going seventeen | water battlegrounds
premise:
as a parody of pubg, the members do a battle-royale with water guns
comments:
i previously mentioned that a lot of the episodes in 2025 are a little too high concept and a little too restrictive on allowing natural chemistry between the members. the things is i actually thought the concept of this episode was really damn good! the cameras behind the members allowed for an easier time for the cameramen (the poor cameramen during mousebusters, going rangers, and catch stock...) while also adding to the video game player concept, which i thought was really neat!! the item boxes and 'heals' were really cool, especially with seeing how each member utilized them. the chemistry was also pretty good too - i loved seeing things like vernon's typical resting, the various alliances, hoshi on a bike, jun in a tree, and seungcheol + mingyu's more competitive sides coming out (it does make me sad that wonwoo wasn't there for the game themed episode though).
however i think this episode unfortunately falls into the same pitfall of revenge of the moles (which, despite my hypercritical review, i thought was actually a cute episode!!) in that the game just wasn't balanced very well. spoilers unfortunately the members are too kind to each other and i don't know if the 'prize' for the members was enough because why do they not really seem motivated enough to put in more effort at the end? why are they so avoidant the whole game?? it just feels like maybe they were given too much space to work with because it felt like everyone was just hiding and i felt like that image of the guy with a stick poking and going 'come on... do something). maybe there should've been a clause where it's like 'if you don't attack anyone in 10 minutes you're dead' because it felt like the episode just crescendoed into a snail crawl by the end. gaaah. at least the mvp choosing and 2nd class president appointment was sweet.
ranking:
concept: 7; WE COULD HAVE HAD IT ALL
chemistry: 6; like it's okay i guess...
enjoyment: 6; .......
overall - 6.3/10