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mikkouille · 1 year

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BOYS PLANET 1212

From the get go, Boys Planet looked to be a disaster: postponement, changes of plans, and the legacy of Girls Planet 999′s already lukewarm reception and results, plethora of scandals, on top of the history of Mnet survivals not being quite reassuring as for what this one would be. They didn’t even have Yeo Jingoo as their MC anymore so what even was the point for me to watch, right? Well I like bad reality TV, and if the show forewent it’s predecessor’s clunky numbers, it was not merely because they cleaned themselves off the unpromised implication that ‘999′ offered, that being of parity in it’s final lineup’s nationalities- but because had they to pick one to represent the cast of 98 boys (95 by the time of announcement and 93 when the first episode released, once more, a good sign that this was going to be a Very Well Made Show), it’d have to be 1212, for Dozens of Dozens.

A bit of context for newcomers and unknowers as I’ll be mentioning the title a surprisingly low but still relevant amount of time.

From the day the fancams for the ‘Here I Am’ Signal song were uploaded, the word bounced around my brain, with cruel glee: these guys were just not good. At the same time, knowledge of how things were handled with Produce and “Not Produce we swear it’s different” shows did keep me back from immediatly dismissing about 85 boys from being of any respectable skill: if Boys Planet was anything like it’s elders, these guys likely had at most a week to learn a choreography and song, on their own, with little group rehearsals. The mere inability to judge what some steps were meant to look like given how varied the executions were across contestants said it all: they were given no teacher, likely the dance “teacher” and judge responsible for that atrocity of a dance routine showed up once, stayed an hour, and then left them to their own device (and watching episode 2, it is indeed basically what happened. When most of the rehearsal footage is just the kids by themselves teaching each other, the title of “Master” is to put into question: you’re not their masters so much as their executioner).

So I awaited the actual episodes, to see the surprises, or even just the bad dancers who were here as vocalists.

Which to be honest, was a mistake on my part, expecting vocalists was to lobotomise myself, out of the knowledge of the sad state of this industry, the one that we could nearly say this show satirises: Boys Planet isn’t a survival as much as it is a long winded performance art piece meant to criticise 4,5th gen Kpop. And so it was with equality little and great surprise that the Auditions were the same as the Fancams, only this time both eyes AND ears got to suffer the same pains.

(I ran out of embed spots- you only get 5??- so you’ll unfortunately have to click links for most of the video evidence of my claims. Very sorry about that. Prommy I didn’t intend for only the Worse- and Hui’s feast- to be visible but it IS funny).

Where are the standards of casting?

But Signal song fancams aren’t meant to be good. As stated before, they’re a bad metric of talent, or of potential even, as both song and dance are learnt in a hurry, with hardly any mentoring outside of Lim Han Byul disregarding all decency as a human being to instead have his “bullying children” segment. Moreso, a dance focused fancam does not help display the skills of vocalists, so while I did rank all of the Here I Am videos, I was waiting for the audition performances, or Star Level to truly pick out who were the trainees deserving of my attention. Still, the combination of how little candidates truly shone through their fancams, the lukewarm interest sparked by the 1mn PR videos and the trainee profiles, with their citations of way too many symbols of kpop’s downfall as for the standards of performance- not citing names as I do like the state of my life and witness protection would take all of that fun away from me- I had little hopes for what was to come, which did protect me: I was at least not disappointed in expecting nothing.

The performances aired for the first episode were highly enjoyable, in a Schadenfreude kind of way: the ones that were bad were Bad bad, to the point of hilarity: I had legitimate tears in my eyes watching some of these, and couldn’t help share them ahead of our group watching to my co-watcher friend. Things needed to be spoilt; joy to be shared.

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Portrayed here, Yang Jun’s most iconic opening of Seventeen’s worst song: mathematically a masterpiece as two negatives make a positive. Also, do know that upon watching Yang Jun’s fancam back before the show started, I claimed him as one of my favourite as I thought dancing that awful must hide incredible singing talents, why else would he be there, right? I’ve had to reassess that statement, but I will not stop my support. He reached public infamy, legend status, and did so much for the show with just these few words.Similarly, team Hyogo gave us a SPLENDID rendition of MANIAC that I view with just as much affection as I do see team Sichuan’s HOT: an enemy of my enemy is my friend, desecrate songs I don’t like and we’ll get along (this is just what the songs sound like to me on regular after all, I think they did amazing).

Many such cases. The full cam footage of the first episode’s performance are overall a feast, a gathering of comically bad stages, put back to back for the heartless public to tear to shreds, only to further humiliate it’s most iconic suckers a week later, in front of Sunmi no less… There is nothing crueler when it comes to reality TV than an Mnet survival.

While a few stages did still look significantly better, and the second week packed overall better performances, the truth is still that the vast majority was mediocre at best, funnily enough, probably would rank 12/20 in my french fashion of rating: not awful enough to be failed but just toeing that line.

And that overall does make sense: why would a company send their best most promising trainees to a shitshow where they can hardly monitor their progress anymore, all for them to get eliminated after two weeks of airtime, but months of recording, alongside half the contestant, and after a combined screen time of about 10 seconds. The investment isn’t good when the winners are already pre-decided, might as well send your newbies, your bottom of the class lineup, avoiding the silent blacklisting of a large TV channel without wasting the time of your talents. As for the viewer, it only makes the experience more entertaining: the mind’s much more rested when all the decent guys are relatively safe for a few episodes when the network first has to weed out the ones who are simply way too incompetent to even get a single pity vote. Instead, you get to laugh at poor youngsters that still probably are doing much better than you would, only they have a roomful of witnesses and large audience to witness them. I cannot truly cast the stone of ‘this is cruel and uncivilised’ when I myself go back to the Canton China’s team rendition of God’s Menu daily, for reasons that are anything but amazement.

Something that was evident throughout all the stages, including the good and passable ones though, was how little singers were present on set. The show even makes a point of highlighting it: if there is a handful of good performers and dancers, the singing is truly subpar. Only, for the jury to point it out is a bit hypocritical. Comparing the performances and the gradings assigned to each participant show that while the jury- and mainly professional hater Lim Han Byul- lament the lack of good voices, they do not support what little good ones they do have on their hand. Abysmal singers who can dance consistently get better star rankings than good singers with lacklustre dancing. The message is clear: we shall address the issue in words, but only participate in it with our actions.

For Choi Yujin to get four stars with that mid at most line being the only piece of singing we heard from him, while Park Gunwook got assigned three for not being heard singing enough was already quite frustrating. But Gunwook isn’t really a singer either, so the real rage was to see Kim Taerae also get only three stars AFTER the assessment that the show desperately needed SINGERS. If Yujin deserved four stars, then so did Taerae, because his dancing is nowhere near just middle-ground, he’s good enough to blend in the ensemble while carrying a vocal position. But the show does not care for this: they want flashy performers, no matter what their empty claim. But then, it seems Choi Yujin was actually a victim more than an undeserved win, as the show’s true focus seems to now do MY job and use every opportunity to belittle him and call him undeserving of his rank, as if they weren’t the ones putting him there in the first place.

But in all fairness, bad singing makes sense when a good portion of your candidates aren’t done going through puberty: the amount of 2006 to 2008ers present in the lineup should be an indicator as to why we hear so many unstable shaky creaky breaky voices: these are teenagers who should be in school, not in Public Shamings - The Show, no budget edition (because we spent all of it making a Roblox dupe, something the public for certain asked for).

Speaking of things no one asked for: Pentagon Hui’s presence. As enjoyable as it is to get an actual serve in the midst of… Whatever it is others are doing, there’s nothing pleasant about seeing him sit in the middle of all those teens, right out of the army and all out of tears to cry. The misery of every episode 1 reaction shot on him, free this man. At every round, we will have to pretend to carefully examine who exactly is most skilled, as if there wasn’t a guy among the participants who should have been mentoring them, not playing with them. Unlike CLC’s Yujin on Girls Planet, his situation is also nowhere near as dire: while Pentagon hasn’t been in its Shine heydays for a moment, they do not seem to be on the brink of disbandment the way CLC was when Girl’s Planet aired: Hui himself was speaking of comeback plans months before the start of Boys Planet. It seems CUBE ENT just wants to torture a poor guy who only probably wants to go back to his writing studio with his actual group rather than being under the threat of having to spend god knows how long Kep1er’s babybrother group will be active for. At least he provides respite whenever on stage I suppose, but I so desperately want him to get the Produce Camp Lelush treatment: a full time exposure then freedom on the last episode. Make it worth it at least!

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Have a little palate cleanser before we carry on.

Sabotage

I love to talk badly about corporations too much to blame only the trainees for their bad performances though. Particularly, Mnet isn’t truly known for either fairness or transparency, and so a lot of what the show displays doesn’t reflect individual potential. When that many stages are bad, the fault is on the network, not only through their casting, but their sabotage. That’s right: here come the delicious speculations of foul play.

Just like fancams of a performance learnt in a few days- with foreign trainees being given one day less to train, by the way- aren’t really indicative of who is talented, the Star Level stages are to be put into question: the showrunners claim that the songs were picked by the teams, but it takes extreme gullibility to take their word when watching some of the stage choices: either those trainees are stupid on top of untalented, or someone isn’t telling the truth.

When I mentioned Canton China’s performance earlier, they are one of the most questionable matchup: why would foreigners who aren’t fluent pick a song as rap-heavy and dense in pronunciation as God’s Menu? Would they really have expected anything but this?

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It’s still funny though sorry Canton China. KKAMA HH HH KKAJI.

And how come there just so happens to be such a high percentage of songs that members of the jury worked on, even with their extensive workography, when half the songs are their work, it becomes a tad suspicious, there isn’t just one writer and one choreographer in this industry. The numbers don’t add up. And as iconic as Shine is as a song, it’s still eyebrow-raise worthy to have Just the song to activate the competition’s most famous “trainee”’s backstory and tears. The songs are just too suspicious: fitting neither the skills or style or announced preferences of the participants. In a round where they have to best portray themselves, it’s hard to believe that so many contestants would pick so far out of their comfort zone, just to appeal to one member of the jury. Not to mention the coincidental stage repeats: the two tall and handsome but inexperienced guys just happened to both decide to do My House, in matching outfits too? At least try to be subtle about your script.

And all of those network picks only serve to push forward their favourites, and mostly, the premises of narratives they want to build. As the writers aren’t too original and love to rehash the same storylines, they are pretty easy to spot: the talented guy who did not charm the jury at first but will then sweep them off their feet with one day of practice, great but mean guy who’ll likely be lost by his “oversized ego”, the one who did So Good at first and then never lived up to it… It is much easier to make entertaining situations yourself than to expect them from a crowd of kids who likely wouldn’t start fights with how little time they have to do anything but practice and sleep. Hence, manufactured rivalries- between the Korean and Foreign group notably, something so out of pocket when within those you can find people who belong to one same debuted group split into blue and pink team, and definitely hilarious whenever they prompt a foreigner to say anything negative on the Korean team, taking it to their nationality as root of the issue, when some members of the Global team are themselves part of the Korean diaspora. The choice of Nationalistic War as a plotline is certainly a choice, but only works way less when instead of GP999’s three teams of more or less strictly region locked participants you have one country against the whole rest of the world. But I’d rather pretend this entire decision does not exist, there’s just something uncomfortable about the show trying to become ‘war on Kpop: these foreigners are trying to steal our job’. As if Mnet was even going to pick more than 3 Global trainees for their line up.

Then come my most detested, as I am a hater, the ones who take the limelight when being hardly better than MY picks who are objectively better naturally as I am the voice of truth. I mentioned Choi Yujin, but there are other worsties in the show, some who may get the same sad treatment as their fellow (of being shamed for not living up to expectation built out of nothing), I’m thinking most notably KuanJui from team Taipei whom the show will not manage to convince me is good as an Idol, no matter how much they repeat it: his traditional dancing is very good, but he neither could dance or sing Tiger Inside in a way that I could stomach, and it was neither a matter of awkward lack of confidence nor an issue of assignment that didn’t match his tastes. He may have done better indeed on an elegant song, but when it’s likely the final group will be performing Hip-Hop leaning choreographies, what use is there in lying that he can carry them out? Why are we pretending that he did not just disrespect Ten’s legacy etc etc? As he also carries the fatal flaw of not being a Korean trainee, which, to the Mnet writers’ eyes might as well mean you attempted murder on their families, I am expecting him to be this season’s Cai Bing, suddenly villainized by the community whenever the show needs some drama that doesn’t involve collateral damage for their plan of debutees to be.

Is there no main Slayer?

And how are they even going to make that lineup, you could ask, if everyone is mediocre, if there’s no talent but the 30 years old hag who already has a group at home and enlistment under his belt?

Thankfully, in the mass of Nothing, there still are a few attention grabbers, some I have already shouted out before, some that I keep for this more entertaining section of “lets see some good food”.

Well, good food…

I first want to give a shout-out to my little pity boys, the ones so clearly set up and so thoroughly mocked that you can only feel bad for them. I’d want them in the group just to spite the network. The Houses, as I’ve already mentioned before, have this incredible charm to them (they’re good looking) that makes it hard not to root for their progress (and they’re tall too) especially when the show bestows a montage of them working so hard day and night to escape their reputation (pretty boys should never be sad). Red House Jung Min Gyu is probably the funnier of the two, his awkwardness is in how brazenly he tries, while Blue House Bak Do Ha is the more tragic one, the one desperate with tears, the one who has to carry the burden of being Labelmate with Hui. Neither of them are good, but both seem untrained as hell, and the odds aren’t in their favour when the show cannot acknowledge that even with years of vocal lessons they’d hardly be able to sing Here I Am given their natural pitch. There’s something wholesome in the trauma-bound solidarity between the two as well, my favourite manufactured narrative is the show’s insistence on sliding a reaction shot of one House whenever the other does badly. They are brothers in martyrdom.

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The one thing the jury did get right is how much we did need to see them perform together. Power duo.

Another Martyr would be Lee Da Eul: as soon as the fancams dropped he was already the most mocked online, for his sloppy and odd dancing. Just like the Houses, his voice is unfit for the Soprano-ranged songs, and just like them, he has that weirdly endearing thing to him. Unlike the houses though, his bad performance secured him a spot for at least a round, if votes remain the main factor of survival: the hate-views of his fancam alone landed him in the top 9 for two episodes in a row. He’s everyone’s favourite underskilled little guy. And perhaps mine as well. Daeul sweep etc… I hope he makes it to the finale.

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He’s hypnotic to be perfectly honest, I’m obsessed with him he’s so woobly he’s so real.

Then come My Dozens. The ones that may not be deserving of the support compared to others, but that I still will support, because it’s my ranking, I get to choose the pretty boys who get in on face alone. Naturally, as the rest of the viewers, I devote myself to the Chiu SweetBlood- sorry I mean Jiwoong Sweep. Is he here and winning just because Bro is Beautiful? Maybe. But if the mass is not good might as well have pretty faces, and the thing is that he’s not completely void of talent, to my surprise and also disappointment, as there was something much funnier in supporting a guy who can legit do nothing but serve face and cleavage. From the get go I could never tell if I thought he was a good dancer or not. His fancam was… Not very good. His footage from his previous group endeavours were not too remarkable but not too bad. But Mirotic seemed to be just the style that best showcased his ability, and he can sustain vocals on top of the dancing, although not the most stunning ones. Still, that’s more than a Dozen needs to be doing, so shoutout to his pretty eyes and bosoms. Was he my favourite of his team? Not even. Did he still kind of Give? To me, certainly. But then I’m not objective towards the one truly handsome guy of the whole competition. Any lacks of his that would get anyone else thwarted from my list of faves is filled out by his mere blinks.

Good dancers who cannot hold a note were aplenty, and if I’m sensitive to guys who can shake it and willing to close my ears for them, I could not just adopt all of them. Some that did still vow me would be, and we’ll do quick name drops, Haruto, whose iconic voice break- cut off at broadcast because Mnet and I sometimes agree on who deserve the Ws- and iconic-er pre-show online presence carry him into my heart at all times, Wang Zi Hao who danced way better in his rehearsal than final stage but did not sound pleasant in either, Cha Woongki, yes he sounds awful no I don’t care he can shake it and threw a fish, and Na Kamden who hasn’t actually shown any singing so who knows maybe he’s good. All of these make it far in my excel sheet only because they aren’t Good dancers but Great ones. In this economy, it’s equivalent to having a minimum of singing skills.

As for singers, they get an automatic pass for me. We have to support what little voices we get.

The first Good singer I heard watching the performances was Jay, Kamden’s singing teammate, and he’s one I have to support double as it seems the public refuses to acknowledge him due to his cringeboy swag. Or perhaps he did something I’m not aware of, but his High School Musical type vocals deserve the acknowledgement: there’s not a lot of other candidates who can do what he does. So what if he’s cringe? What if he has the aura of a guy who posts tiktok thirst traps? What if he’s American? We have a shortage of singers. We need him now more than ever.

I mentioned Kim Taerae earlier, he alongside Lee Hwanhee are the two trainees who give the more Classic Kpop vocals. The former got to have a segment on how ‘he sounds so good but dances so bad’ and the latter is nowhere to be found on the screen. A damn shame, he sounds amazing, but what can we do against the editor’s favouritism except watch the full cam performance and sigh in hopes for a change to come when more group performances happen and they cannot skip him anymore.

Yoo Seungeon mainly, but also Krystian (with a very unique vocal colour, whose uncle possessed him, idk but i fuck with it), Park Gwanyoung (who sounded strained but way tolerable considering) and Winnie (who was mad good given the moves he was doing) aren’t just as good but still have nice vocal potential, and can probably do more, with time or more fitting songs.

Then come the ones that actually caught real attention, to different levels.

My favourite flop with no hopes of surviving, Kim Minhyuk, teammate of Park Gwanyoung, is being snubbed of screen time, of votes, of stars, of everything. Most tortured babygirl. Every day I dump a vote to the trash by giving it to him as if he could make it. First elimination and I know I’ll have to bid him goodbye, but our time together was lovely regardless. I made my peace, I don’t love him to the point of outrage, just to the point of disappointment.

Lee Ye Dam gave mediocre vocals on his live, but his practice sounded much better, so I do believe he can sing. And mainly, boy he can dance, and he can Slay. Moves AND attitude, it’s maddening given how his PR video had me on the fence about supporting him (made him drop all the way from my top ranks after the fancam, to the Thin Ice section). For my own public image, let’s all look into a spinning spiral and erase it from our minds, and focus on his gambler performance.

Sung Han Bin has me very confused. He’s quite obviously Mnet’s favourite little guy, and he’s surely talented, but he’s got that crazy trait of becoming way less interesting as soon as he’s on stage. His rehearsals and freestyles are way more charming, they film him having a silly little fake competition and suddenly I get the hype, then he does his assignments and I am bored. But well, would I be mad if he won? Absolutely not, he’s solid, he’s safe. He’s just a mystery: how does a guy who look so confident about performing also loses his charisma when he does? A science subject. Perhaps that’ll bewitch me.

Funnily, because they’re besties, the show so badly wants a Sung Hanbin vs Seok Matthew rivalry. They do play it up a tiny bit, but never fully, instead, you get to see Canada boy rave over how good his friend is over and over again, while himself being honestly quite as good. It seems that a lot of people want them to debut together, friendship wins, but also talent wins, because Matthew is a great performer, good dancer, pleasant singer though with room to improve, and seems comfortable and happy on stage, so that’s just nice. Good vibes. Go Canada.

Next one will have people ask, wait, didn’t you have a section for good dancers who can’t sing? And yes, I did, but the thing is to me, Park Gunwook is more than a great dancer. He’s just way too nice to watch dance. Makes me insane levels of “I fuck with this guy’s dance”. So he’s allowed to not sing the best you see. I think he can learn. I think he can be dangerous if he does. Like give him vocals and it’s the end for everyone else because damn. He dance good. That’s it. Sometimes I just need a lil dance guy.

The one sin Jiwoong committed in entrancing everyone with his vampire spell was to take away attention from Jeong Ichan in his team. That guy is kind of crazy if you ask me, and gets no attention for it. Sad! Watch him shake it, hear him sing, he’s quite obviously talented in both aspects. I want him in the final lineup so desperately, but it seems the judges disagree with me. Well, they never had good taste anyway. All he can do now is steal Yoon Jongwoo’s strategy of gaybaiting through Jiwoong to secure his fujogirl’s votes through ship-sweep. I’m begging him to get on this grind. I need him to survive.

For a while I didn’t understand the Keita hype. Not that I thought he was bad: like Hanbin I just thought he was skilled but not that bewitching, at least from his fancam he seemed really skilled, but I just didn’t feel much. I can understand better with his appearances on the two episodes so far. His Conduct Zero stage was fun, and he also did well with Here I Am both in evaluation and in Good Conduct, so go short king! You caught me now, I’m adding you to the ones I look after now. If we have to have a kpop rapper on the team, he can be it.

Kum Junhyeon. That’s about it. I thought he was great in his fancam, I thought he was awesome in Nunu Nana too, like oh he can sing alright? Seems like a fun guy too, let’s twirl our hair and pat ourselves on the back for always knowing he was to look out for, I always knew but now I got the other watchers on my side too. Very satisfying.

Unlike the total disregard for Kim Minseoung. It was to the point I wondered if he was just a known public enemy, he was my favourite from the fancams, and by favourite I mean that Youtube started putting it in my automatic playlists because of how much I watched it-something about the clarity of his moves, so satisfying, so clean, so exactly what I look for, so I pledged allegiance to him forever, and I’m thankful that he did not embarrass me. He’s great. And he’s in the bottom twenty percent with a full four star ranking. Very frustrating. Gives me a superiority complex too: I know what’s up. No one else does. They only like him because he does a flip…

In Conclusion...

The show exactly meets its expectations: bad taste and bad faith from the judges. The public doesn’t know shit. We are short of talent in this industry nowadays. I’m the biggest martyr. Chiu sweep. Ten thousand likes and I drop my list of most hated candidates just to feel something.

#and that's the essay #the intro and first paragrpah of the uuuuuuu development rly saying the same but shittalking a different star master ptdr #yea well i didnt know how to erm reformat rephrase etc in a way that'd remove the repeat outside of removing the whole thing #or itd take so long and im HUNGY #so take one awkward stitching #whatever!#this has been my ep1 and 2 review #seems like the next challenge the contestants will face is 'K group vs G group' cannot wait for more US VS THEM weird nationalism #they put so many of my girlies in the same one team too cant wait #the ones i cited as good arent all in my top9 btw some are guys i mentioned earlier who have like one or the other of the important skills #also yes i do not point out any Good Rappers bc i do not think there is any good rapper here <3 #trainees who come and rap to me are the same as coming and just staying silent the whole time <3 #i view them similarly #also the 'rap master' rly aint saying ANYTHING during these judge panels he too knows he's a fraud judging other frauds #i forgot to mention takuto!!! he's very cute and alike the houses and daeul gets pity likings but he's also a little baby so i want him #to get out of here and back to real life ! enjoy your youth!!!!!!! dont become an idol at age 15 or however young you are

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