going seventeen | jxj special: the dream show
premise:
to celebrate jeonghan and joshua's unit debut, they play a game where jeonghan and joshua are assigned either a "dream" room or a "reality" room (coinciding with their album, dreamscape). however, they are competing with seungkwan, and can lie about which room they are in -- if seungkwan isn't able to correctly determine who is in which room, he loses out on the points.
comments:
i actually really really like the concept of this episode. i have already gone on record to say why i don't like episodes that are super high concept, but i think the recent gose episodes have been doing a great job at balancing member chemistry and episodes with increasingly convoluted/high production concepts (refer to what happened on the set). but this one balances really big production value (me and joshua are lowk twin because we were reacting the same way to how much effort went into changing each of the sets into dream or reality) and farming great interactions to tell us more about each member's personality.
see, jeonghan has kinda been made into the token bad guy in going seventeen. i think that started with four-wheeled rider (review coming soon) with him completely skipping parts of the track, but of the complete cheaters that are the 95z (which is extremely funny seeing they're the oldest members of the group and ALSO even funnier when you see how they were all paired together for hide and seek), he's definitely seen as the leader of the lying pack (thank you [https://rankingsvt.bearblog.dev/going-seventeen-liar-liar/](world's biggest liar) and one million won host (review also coming soon)). but in the two years that he's been enlisted, we've sorta seen joshua beginning to fill that role. he was the runner up in liar liar, after all, and even made seungkwan cry on red ball, blue ball from his trickery! but i think this episode especially reveals something with jeonghan's win, joshua's runner-upping again, and seungkwan's loss.
jeonghan lies if it helps him achieve a win and to make the show entertaining. (you can see bits of pieces of this in the other don't lie episodes, for example.
joshua likes to lie just to lie, because he thinks it's fun, even if it may put him at a disadvantage at times. there are points in liar liar where he should've just told the truth (looking at that final question btw), him playing around with the batteries in 12,317 won costs him everyone's groceries, and i think this is also what digs his grave in what happened on the set. i love my man throughout it though.
but here's the funny thing: i think seungkwan genuinely does seem to trust joshua's telling the truth more often than jeonghan, despite seungkwan being jeonghan's favorite member (bungee jump review coming soon) and him being jeonghan's roommate for so long. that's why red ball, blue ball gave him such an emotional reaction, IMO! and when he realizes he 1. cannot trust his instincts in this game when this assumption is flipped due to cold hard evidence and 2. eventually starts losing because of how little he trusts jeonghan and joshua as a result of that, i think it's very interesting, but also give the poor guy a break ;--; his intro pose is so cute and they played him like a fiddle!! :(
P.S. the reason why villains bboodo is unranked while this is (both being episodes to celebrate a unit's debut) is because this one has a game while villains bboodo was more of a mini TTT x skit. not much to say about that one because it's surprisingly sweet. lots to say about this one because despite its runtime being way shorter than most gose episodes the game in this one is actually crazy.
ranking:
concept: 9; it's perfect for THESE MEMBERS. it's liar liar without the trivia where we just have Mr. Rule Breaker and Mr. Manipulator tricking sweet little booboo LMFAO
chemistry: 7.5; there's not that many members and it's more on revealing these members' personalities rather than interactions.
enjoyment: 8; why do i feel like i'm watching you can see everything bro (i saw it on monday fyi LOL)
overall - 8.2/10