Mnet idol survival show BOYS PLANET (the boys version of the successful GIRLS PLANET 999 which spawned Kep1er) has released a set of profile images of the competing trainees.. The series debut is scheduled for February 2nd.
1. Seok Matthew (MNH Entertainment)
2. Takuto (YY Entertainment)
3. Toui (FNC Entertainment Japan)
4. Wang Yanhong (Asia Star Entertainment)
5. Wang Zihao (Chromosome)
6. Wen Yechen (Youth With You alum)
7. Winnie (FirstOne Entertainment; member of NINE.i)
8. Wumuti (JPark&Company; Under 19 alum)
9. Xuan Hao (Beijng Stardyehot Entertainment; Youth With You 3 alum)
10. Yang Jun (Asia Star Entertainment)
If you’re following the MNET show Boys Planet, you probably know by now that the editors are extremely irritating. For a song “mission” like this, they show 2-3 minute montages of some of the teams practicing, then fast forward to show time passing, then make it look like the performance will start any moment, and then have a lengthy flashback before we finally get to see the performance.
So, I made a main recap that takes you through episodes 3 and 4 in a linear way, but then when it comes to focusing on each team, I’ll put all those thoughts in a separate post so you can keep the storylines straight. This post is about the Hot Sauce teams’ rehearsal and performance.
The Teams
K team:
Leader: Park Hanbin
Other members: Lee Dong Gun, Bak Do Ha, Choi Woojin, Park Hyunbeen, Park Ji Hoo
Lee Dong Gun is 17, auditioned with Criminal (wearing shoes), was ranked 43rd and then 44th, and has risen from 1 star to 2 stars. I think the judges were unreasonably cruel to him about his audition, for the record.
Park Ji Hoo is 16, auditioned with Freak, was ranked 47th and then 49th, and has fallen from 4 stars to 3 stars. He’s the one that told Hui, “I just got here!”
Choi Woojin is 18, auditioned with NuNu NaNa, was ranked 41st and then 46th, and has fallen from 3 stars to 1 star.
Park Hanbin is 20, auditioned with The Real, was ranked 34th and then 36th, and has been 4 stars the whole time. He is the one with the blue hair.
Park Hyunbeen is 17, auditioned with GBTB, was ranked 40th and then 50th, and has been 3 stars the whole time.
Bak Do Ha is 20, auditioned with My House (blue shirt), was ranked 27th and then 25th, and has been 0 stars the whole time. He’s not good at anything, and yet you know exactly who I mean, right?
Jang Min Seo is also there for the earlier rehearsals, with his longer blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail. He later had to leave the show, apparently due to knee injuries. This SHOW.
G team:
Leader: Osuke
Other members: Nice, Cai Jin Xin, Chen Liang, Lin Shi Yuan, Ollie, Toui
Osuke is 19 years old, auditioned with Crown, was ranked 63rd and then 69th, and rose from 1 star to 2 stars. He’s Japanese.
Nice is 22 years old, auditioned with Kokobop, was ranked 71st and then 63rd, and has been 0 stars the whole time. He’s Thai.
Cai Jin Xin is 19 years old, auditioned with Reveal, was ranked 42nd and then 45th, has been 0 stars the whole time. He’s Chinese.
Chen Liang is 22 years old, auditioned with God’s Menu, was ranked 83rd and then 61st, and fell from 2 stars to 0 stars. He’s Chinese.
Lin Shi Yuan is 24 years old, auditioned with God’s Menu, was ranked 89th and then 91st, and fell from 1 star to 0 stars. He’s Chinese.
Ollie is 16 years old, auditioned with Kick It, was ranked 23rd and then 18th, and fell from 3 stars to 0 stars! Oh no! He’s Chinese, but speaks English really well -- in fact, he seems more comfortable in English than other languages, and chooses English for most of his interviews.
Toui is 19 years old, didn’t get to audition, was ranked 95th and then 93rd, ouch, and rose from the automatically assigned 0 stars to 1 star. He’s Japanese.
Team Selection:
I think this is the fifth k-team picked, and might be the fifth g-team picked too. It’s hard to be sure.
Episode 3, 1:21:58
Part Selection
Then they pick who will have the killing part, and they give it to little Ji Hoo, who specializes in facial expressions.
On the K-side, the team decides to pick a leader. Bak Do Ha says he’s been a leader in student government, but Park Hanbin says he’s been a leader of musical teams at his agency. They hold a vote for leader, and no one votes for Bak Do Ha. Diplomatic Park Hyunbeen still says “Please put down your hands” so that DoHa wouldn’t know that no one had raised them. Awww. But Park Hanbin wins unanimously. He promises to push them hard, then gives a really cute smile.
Meanwhile, over on the G-team, the drama is that the leader, Osuke, is the shortest one on the team, so he keeps disappearing from view. MNET lets us know this is very funny with their choice of background music. If you’re wondering, Osuke is apparently 5’5.
Osuke interviews (in Japanese) that the other team has Park Hanbin, who has four stars, but his team has a combined total of 3 stars among them - so Park Hanbin alone could beat all of them. Aww.
Skip to Episode 4, 1:21:37. It’s time for the teams to perform.
Back stage, Seo Won says something that is translated as “Win scrumptiously.”
The holy trinity of G-team hopes, Keita, Matthew, and Zhang Hao, watches hopefully.
The K-team introduces themselves, and promise to do a delicious performance. Don’t know what that has to do with guns to their heads, but ok. Also, love how Bak Do Ha forgets to do it. He seems like a sweet guy, but boy, he can’t do anything right.
Left to right: Choi Woojin, Bak Do Ha, Park Hyunbeen, Lee Dong Gun, Park Ji Hoo, Park Hanbin
G-team introduces themselves as a restaurant of charms. We again hear about how tiny Osuke is, and then it’s time for a flashback.
Osuke is having trouble figuring out how to teach the choreo to the team by watching the video on the tablet, and I can’t blame him. I don’t know how people do that. Meanwhile, K-team is learning so fast. He interviews, straight up, “I think my team will lose.”
That’s Osuke in green and Toui in yellow. Chen Liang has silvery hair and an eyepatch. There’s Nice, right behind Osuke (and looking down!!). It’s hard to see the others in this shot, but it should be noted that Lin Shi Yuan had red hair during his audition, but his hair is brown now (and it looks a lot better).
Ollie steps forward and offers to help, and things begin moving. Ollie might be the youngest member, but, as he explains in his interview (in English), “We want to win, and we kind of have to work together to make the best stage we can.” In the end, Ollie becomes the dance teacher, and helps everyone a lot.
Remember that Ollie is signed with Yuehua, which means that he trains with Zhang Hao and Han Yu Jin -- this is a kid who has actually studied choreography, and he was initially a three star. I suspect he may have failed his star level test because he either just sort of choked or was sick that day -- I've heard that if you were sick for the second level test they put you in zero stars automatically. Though he takes over as leader, he’s still sweet with his hyungs, and it’s nice to see.
At dance rehearsal with kindly LipJ, they go up in pairs, one person from K and one from G. I get the feeling that they both performed as teams first and did decently, or else LipJ wouldn’t put them through this. Blue haired Park Hanbin from the other team dismisses Ollie as “nothing special,” but he’s laughing as he says it, so it easily could be a joke. I think Park Hanbin jokes a lot and doesn’t think about how people might interpret the things he says. I think MNET is trying to make me hate Park Hanbin, and I don’t like to do what MNET is telling me to do, so I’m going to fight it.
But look at these two. It should be a really unfair match, given their ages and star levels, and yet….
I think Ollie is completely keeping up with Hanbin -- in fact, I think he nails some of the details even better than Hanbin does. LipJ’s comments obviously confuse Ollie, so she switches to English, which he seems to understand much better than Korean. She tells him, essentially, that he’s doing the choreo his own new way, but that she really likes it.
At dress rehearsal, the judges are pretty impressed. They can’t believe that this is a team with five no-stars (it’s almost as if ya’ll sorted Ollie into the wrong pile!). The dancing seems to all be pretty good, and though Toui is having trouble with some of the high notes, the vocal masters tell him he’s doing ok otherwise, and to just focus on the last part more. It seems like good feedback, and in a fair world, this team might even have a chance to win. The judges also say that Osuke looks nice in the middle because he’s so short.
As we head into the performance, Ollie gets the last word, in English: “I believe in my teammates.”
Left to right: Osuke, Toui, Ollie, Lin Shi Yuan, Nice, Cai Jin Xin, Chen Liang
As the performance begins, the judges say that they hope the trainees will show vigor beyond just skills, and I think I know what they mean -- they want to see dancing, not just execution of choreography.
Overall, pretty good, Toui’s bad high notes aside! One of my favorite G-performances. You could believe they were having fun. Obviously, Ollie was one of the best, if not the best in terms of both dancing and performance; but he also showed decent vocals -- clear, and with signs of actual training. He’s ranked pretty well and I hope he survives so we can keep seeing more of him. Osuke was the best in terms of facial expressions throughout -- he’s really fun to watch in general, but his rapping tone was not the best. Lin Shi Yuan was arguably the best rapper, but kind of forgot to perform, which is a bummer since he was in the center a lot. Cai Jin Xin looked a little lost on stage sometimes, like he was counting his steps, but when he was the vocalist he remembered to show expression. Poor Toui -- stepping up to do some SM Agency style high notes on a team without a main vocalist. He did his best, ya’ll. I think if I were him I would have just not tried for that note -- just drop an octave or something, I don’t know.
Biggest surprise: You guys, Nice not only didn’t look down the whole time, he actually looked upwards??? And showed all sorts of different facial expressions other than just dull surprise! It’s the first time since he came on the show that I understood why he was here. I think his fan cam is worth a peek. I’m not saying he’s the best performer to ever walk the earth -- just that he’s so much better than I would have guessed. Good job, Nice! You were the biggest surprise on this team, for me.
At 1:29:56, we move over to K-team.
The MNET editing focuses on Osuke’s charm and how natural and relaxed Ollie is. No one has a kind word to say about Nice, which is a shame because I feel like he made a leap forward from what we’d ever seen from him.
But yeah, overall, good job Hot Sauce G!
We flashback to the boys’ dance rehearsal, not with the judges but on their own. Hanbin has gone full dance teacher on them, telling them to lift their arms more, elongate their angles, etc. But he doesn’t seem cruel or insulting in any way. He had warned them that it was going to be tough, but it really IS tough. He makes them dance one at a time with him, while the rest of the team watches to see what’s different.
Bak Do Ha says, “He pulled us by our necks,” which probably sounds more normal in Korean.
Lee Dong Gun says, “I learned a lot from Han Bin hyung -- I learned what it really means to practice.”
Choi Woojin says, “I was grateful we practiced 1-on-1.”
At that big group evaluation where they all gave each other feedback, everyone is full of compliments for Ji Hoo and the team in general. However, there is a lot of negative feedback about main vocalist Donggun’s vocals, which seems well earned. Kid is ruuuuuullll off key. Hanbin says, essentially, that it’s natural Donggun would feel stressed out, but that he should try his best to stay relaxed. No one on this team is really a noted vocalist, and so Donggun is falling on his sword. I feel bad for people who have to take on the main vocalist when no one else will, even though maybe they also can’t sing. Hanbin even admits that he himself needs more practice, and the team almost can’t believe it. They’re aiming not just to beat G-group, but to win the whole thing and end up on M-Countdown. Hey, I love the ambition.
Park Ji Hoo, who has the killing part, says he’s grateful for Hanbin’s good ideas, and adds, “He’s the best.”
There really isn’t any drama here, even though one of the team members had to leave the show and they had to scuttle to rearrange the choreo and parts probably a day or two before the show. There wasn’t drama because Hanbin is being exactly what he should be, as a leader. His feedback is firm but specific and fair. He doesn’t just yell at them to already be good dancers. He helps them be good dancers. He even coaxed accurate dancing out of Do Ha somehow. I don’t know why the psychopath dance teachers don’t do that, but then again, they are psychopaths incapable of basic human empathy. Hanbin at least knows that people perform better when they feel happy and confident.
Left to right:Choi Woojin, Bak Do Ha, Park Hyunbeen, Lee Dong Gun, Park Ji Hoo, Park Hanbin
The performance:
It’s great, actually, aside from Donggun’s pretty terrible vocals. It's too bad they didn't have anyone else better suited for the part -- I know he did his best, he's just not a vocalist. Ji Hoo is super charming, as dumb looking as his pointless goggles are (that’s not his fault). They all looked like they were having fun, and the choreography made sense when they were doing it. Park Hyunbeen, in the very shiny jacket, rapped pretty well. Even Do Ha did ok with the dancing! Let the record show, this is what happens when you teach people a dance with respect and honesty instead of yelling at them and making them feel bad or passive aggressively hiding in staircases.
Hanbin’s shirt raise felt kind of pointless but I won’t pretend it didn’t work on the crowd.
And he pulled it off with self-confidence, which is the most important thing about a shirt lift. I’d rather full confidence and not as good abs than the other way around. Luckily, Hanbin has both confidence and good abs so good for him! And pretty good vocals, too.
Side note: why did K group get so much cuter of a background? (The reddish one is G, the greenish one is K)
Anyway, I don’t know if this team could have ever won against the Backdoor team when it came to the M-Countdown, but I do think that if their songs had been switched, and this team had had Backdoor and the other team had Hot Sauce, then maybe this team would have won. Backdoor is just such a great song and Hot Sauce is just noises and choreography. I swear, I like a lot of NCT songs, but this one just isn't it for me, personally, and I think it's harder to pull off. Backdoor is the kind of song that I think more people would like even if they weren't fans of the people performing the song.
Afterwards, the judges are full of compliments for the whole team, going so far as to basically compliment the show for casting so many talented trainees.
The Results:
G: Toui 10
Main Vocal
K: Lee Dong Gun 56
Sub Vocal 1
K: Park Hanbin 253
G: Ollie 60
Main Rapper
K: Park Hyunbeen 107
G: Lin Shi Yuan 12
Sub Vocal 2
K: Choi Woojin 30
G: Nice 6
Sub Rapper 1
K: Bak Do Ha 29
G: Cai Jin Xin 54
Sub Vocal 3:
G: Chen Liang 10
Sub Rapper 2
K: *Park Ji Hoo* 143
G: *Osuke* 81
Final vote: 618 to 233
They don't actually tell us how many votes Chen Liang got, but we later on find out that the whole team had 233 total, so it would have to be 10 for Liang.
Hanbin is pretty surprised and happy about his high vote count.
He interviews that the audience liked it when he showed his abs, and I mean, they did.
But poor Ollie had been hoping for better than 60 votes -- it’s just hard for a 16 year old to beat a 20 year old when it comes to sex appeal, and appeal in general. Ollie is super talented and I know he’ll land on his feet somehow.
I’m happy for Osuke -- 81 votes is great for a G-team member. But once Ji Hoo’s score -- or as the subtitles called him here, “Ji Boo” -- was revealed, K team already had 296 votes, and it already was obvious which team would win.
I’m surprised for the votes that both Lee Donggun and Toui got. I know 10 isn’t much but it’s more than I thought the trainee in last place would get! I think Lee Donggun has a lot of charm.
Hanbin’s 253 is just six points below Kim Ji Woong’s 259 votes, so I guess the trick really is to show your abs!
Oh, Nice looked like he was going to cry. Nice, you did a good job! I noticed you, sweetheart!
Hanbin interviews that it was his first time as a leader (??? didn’t he say he’d done it before???) but that his team trusted him and didn’t quit, and he thanks them truly.
Meanwhile, G-group is speechless with sadness. They just sit there, and you can feel their chests aching. Ollie begins to cry, and his hyungs wipe away his tears. The rest of them cry a bit too.
Osuke interviews that he feels bad that as a leader he couldn’t do more for his team. But we all know that the deck was stacked against them.
Ollie gets the last word, saying in English, “even if we don’t win, it’s ok. It was like, a really fun ride to go along.”
And that's the end of this recap!
Also, this was the final song to be recapped (Love Me Right was in an earlier post.)
