Produce 101 Season 2: A Survival, Reality Show
Hello everyone! It’s me again, Syeikha. I’d like to tell you my favorite TV show for the last several weeks. On this Friday, the next episode of Produce 101 Season 2 will air. I didn’t really watch all episodes one-by-one, but I followed the program on Youtube. Basically, I only looked for the performances from each group in every episode. It was a very good way to judge them fairly, I think, since I could be very objective of seeing each member’s skill and talent. I said it that way because the editing in the show matters so much to lead the audience’s views on those trainees. You might wonder, “What’s this show about?” Okay, let me explain a bit.
Produce 101 is a survival, reality Korean show of choosing 11 out of 101 trainees to make their debut in the music industry and perform within a year period after the show ends. Originally, this show consists of female contestants in the first season, but it tries the male version, so yeah this is the season 2. This is a very big chance for the trainees whose companies are neither big nor known. If they could stay until the last episode and become one of the members to make a debut, they will be very popular like IOI, the group who made its debut from the first season. Why can this happen? It’s simply because of the voting system. This show is famous internally (in Korea) and internationally (for K-pop fans). One of the major reasons people watch it is because of the success of the first season. In the first season, international fans could vote for their favorite trainee, yet now, the show will not count the international votes. The voting results differ so much from the previous to this season that the numbers of vote become bigger as the show is watched by more people. I take an example from the first elimination in both seasons: the trainee who was placed first in the first and second seasons got 559,694 votes and 1,044,197 respectively. The difference is big, isn’t it? It’s two times bigger. You can see that this season is more popular considering the high votes despite only Koreans can vote.
I have already watched the first one although I didn’t watch the determining episode because I imagined it would be sadder to watch the trainees who were only a-step-away from their debut throughout the show. However, I still planned to watch the second one fully after the finals end, but maybe I will skip the same part as the part I skipped in the first season. Unfortunately, there are only 11 episodes to decide who will be the chosen trainees, so we can only get several performances. As far as I have watched, the performances are so good. Back to my introduction topic, if we watch performances without knowing the performers’ characters or whether they work hard or not, we will judge them precisely on how well they are on stage. I can say that almost all contestants in this season are qualified to be the 11 trainees-to-make-debut.
I will now talk about my favorite stages in season 2 so far. These teams that I am going to mention are given names based on their performance songs. First of all, I really like Call Me Baby team 1 especially the rap part which is so interesting. Then I like 10 Out of 10 team 2 which is like a Taekwondo-dance performance, and Boy in Luv team 1 and 2. Those are from the first group mission of the show. I think I watched the others also, but those four performances caught me the most. From the second mission, I like Right Round team, If It’s You team, Playing with Fire team, and Get Ugly team. I got my eyes on many trainees, and I’m looking forward for their next performances. I can’t really choose whom to vote because I am confused (well, international fans cannot vote), so is Korean audience. It is shown from the voting results every week that the results are not stable. The first season showed stability in results between the first and second place that those trainees would only compete with each other for the first place. Meanwhile, we cannot really predict the results in this season. In fact, the first-place trainee on the first elimination moves down to third place in the 6th episode, whereas the other trainees move up and down. Who will be the trainees that make their debut? Let’s just wait and see.
Writer:
Syeikha Annisa Marasabessy
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4th Entry (4th semester)
