going seventeen | going company outing (surprise don't lie)
premise:
the members of seventeen go on a pretend to be employees at a company going to a corporate outing, including a treasure hunt and a barbecue.
except it isn't, because the treasure hunt was done to choose mafia members for a game of don't lie, where the mafia must hide the cash price, split into three parts, on the spot while the other members are simultaneously searching for it. now with the addition of the thief role rather than the previous broker role: someone who may check a citizen at night and steal the money if they have found the treasure.
comments:
going seventeen 2023 was something very special because team going realized as quickly as the rest of us that don't lie has truly become a staple of going seventeen as a webshow. so, they kicked it off with a bang by introducing three iterations of don't lie as a mega don't lie trilogy where the ultimate winner at the end of them would win 3 million krw (about 2,250usd) -- the biggest prize of all of gose. and the first iteration of this was a surprise.
i won't lie (i don't lie) - i do not remember ANYTHING about this episode. the only episode i have rewatched was the very first one before don't lie was revealed, and even then, i must have seen that episode at least 3 years ago, since all i remember was how cozy minghao's hat is and minghao being jihoon's son in their company skit. imagine my surprise when this turned out to be so much more enjoyable than i thought it would be. all the episodes i've rewatched for this 'project' that scored above a 9 are episodes i've already known, already loved, and already expected to rank highly. i don't even SLIGHTLY recall this episode being this good, and, frankly, i don't know why i never ended up rewatching it until now! i actually really love the surprise don't lie concept because truly no one was expecting it. it started off as an episode that kept on with the going company skit they had conceived for gose 2021 with a ttt-style approach, yet the reveal that it's the return of don't lie (after having no don't lie episodes for all of 2022 btw), was genius. i love the editing reveal here too that the first(?) person to find out about this surprise episode was jeonghan at the moment where jihoon got suspicious he found a treasure earlier on in the episode. it's genius!
now the previous don't lies have been quite influenced by the producers trying to pick roles for members who they think would really fit or pass in their prospective roles. this precedent is what led hoshi to suspect mingyu in the first place in don't lie ii, which may cause criticism over not really leaving the episode to chance. this throws all that overengineering of the episode out the window because somehow the worst person for the doctor role ended up becoming the doctor and immediately started planning for the strategic taking out of certain members and teamed up with the mafia. like. WHAT?? that's INSANE and something that could only happen in a game that's truly cooked up by chance -- HERE!
this episode just has so many good moments that i completely, 100% forgot about. the broker being replaced with the thief completely makes sense for this situation. there is no longer individual rooms, just a wide open space, so there is no point of a broker asking where the treasure is. however, due to the hastiness of the mafias having to hide the treasure on the fly, it is going to be a little bit easier to find the treasure -- yet whether or not you keep it is now up in the air. i honestly really love the thief position, and it going to hoshi helps him out in a very hoshi way, though it worked out so well that it ultimately felt like wasted potential. i hope they do bring the role back in the future, though! and, of course, getting to experience this a second time without any real knowledge on what happens aside from the don't lie surprise (because i do remember getting to the end and reading that text scroll but i had no clue who the mafias were) meant i got to experience the unveiling of all the mysteries again. and despite the editing withholding information from us until the very end so we're walking in as blind as the rest of the citizens, i'm actually not upset in the way i was with don't lie iii -- i'm just shocked at how good everyone's acting has gotten! and even if
and as someone who is very biased, we did get a great jun moment from this episode and that always catapults an episode into a great chemistry score for me. <3 the members playing around with geese and cats is an extra plus.
(and i don't even mind that they cheated pretty hard in this episode that much because i know team going rectified that in eyes that see the truth & point of omniscient interference, haha!)
ranking:
concept: 10! having the episode start out very lighthearted before becoming a surprise don't lie was a surprise at the time and even if the surprise is spoiled it's just as fun seeing the members surprised now. there is something to be said about how much the members were able to cheat, but they did safeguard it by warning for a penalty if members were cheating. the members just happened to cheat, and that's not team going's fault for this episode imo.
chemistry: 10! everyone gets a piece of it.
enjoyment: 10! wow! another 10/10 episode!
overall - 10/10 ⭐