[October 26, 2022]
you know when you find a piece of media so good that you spend the whole day thinking "wow, I can't wait to get home and watch/play/read X"? well, in the last few weeks this has been happening to me, with a TV show that absolutely nobody has heard of. in fact, I discovered the show in a very obscure way: through a post on a random blog that I found while stalking the author of a paper I found when searching for 'detective games' on google scholar. in other words: obscure!! the only "popular" mention of this show is a video essay with 190k views on YouTube, which is not a small number, but it's certainly not what I would call "mainstream".
being so good and so obscure, I feel a MORAL obligation to spread The Word. because without a post on A Random Website on the Internet, I wouldn't have found this excellent show, so being the owner of another Random Website on the Internet, nothing more natural than doing the same. #Random Websites on the Internet matter
the show in question is called "The Genius", a South Korean game show that ran between 2013 and 2015. the summary is as follows: each season follows a group of 13 players who, every episode, play a different game to decide who will be eliminated. after 12 episodes, the player who remains (the titular "genius") becomes the owner of the most natural reward in the world: lots of money. and if this sounds like something you would never watch, don't worry, because it's also not something I would watch! but it's good. it's very good.
it's good for several reasons. first, the players: they're all people with some kind of talent, which makes this show the closest thing to a real version of Danganronpa that will probably ever exist on planet earth. just to give you an idea, in the first season the cast includes:
as you can imagine, each of these people brings a different set of skills to the show: some are naturally intelligent, others are good at lying, others at allying with whoever is winning... it's sensational to see how different players approach the same games, and also to see how the dynamics between them evolve over time. because as the episodes go by, the players build relationships with each other: so-and-so was already betrayed by so-and-so, whatshisname always allied with so-and-so, etc. this creates an additional layer of drama that is very welcome, like seeing someone swallow their pride and kneel before their worst enemy just to have a chance of not being eliminated. it's human drama!! it's fun!!
but this only works because of the true star of The Genius: the games. every episode has a new game, and the games are always carefully constructed: they all have loopholes in the rules that allow players to do clever things, like eliminating all the impact of luck, scoring infinite points, or even creating secret codes to communicate with their enemies and betray their allies. if the games sucked The Genius would suck, but the games are very good at allowing different people to demonstrate their talents.
the games allow people to show that they're clever, and The Genius is good because it's very fun to watch people being clever.
but it's not just the games and the players. the real real star of The Genius is... the editing. it may seem strange, but a large part of the episodes have plot twists: you were sure that one person was going to win because they were doing something very smart, but BOOM, there was actually another person doing something EVEN SMARTER the whole time, and you only found out at the end because the editors were hiding it from you the whole time. this editing style breaks the idea of "omniscient viewer" that these shows normally bring, and ends up putting YOU, the viewer, in the middle of the game with the players -- thus maximizing the tension since even YOU don't know who is telling the truth and who is lying. it's perfect it's like a mystery movie!!!
anyway I think those are the most important points. did I sell it well? not really, but just go and watch it. The Genius is very good. the series gets better over time (because you build bonds with the players), but the first episode is already good, and I think it does a great job of selling the fish. watch it! watch it now!!
piracy is illegal but I don't know of absolutely anywhere you can watch The Genius legally, so... ? please go to this reddit post where you can access all four seasons (note: if you're interested, it's possible to stream the video on mega without downloading it).
for me the editing is the best part, but some people don't like it (???). these people say things like "The editing keeps repeating scenes, [...] forcing mystery. [...] It takes too long to get to the point it wants to make". I don't understand what these words mean but it's worth saying the obvious: it's not for everyone!
"my god I don't know who is who": if you're like me, at first it will be difficult to distinguish some of the players, especially when they're mentioned by name -- unfortunately it's not that easy to associate names with faces when the names are things like Hwangjoon and Jungmoon and Jungmin and Sangmin and etc. my answer to that is: hang in there!! the beginning is the worst part, because there are more players and you don't know anyone -- over time the cast shrinks and the faces become more familiar.