So, I’ve started watching MNET’s Boys’ Planet on Twitch with a K-Pop reactor I follow regularly. It’s the first time I’ve watched a band creation series, although I have watched their previous competition series’ with already established bands: Road to Kingdom and Kingdom: Legendary War, and have heard and seen enough of their evil editing to know that it probably wasn’t going to be light entertainment.
The programme features 98 ‘boys’, who are vying to become
one of the 9 members of a new band that will debut after the show ends. Each
week they provide performances, on which they are judged by mentors, who award
them up to four stars, the points accruing as the series progresses.
Additionally, there is a public vote, which is done via an app. I’m assuming
that each week the least-voted members are eliminated.
I was already a little apprehensive, as Hui, the
leader of Pentagon (who you may recall are one of my favourite
K-pop bands), has, inexplicably to just about everyone, chosen to take part in
the show. Considering his immense talent and experience, you could imagine him
as one of the mentors and judges but not as a contestant, going up against what
are in the main, teenage boys in the early stage of their careers.
Universes (Pentagon’s fandom) had, not unreasonably,
been expecting the band to release a new album once Hui returned from
his military service as it’s now been a year since their last one (In:vite U)
came out, but instead, we were greeted with this news and some evilly edited
trailers that give the impression that his performance wasn’t as good as
expected, which didn’t do anything to help allay our fears about the future of Pentagon
and Hui himself. In fact, the fandom has been pretty much split between
those who want him removed from the show and those who will support him
regardless.
It was with this apprehension that I approached the first
show, and it didn’t take long for me to be both annoyed and completely confused.
I know from the shows I have watched previously that they spend a lot of time
focussing on non-important stuff and rarely give a full performance, often cutting
away to show the reactions of the other contestants and judges or reshowing
particular moves several times, but considering that viewers are supposed to be
voting on the contestants based on their performance in the first show, I don’t
see how they could do it.
First of all, of the 98 contestants, I don’t think we actually
saw the performances of more than a quarter of them. They are split into two
teams – Korean and Global, who are competing against each other, and from there
are split down into further teams. However, it made no sense to me – some of
them were in teams of 3 or 4, whereas others performed individually. In several
cases, the opposing teams performed the same song. In the case of 2
individuals, they were given a difficult (and old) 2PM song (definitely not
designed for solo performance) which, unsurprisingly, neither performed particularly
well alone. But then they got them to perform together and they did it much
better. Both were then marked down by the judges, as their solo performances were
the ones that counted (so why bother with the joint performance?).
But then there were several groups who were mentioned or
even briefly introduced, who they didn’t even bother to show the performances of
– so how are we supposed to assess whether these people are worth voting for if
we don’t even get to see them perform because they wasted time on showing one
of the Korean trainees getting ready for his slot instead?
The answer, it appears, is that each group/performer
has a video uploaded onto Youtube, which you are supposed to watch in
addition to the show (but honestly, who has time for that? The show was already
2 hours long). I was also told by other people watching the stream that many contestants have previously been on other band creation shows, so they
already have supporters who will vote for them regardless. This all seems very
unfair to me.
As expected, MNET’s treatment of Hui was pretty poor –
the aforementioned trailer showed him being tearful, and seemed to indicate it
was due to criticism of poor performance (unbelievable to anyone that knows
him) but instead, turned out to be because one of the groups performed Pentagon’s
Shine and he was understandably a little overwhelmed at being recognised
like that.* But then MNET tried to insinuate that Shine had been
the highlight of the band’s career – hinting that they’re washed up – when nothing
could be further from the truth. While, undoubtedly, it is their best-known
track, their popularity has been steadily increasing with each album (particularly
internationally) and Universes have worked hard to raise their profile.
We didn’t even get to see Hui’s performance as they
ended the programme before he got to sing, but I feel that scheduling him to perform
immediately after making him give feedback on the group covering his song when he was so emotional, was probably not
putting him in the best place to shine either.
I will continue watching the show, as I am interested to see how it develops and I enjoy interacting with the other people on the stream, although I fear there will be more frustration over Hui and his misuse.
I’m also
interested to see how one of the other contestants does as he’s from Lay’s
agency, Chromosome. A couple of others have also sparked interest among
the streamers, so we’ll see how many of them make the final 9. Hopefully, it’s
not going to end up like one of their previous band production series where the
cheating was so rife that it had to be cancelled without the band ever
debuting, and several people connected to the show’s production ended up in prison.
*This is not the first time MNET has used a performer's tears inaccurately in their advertising. In 2019, they used a video of Chanyeol crying at 2018 MAMA’s, with the caption that he was crying for joy (at winning an award). The truth was, EXO and their fandom were so badly treated at that award show that they were upset about it, and Chanyeol’s emotions reflected the feelings of many. Actually, MNET has done several shitty things to EXO over the years – including stealing their concepts and making fun of them – they had to withdraw one advertisement as it received so many complaints from the public.
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