going seventeen | runner up's sport day
premise:
celebrating children's day, the members of seventeen play a series of games where 2nd place gets the highest number of points; the member with the 2nd highest number of points after all games wins.
spoilers throughout review! as a pun on the word for runner up in korean (준우승), the members all win prizes if jun wins second place overall (준 우승 translating to jun victory). if jun figures the plan out, then only jun wins a prize.
comments:
happy birthday jun!! jun is my second bias in seventeen so of course i love this episode. it's filled with so many fun childish moments from each of the members, from the silly warmup to dokyeom repeatedly dodging the ball to all the doctor strange shenanigans. it's definitely an episode made for huihuis - i distinctly remember around this time fans complaining about how little screentime jun got in particular, being one of the shier/quieter members. the producers cooking up this game based on dino's idea in going company plus adding that extra element of jun winning to force more screen time is a stroke of genius. the members are right - it really is cute seeing jun having so much fun while being 100% oblivious.
i do love the set up of the episodes in luring you into the episode by not revealing the twist of it being rigged in jun's favor until the end of the first part - which makes it so much more fun on rewatch since jun's behavior is so much more funny in retrospective contrasted with everyone else! and while i thought the original plan of making people compete to get 2nd place while having to calculate how many points they need to get 2nd place is fun enough as a concept, it's really tricky and would feel a bit random in the end, especially with how it would be hard for anyone to ever get first place before anyone would get second. encouraging the members to rig a win from jun helps to create that motivation! and despite the episode being mostly centered on jun, it's not like there aren't moments from each of the other members either! despite seungcheol, minghao, and hoshi all being absent, the other members pick up and fill the space to have even more extravagantly ridiculous moments (hello dk's hula hooping, joshua's infinite going, and dino's cardio workout). small note - i do love seeing wonwoo being an mc, especially outside of the debate night setting!
ultimately super fun episode!! i do think it does lag a bit when the members start being blatant about rigging the game because they're just that competitive, and i honestly think jun should've gotten the gifts alone for the members being so obvious about rigging (jun DID say 'are you guys trying to make me win?') but i think it's nice everyone got the gifts anyway. however this is an episode i've seen countless times and i still love it. hooray for jun fans!!
ranking:
concept: 8.5; not super perfect but still so so fun
chemistry: 8.5; all episodes missing members will lack a certain something. however, the members present really made do - especially when it came to highlighting (pun intended) their more reserved hidden ace of comedy
enjoyment: 10; i love this episode. truly one of my favorites.
overall - 9/10