMG, what are we going to do?” Like, that’s their name. I have a lot to say about team 2’s outfits, but we’ll get there.

Seungki asks Park Minji how she’s feeling, considering that she did this once before in a previous season. She answers that she thought she’d feel less nervous, but if anything, she might be even more anxious! But, she adds, they’ve worked really hard so that they can do their best.

Seungki asks each team to give a statement. Chiyori says her team will never lose! Souen says that her team really wants to win! Hwighting!

Seungki says it’s Showtime! But it is not Showtime! It is… FLASHBACK TIME!

The members:

Kim Hyunah, age 23, who I call husky voiced Hyunah, from B class, ranked a sad 72. 😣

Murase Sae, 21, who auditioned with Funny People, rose from D to C and is currently ranked 43.

Nakanishi Chiyori, 23, Wacky Chiyori, who auditioned with What's Your Name?, rose from D to C, and is ranked 37.

Park Jieun, 20, future ex-Purple Kiss, who fell from C to F and was ranked 70th.

Park Minji, age 19, PD101 trainee and future Secret Number member, from B class, ranked 56.

When we left off, we were learning that Wacky Chiyori is the master of hilarious facial expressions, but that plotline has been abandoned for this next segment. It’s also helpful to recall that Hyunah is the center.

Minji, left; Hyunah, central, and I’m not sure who is to the right since we never see their faces. That’s ok, they’re apparently not important to the story and get 0 camera time.

We start off with a few of the girls in one of those tiny practice rooms, working on their singing together. Park Minji interviews, “this year, I want to be recognized for my singing ability and show everybody what I have to offer.”

We cut to the girls rehearsing with Soyou. She’s having them sing while they dance, which honestly is a good sign -- I’m sure she starts off just listening to them sing, and if they did terribly at that I don’t think she’d ask them to dance at the same time.

She’s making this face.

I dare you to determine, based on her facial expression, what she thinks of them.

Turns out she has nothing but praise for Kim Hyunah, who is my favorite for a reason, and that reason is that she’s great. Soyou even praises her dancing.

Minji (far right) is ready for her critique.

But to Minji, Soyou says, “I’ve told you before, but you shouldn’t sing this all “pretty.” We get a flashback that we’ve never seen before. The MNET editors go pretty ham with this scene, adding in a lovely sepia tone to things so we know that this is a flashback.

In it, Soyou is telling Minji, “You have a lovely voice, but you have to focus in on it alone. You keep trying to look pretty while you sing, and you focus a lot on your mouth.”

Back in… the main timeline, I guess I’ll call it…. she has Minji try again, but interrupts her almost immediately. “Not like that. Don’t drag the sound. Just sing like this:” -- and she demonstrates. Minji imitates her and it sounds great. Soyou nods, adding, “The sound has to grow gradually stronger.” I like seeing this really specific voice work, because the change that Soyou was making to Minji’s voice was really subtle and specific and good.

Minji

Then she has all of the girls sing the high “la pa padi” part, and though they’re all a bit pitchy without accompaniment, they’re basically hitting the notes, and more comfortably than Minji.

Minji interviews that her voice is her best attribute, and even so, she hasn’t been able to establish herself as a main vocalist. She thinks her anxiety is getting the best of her because she doesn’t want to get eliminated again.

Time passes and it’s their dress rehearsal. Minji sounds awful. Just awful. She’s obviously been over rehearsing and she blew out her voice. It’s much worse than Jang Gyuri’s from Peekaboo.

The trainers are just like…

Jeremy asks what’s wrong, but not in a way that seems to demand an answer. Soyou is like, but you’re the main vocalist, if you sound bad you make the whole team sound bad. Minji says that she originally a part in falsetto, and had been trying to sing it full voice, and that was the problem. She asks if it’s ok to change it now. She tries again, but falters, about to cry. Chiyori and the other girls try to comfort her.

Why does Chiyori’s top fit so weird on her? She’s a cute girl -- stylist unnie, wtf?

Jeremy kindly acknowledges the pressure that vocalists face, but it isn’t just that -- Minji is still thinking about getting eliminated last time and how she doesn’t want it to happen again now. It’s so sad how scarred she seems to be from her first elimination. She talks about it for a while in an interview but it comes down to that it sucked to be eliminated before, and she is terrified it will happen again. I think it’s really interfering with her mental health. Poor girl. This show is such a mess.

Backstage, she’s starting to cry again.

LTRL Sae, Jieun, Minji, Hyunah, Chiyori

Hyunah says, “It’s ok, don’t cry. Don’t feel so pressured.”

Minji says, “I feel like it will be really bad if I don't do well.”

Jieun, bless her heart, says “It’s ok if you don’t do well, too. Who cares?”

Minji voice overs, “I want to cry tears of joy when we win. I want to hear people say that al our efforts weren’t in vain.”

And now, it really is performance time! The judges are ready…

I love this shot of the trainer’s room. They’re just in some corner with some big wooden blocks and a few bottles of water. They at least have moderately comfortable looking chairs, but they have to hold their clipboards in their laps. Jeremy is just using his phone to take notes. IDK, the whole thing is so budget. It cracks me up.

As the lights go down, you hear a few shouts from the audience, encouraging Minji and Chiyori by name.

Unfortunately, there are no blessed edits of either group this time, so we’ll just have to make do with the MNET edit and try not to die. Or you could just watch Kim Hyunah’s fancam -- she’s the center, and for whatever reason the camera isn’t as focused on her face as fancams sometimes are, so it’s almost like a full cam.

My thoughts:

It wasn’t terrible or anything, but the vocals weren’t great. When all five of them are singing in the chorus it’s ok, but each of them has kind of thing vocals and when they sing once at a time, it doesn’t sound great overall.

Minji pulls off the high notes -- of course MNET has to drag it out and all that, sigh -- but it doesn’t sound particularly lovely. She also continues to do that thing where she uses her whole body to hit a note.

She sort of sticks out her neck and thickens her throat and just basically does everything in her power to look awkward and hurt her throat. I know that Soyou and Jeremy are doing what they can to help teach the girls how to sing properly, but my god does she need more lessons. I hope that by now, 5 or 6 years later, she has.

Everyone else is a mixed bag. I think Hyunah is an alto, and her part was a little too high for her so she had a hard time. You can actually hear a bit of Park Jieun’s talent leading into the bridge -- you can understand how she would have been in Purple Kiss -- but her voice sounds pretty hoarse in a lot of the song. Slippery elm tea, you dum-dums! Sigh. And as much as I love Chiyori’s personality, neither she nor Sae has a voice that I would like to listen to.

LTR: Minji, Hyunah, Jieun, Chiyori, Sae

Dancewise, it’s the same problem as ever - the camera work hides everything. From what I can see, they look good -- they’re throwing themselves into it and they look pretty synchronized. It’s fun to watch them overall.

Stage presence is also pretty good overall. Sae is good at a smoldering look -- a wink, a lip bite, that kind of thing -- and Chiyori just looks happy to be on stage. Jieun looks down at the ground a lot, and Minji telegraphs every note she sings, neither of which is ideal.

I really don’t know which of these five I would have voted for, but it would have been one of Hyunah or Minji, I think. Hyunah does a great job as center, but her vocals were a little off. Minji looked great when she wasn’t singing, and did a decent job singing, but she was also a little lacking.

I can’t quite give her a vote because of her not-great vocals, but I will say that Sae came into her own in this performance. She’s much more suited to this sexy concept than she was to the silly “Funny People” performance she did as her audition.

LTR: Sae, Jieun, Hyunah, Chiyori, Minji

The MNET edit is nearly intolerable, as per ujh. They make a big deal out of Sae’s wink. If I went on a show like this, I’d wink constantly. I’d basically never stop. It would be hard to see but it would be worth it.

When we come to Minji’s high notes, they do a flashback and a few annoying instant replays, and then they make a big deal out of her doing an ok job. The judges praise the group as a whole, and everyone freaks out about Sae biting her lip sexily in the ending fairy. Ok, I revise my previous statement. I’d alternate between winking and lip biting. It would be hard to see and my lips would hurt, but it would be worth it. Add in the headache I’d get from all the hair tossing and I’d basically be incapacitated, but I’d win the voters’ hearts!

Backstage, the girls hug each other and tell each other that they did a good job. Minji voices over that she’s gotten her confidence back about singing. Well, that’s nice.

Team 2

Team 2 comes up to the stage, accompanied by intense orchestral music. Suhyun voice overs that they worked hard, and she doesn’t want this to be her last stage. Let’s remember who the members of this team are:

Cho Sarang, 14, who sang Tomorrow at the audition, fell from B to F (ouch!) and is currently ranked 90th (ouch again!). She has an eye patch on for some of the rehearsals.

Choi Soeun, 16, who did Question Mark at the audition, fell from B to C and is currently ranked 92 (oh no!)

Miyazaki Miho, 24, our multilingual queen, who has stayed in D and is currently ranked 16th place

Murakawa Bibian, 18 but looks like a baby doll, firmly stationed in F class and ranked 31st

Shin Suhyun, 22, the show’s favorite punching bag, who fell from D to F and is ranked 57th

Shinozaki Ayana, 22, one of the What's Your Name? group, with the beauty mark under her lip, firmly stationed in F class and ranked 87th

When we left off, we had found out that this team did not want to do this song at all, since they didn’t know it. Also, there’s a bit of a rivalry between Miho on this team and Chiyori on the other team, since they’re old friends from AKB48. Bibian was the chooser of this group, Miho is the leader, and Seoun is the center. Sarang is the main vocal and seems to be doing great at it in rehearsals.

We cut to their dance rehearsal. They are anxious and awkward at the start, not sure if Dance Bae wants to see their nametags or wants them to get into formation. They run through their performance, with Dance Bae occasionally shouting at them to change formation. It seems that Seoun is not in the right spot. When they’re done, Dance Bae tells them, “This is beyond belief. You’d get zero votes. I have nothing to say.” But don’t worry, fam, she has plenty to say.

She asks who the leader is, despite it being obvious that Miho is wearing the L sticker.

LTR: Punching bag Suhyun, Boss-babe Miho, and Center Seoun

Dance Bae asks Miho what they were even doing with their time. It looks like they haven’t practiced at all, and they’re going to be humiliated on stage if they keep going like this. Suhyun wipes away a tear quietly. She voice overs, “Our group practiced together, but…” and we head into a flashback-within-a-flashback. Suhyun is asking the team to wait, to confirm certain parts of the choreo for her, to start over, but it seems like everyone just wants to keep going. Suhyun is worried that they won’t get any of the details down that way, but Miho is worried they won’t learn the routine as a whole if they’re worried about details.

Oh no! Miho is worried!

We’ve seen this issue come up before, and I don’t know enough about dancing to really know what’s the right approach. Getting the details right from the start prevents you from establishing bad habits. Working on the routine as a whole allows you to have the big picture so you can keep refining from there. I read a few articles on the topic and it does seem like the general consensus is big picture first, details later, but maybe there’s room for disagreement on this. It can make for some serious discord in a group, though.

Since their styles are so different, they stopped rehearsing together as much and started rehearsing on their own. Some of them notice the other group rehearsing all together and look on with sad jealousy.

It seems like they’re all worried that rehearsing the way they are will make it hard for them to beat the other team, but none of them seem to be doing anything about it.

Finally, they have a meeting in one of those tiny practice rooms.

Miho has written down her thoughts. She tells her team, in Japanese from what I can hear, that she thinks that if they keep going this way, they could end up losing. They’re all charismatic and talented on their own, but no one seems confident or energetic. And, she says, if they lose to Team 1, it’ll be all over. That’s not true, of course, but whatever. She wants them to come together as a team.

Cho Sarang says, “I don’t think we knew that we all felt like that until now. But the thing is, you three already debuted in Japan and have fans waiting for you. But for us, if we’re eliminated, we have nowhere to go.”

Miho says, “But we risked everything to come to Korea. We also don’t really have anywhere to go if we get eliminated.”

They’re all kind of crying now.

Suhyun says, “It’s like Sarang said -- I also have nowhere to go back to.”

They’re all realizing that they are all desperate to win the challenge, and that powers up their teamwork! It’s time for a montage -- suddenly, they can do it! Yeah! Miho voice-overs that her team hopes that all their hard work will come across to the National Producers and win their hearts.

It’s time for the performance! Dance Bae says, “I really hope they do well.”

The performance (MNET Edit link)

It is at this point that I discovered that the original site, kshow123, is back up! And I am proud to report that my understanding of the subtitles in Spanish was spot on. Also, I might keep that Spanish website around because they have better resolution, so it might help me take better screenshots. Ok! Back to the recap.

My thoughts:

Ok, first off, I have to talk about their outfits. They’re obviously based on a particular set of outfits that Kara actually wore while performing:

But this wasn’t really that cute a look even on Kara.

I mean, if you look really closely you can tell that it is some kind of fishnet shorts under their white shorts, but it just gives “control top pantyhose” to me. Also, I caught little Sarang pulling her shorts down a little during the performance. Just.. not great outfits overall. If one group is wearing white and one group is wearing black, the team in black tends to win. I wonder if that’s always true? I’ll have to do some research sometime. Black is slimming and makes skin look paler, which is the Korean standard, and white is the opposite.

That said, let’s talk about the performance.

The biggest problem I have with this performance is the vocals. Shin Suhyun actually does kind of ok as sub-vocal 1, but most of the other vocals sound kind of nasal or shrieky or off key. Even main vocal Sarang doesn’t do that well - the key high notes are edited as if they’re great…

Everyone reacting to something, possibly Sarang’s high notes. By the way, we see Wonyoung, Na Goeun, and Ahn Yujin constantly the whole episode, reacting to everyone else’s performance.

… but she’s definitely flat. Even when she’s on key it doesn’t sound too great because her voice sounds so child-like. That’s fine if you’re singing Baby Shark, but not if you’re singing “Look at nobody but me with that passionate gaze” and “With that skill of yours, lock me up tonight.” Vocally, I think the very worst was Miho, which is such a bummer because she’s such a fun human being. She just… isn’t a very good singer. Sorry, Miho! You still seem really cool!

Dance wise, I think they do fine…? IDK. Thanks, camera man! Thameraman. Some of the moves look really awkward but that might just be the choreo.

Stage presence was a bit better. Choi Soeun does a great job as center, actually.

I think her very low ranking is just because no one knows who the heck she is. Sarang and Vivian look comically out of place to me -- I think they’d both do much better in cute concepts.

Shin Suhyun tries to look sexy but she just kind of looks….

… sleepy? Confused? … it’s not working.

Overall, just kind of amateur.

It’s hard to even say which was better between the two teams since neither was particular great. Sorry, girls! I know you all worked hard. I think this song is just kind of hard to pull off.

The MNET edit tries to make it seem like it was better than it was, but I don’t think the judges were that into it. Dance Bae says to the others, “The thing is, though, they did get a lot better.” That might be the translation, so I checked the Spanish version, which essentially the same. I really get the feeling that Dance Bae was letting the others know that even though this wasn’t great, it was better than it used to be.

Backstage, Choi Soeun says, “I was really worried because we were going up on stage without ever hearing a single word of praise. But I’m thankful now because everyone did so well.”

Shin Suhyun says, “I wish we could’ve done better, but it was really fun. Now I can see why people want to keep performing.” Now you see? You never saw before? Sigh.

It’s time for… the results!

Park Minji from team one is already crying. Girl! I mean, I would be too. I would cry from the second I arrived until about a month after I’d been eliminated.

The voting results are:

Black team (win) Kim Hyun Ah 138 Murase Sae 138 Nakanishi Chiyori 48 Park Jieun 32 Park Minji 66 Average: 84.4

White team (lose) Cho Sarang 18 Choi Soeun 56 Miyazaki Miho 92 Murakawa Bibian 86 Shin Suhyun 88 Shinozaki Ayana 28

Average: 61.3

Neither Sae nor Hyunah can quite believe how many votes they got.

But I’m actually not surprised at all that Kim Hyunah and Murase Sae got so many votes. Both seemed perfectly suited for the song, in both look and attitude. I am a bit surprised about Miho’s 92 votes -- you guys, her vocals were really bad -- but she must have fans as a well-established member of AKB48. Poor Sarang got one of the worst vote tallies of the night, poor kid. This was just the wrong song for her.

Then they have to wait for their averages to pop up on screen, which is so funny to me.

Like, Sarang still seems optimistic that they’ll win, I think? But come on, the math is pretty obvious. Black team’s sum is higher even though they have fewer members. It seems clear that they won, and they did.

When the win is revealed, Minji just begins absolutely wailing.

The girls on the white team applaud lightly, and don’t seem to cry, but Minji is crying so hard her whole team has to try to calm her down. She’s crying with relief, of course, but it really shows how deep her emotional trauma is.

They really should have therapists on hand on this show, you know? Either that, or maybe try traumatizing them a little less. IDK.

We don’t really get a reaction from the white team. Guess they just disappeared from this plane of existence.

And with that, we’re at the end of this post! In the next one, we’ll cover the High Tension teams -- and see a girl named Huh Yunjin! See you then.

#bpr recaps p48 #produce 48 #akb48 #mamma mia #kara

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