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boysplanetrecaps · 2 years ago

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Boys Planet Episode 9, En Garde

Hi! I already wrote a general/master post that covers episode 9, but this post will focus on the rehearsals and performance of the En Garde team. It’s all after the Read More! Thanks for being here, and ready, set, go!

As a reminder, here are the trainees on the En Garde team, with their episode 8 ranking and their previous songs, to help you remember who is who:

Kim Gyu Vin 6 Love Me Right Love Killa Park Gunwook 9 Kill This Love Tomboy Kum Jun Hyeon 10 Back Door Gang Hui (Lee Hoe Taek) 11 Love Me Right Tomboy Lee Seung Hwan 21 Danger Gang Hiroto 28 Very Nice Rush Hour

First Rehearsal Segment

At 35:50 in to Episode 9, we visit team En Garde, and spend about 7.5 minutes with them, most of which time is unnecessary. This team didn’t have to go through much trauma in The Great Reshuffling, since the only teammate who left (Park Hanbin) left voluntarily. Also, their members were left in a convenient distribution, one trainee per part…

Clockwise from top left: Hiroto, Kum Junhyeon, Lee Seunghwan, Hui

… with one exception: both of the Killing Part members survived.

Kim Gyuvin and General Park Gunwook audition for who will get to keep the Killing Part. Kim Seunghwan throws his name in the hat as well. The remaining three trainees decide on who will keep the part. They annoyingly drag out the reveal for a while but finally say that they choose Gunwook.

For me, the constant auditioning for the part seems to make it worse and worse because Gunwook is now overdancing it to the point it doesn’t even look good, to my eyes anyway. I don’t want to feel like someone is combining their dancing with their boxing workout, you know? Maybe it’s just me. I actually like Seunghwan’s audition best, but I understand why the team wouldn’t give him the killing part, not at this stage of the game. And I still like Gunwook. I wonder things about him, like, if he were presented with several pizzas, how many pizzas would he eat? Not slices, pizzas. How many whole pizzas could he eat? I say… three. Like three full size pizzas. And drink like two 2-liter bottles of soda. And just be like, fine. Do it again tomorrow like NBD.

So yeah, once Gunwook is chosen, the trainees don’t have much else to do but practice. And Hui says something interesting. “I worried if things were going too well.” Why would you worry about that, Hui? He doesn’t explain why he’s worried. But I infer he means that if things go too well, then they won’t have a STORY for MNET to show.

Then there’s this kind of dumb bit where they prank Gunwook and tell him that they’ve actually decided to give the killing part to Sunghwan instead. It’s uncomfortable because it makes Sunghwan look like one of those who doesn’t accept a judgment and ask to audition again later on, which is so not the kind of person Sunghwan is. As you recall, Sunghwan is a peach.

Throughout the prank, Gunwook, to his credit, just sort of deals with it. He doesn’t get angry or storm out of the room. He just sort of breathes in and out and tries to accept it. Even as it sinks in, he’s sad, but not kicking things or screaming, just…. trying his best to accept it. Finally, his team makes it obvious that it’s just a prank, and Gunwook lies down on the floor in a combination of annoyance and relief. But throughout, he doesn’t ever whine or try to get people to change their minds or complain that it’s unfair. Aww, Gunwook is a good egg. His patience and fortitude really stand in stark relief compared to Matthew’s behavior.

(Ok team, turn out the lights, put on this hype track, and get close to whatever screen you’re reading this on. Let me whisper in your ear because I have a conspiracy theory. Mmmmaybe Gunwook knew the whole time that this was a prank and just went with it, to create good content. I’m not saying that he knew. I’m just saying, maybe. I’ll let all of you decide for yourselves.)

They give Gunwook back his sticker -- he gives it a little kiss -- and that’s the end of the segment.

1:41:57 D-Day

It’s time for the performance! The team comes up on stage to introduce themselves.

We see Wumuti and co in the audience, holding up signs:

They introduce themselves, and it’s like, Gyuvin’s soul is leaving his body as he tries to speak. I hate aegyo too, Gyuvin.

WHAT IS HUI WEARING AND WHY DOES THIS GARMENT EXIST?

What kind of Loki-cosplay looking crap is this?

Ok, so it’s mixed media -- we got some matte polyester imitation worsted wool in the front, pleather on the shoulders and sleeves, and a single pleated rubber shoulder… device? Also it’s really a jacket that he’s wearing over a button up shirt and tie? And it has a weird belt thing? And shiny buttons that don’t look functional because it’s not really a jacket after all it’s just a thing you wear over a shirt even though it can’t be buttoned or unbuttoned? WHAT IS IT?

And we can’t even blame the stylist noonas or anything. This is just Hui living his best life. Sigh.

I guess I’m the wrong person to ask because I don’t like faux military styling. I probably mentioned it when I was writing my recap for Law. At least with Law they were wearing sort of olive-khaki shades and not black, and they didn't have huge shoulder THINGS . All of these En Garde outfits are just generic “all-black vaguely military mix of fake worsted wool and leather with unnecessary belts and buttons and weird shoulder details” and I am really, really over them. They ride up as they’re performing and they’re weird and ugly.

I was talking about it with my fella and he theorized that maybe, since South Korea has been in an active war for a few generations now, that military-chic is more a part of their collective thought process than it is for most other people, and that’s a valid point, but I still HATE IT. Half the boys did their Star Level test in some variation of this.

But it seems to be a thing in K-pop, so what’cha gonna do?

Anyway, it’s time for a flashback.

We find out that, unlike the other teams who are already hard at work at the scheduled rehearsal start time, the whole En Garde team is at least 10 minutes late, some more like 30 minutes late, for their first rehearsal after the reshuffling. They get scolded by the producers, which is actually kind of interesting.

Assume the fig leaf position for your scolding, please.

Later, they have a training/judgment session with the even more psycho of the two psycho dance teachers. They put on a performance that looks completely fine to me. I mean, we only see a few moments of it, but it seems like they know the choreo and the words, and they’re doing this kind of forgettable song to the best of their ability. But when they’re done, the psychopath dance teacher tells them that their performance was complete garbage. I watched it again, knowing that, and genuinely, I don’t know what I’m supposed to find wrong with it. It just sort of isn’t as good as he wanted it to be, and I don’t… know… what… is… wrong.

The only specific issue that he raises was that Kum Junhyeon didn’t organize his hand gestures. I assume that means that he failed to make up his own gestures to use for his part, or customize them -- he just followed the choreography. Hey, 19-year-old trainee vocalist (not dancer) Junhyeon, why didn’t you know you were supposed to ORGANIZE YOUR HAND GESTURES??

Side note: I actually really hate preplanned arm/hand gestures that are always the same -- like when Seungmin from Stray Kids does that one face cover in Backdoor, always at that same spot, like, switch it up a little? Like 5%? No? Ok. But I get it, they’re standard in the industry.

Anyway, the dance teacher tells them, “Your idleness strikes the sky.”

Afterward, good-guy Hyung Sunghwan tries to cheer up dongsaeng Gunwook, but uber-hyung Hui tells them all that they should be using this time to reflect on their bad behavior.

Really internalize that scolding, guys. Let it get inside you and just squirm its way into your stomach lining. You want to make sure that you are shitting rivers by the end of the day. You want to not be able to sleep tonight because the words are just replaying in your head louder and louder and louder. That way you’ll definitely put on a better performance on D-day.

Then they all interview about how they want to win the performance on behalf of the eliminated trainees. That’s kind of… not… relevant. What, and Supercharger and Switch don’t want to win it on behalf of their eliminated trainees? Winning is for you, guys. It won’t help Lee Yedam.

We cut to later that night, when they’re rehearsing with renewed vigor.

They begin tweaking small details to improve the choreo. Gunwook suggests dancing “dynamically,” and grabs his crotch. I guess that’s what dancing dynamically means. They end up rehearsing until 4am, which, again, is a great way to make sure you stay healthy and put on a good performance on D-day.

Then we hear a series of interviews from the boys, professing that they care deeply about the performance and are trying as hard as they can. And then it’s time for the performance.

Ok, before we get to the performance, I just want to say that something felt off and weird to me about this whole segment, like it was just manufactured drama. Is it possible that they held back a little in the performance for the judge so they’d get a good scolding? I don’t know. Or even more conspiracy theory level stuff, like was the judge even in on it? That seems coocoo but… also not coocoo? If they did manufacture the drama, it was smart to do so, because most of the Star Creators vote based on the rehearsal footage, not the performance. If Gunwook, Gyuvin, little cousin, and the rest look self sufficient, they don’t need your vote, right?

Or maybe they really did get scolded for no real reason by the judge. That’s possible too. I really have no way to know.

The performance begins.

My take:

It’s kind of mentally helpful to differentiate between “flawless” and “perfect.” “Flawless” means that there are no flaws. There is nothing specifically wrong with it that could be considered an objective mistake. “Perfect” has a less specific meaning but the way we often use it, it means “exactly what I wanted.” For example, maybe a particular diamond is flawless (has no flaws) but is in a cut or style you don’t personally like, and thus isn’t perfect for you. Or like, someone makes an absolutely flawless carrot cake, but if you don’t like carrot cake, it’s not perfect for you!

So, for me, this performance is flawless, but it’s still not perfect, if you dig me?

I don’t want to yuck your yum. If you enjoyed this, then yay! I’m so glad that you enjoyed the performance and I’m glad that these performers found an appreciative audience. I like all these performers individually and I know they tried hard. I just can’t get with this performance as a whole. I’m sorry. 🙁

Part of it is the staging and the outfits. What is this staging? Hui has really thought himself into a corner again, hasn’t he? It’s like that awful version of Follow that he made for Kingdom, that assaulted your ears. I don’t even want to link it here because I dislike it. It’s like the sound of pain. I really respect Hui’s talent and work ethic and all that, but seriously, what is this staging? It’s some weird Cat Women Of The Moon shit, with columns and giant torches.

Are they in space? But sometimes there’s lightening? Are they in ancient Greece, with those columns? Are they in medieval times, with those gargoyles? Are they in some futuristic war, in those outfits? What the fuck is going on????

I mean, I’m sure Hui has some long weird explanation of their characters or whatever he was thinking in those twenty minutes in the bathroom in episode 8, but… if you don’t demonstrate it to me immediately, what’s the point? Supercharger was like, “we’re tough motorcycle riding cool guys who are singing about how we’re cool and tough and full of super powered energy.” It’s silly but it’s fine, it all checks out. But for En Garde, there’s no coherence. It’s just absolutely random disparate elements, yet they’re not disparate enough for it to be an obvious attempt at that either. It just defies my brain.

My other issue is the way they performed it, though I will say right now that I don’t think it’s their fault. So let me explain. Part of it is, I think that they were all trying to “out-Gunwook” Gunwook and it made them all dance with too much power, so even the parts that should have been lighter, more sly, more sensual, were done as if they were in cardio class. Their outfits worked against them -- it’s hard to look sensual or light when your shoulder pads are poking into your ears and your suit jacket is riding up into your rib cage. But a lot of it is their dancing intensity, and it’s a problem, because when the whole performance is powerful, there’s no up and down, there’s just onslaught for three minutes.

It’s like the difference between Law and Zoom. Law was three straight minutes of dancing, and Zoom had ups and downs, peaks and valleys. I can watch Zoom every day and not get sick of it. I can barely make it through watching Law all the way through at this point, I get so bored of it.

But as I said, the trainees really can’t be faulted for performing it this way. This is what they get praised for doing. Law beat Zoom at that performance, right? So why not emulate it for this performance?

One symbolic thing kind of worked for me -- the arm bands thing. The symbolism is obvious (we’re shedding these 3 star/4 star labels and moving on), and I think it meant something to them. But I think having the arm bands be the same color as the rest of the outfits, and not being that visible most of the time, diminished the impact and meaning of tearing them off at the end. No way could the audience see which arm bands had 3 and which had 4 stars. Even if there was a big jumbotron kind of thing, I still don’t think it would have read.

I wish, though, that they’d done more with that theme, because it fits the song so well. Consider the lyrics:

“En garde and pret [ ready], before the curtain starts, enjoy the most intense tension, Now it’s my show time… We don’t break, go ‘way, laugh like it’s nothing, an irreversible night, twist of fate… I can’t stop for you, ready set and go.”

The song seems to be about performing, about working hard and ultimately achieving a goal. Which is what they were doing. The dance teacher says that the finger moving in a circle bit at the beginning is meant to refer to the hands on a clock, the hours and hours spent rehearsing and working. If that’s what this song is about, why not lean into that? Why the weird staging?

Here's my thought: Have them start with big loose sweatpants on and have them wearing big name tags with their stars on them. Decorate the stage like it’s a rehearsal room. Then partway through have a red curtain drop down or something, and they can tear off their stars and do a quick change to show a stage outfit. Something like that, something to show a story about preparing for a stage and then being on it, if that’s what the song is about. It would have been autobiographical and fun, and the audience would have understood the references. More importantly, it would have connected with the performers, so they would have engaged fully in what they were presenting because they were telling their own story! Sigh. But instead we got this confusing mishmash.

I guess the biggest problem, though, is that I just don’t really dig the song itself, and I don’t know why. As one of you said in an ask, the song kind of sounds like a b-side or something. I dislike Supercharger, but in a weird way I think I prefer it to this song, because at least Supercharger sounds like something, and this sounds like the absence of a song. Ceci n'est pas une chanson. You know?

I’m sorry if my negative thoughts on the performance bummed you out. I’m extra sorry about it because I like Gunwook, Gyuvin, Hiroto, Hui, Junhyeon, and Sunghwan, really I do. I know they were doing their best and their best is very, very good.

Let’s see, the dancing was good. I thought they were super well synced -- it’s obvious that they worked hard to get that perfect. Also, I liked how the the choreography had levels, in the sense that their bodies were physically up high and down low at different times.

All their vocals sounded super good -- I think they had MR* but you could hear live vocals over it and they were all great. Kum Junhyeon, Lee Sunghwan, and Hui’s vocals were all perfect. Nice job on that ad lib, Sunghwan! Hiroto’s rap sounded good too. And I always like Gunwook’s total commitment to performance.

*MR is a kpop term. It stands for “music recorded” and it refers to a background track that carries some of the burden of the vocals, given that they’re dancing while they’re performing. What you actually hear when kpop artists are performing “live” is usually a mixture of the MR and the live vocals. Some artists rely more than others on their MR -- one of the reasons I love Exo so much is that their microphones are ON when they perform (that’s from 6 years ago, they’re even better now!).

Gyuvin has just sort of not lived up to the performance quality that I saw in him in his star level test, and I blame those psychopath dance teachers who have squashed any spark of life out of this kid. He is the only one whose outfit flattered his body, though, so I kind of assumed he’ll win the fan vote the minute I saw him walk out on stage. In fact, I asked my fella to guess which one would win based solely on the outfits, and my fella picked Gyuvin too. I really hope he gets his spark back. I genuinely believe he’s having mental health issues being on this show.

Seriously, Gyuvin’s cropped jacket and nipped in waist make him stand out in this group.

The Edit

The edit is kind, as I suspect all these edits will be. I’m sure they could have found some teeny mistake and played it 5x in a row, and they didn’t. They spliced in some reaction to make the whole thing look cooler and exciting, as per usual. The judges go completely nuts for it, throwing their clipboards around again, and the audience goes nuts too. That’s good!

Afterwards

Time for them to wait in the white room of doom to find out their numerical values on a scale of ??? to ???.

The other trainees are sure that the high score will be really high, but it’s only 748 --good but not outstanding. And, as I predicted, it’s Gyuvin.

I’ve talked about this before: if your outfit gives people sparkles in their pants, they are much more likely to vote for you. And his outfit flattered his body really well, while the rest of these attractive, fit guys ended up looking boxy and pointy.

We don’t see who came in last. That makes me think that it wasn’t Hiroto, because if it had been, they would have shown that. I wish they told us these votes! It’d be so interesting.

Gyuvin says, “All six of us on this team really put our heart and soul into this performance. We worked so hard on it. That’s why I think all the Star Creators thought positively about our performance.” And he smiles sweetly, but still looks like he’s going to cry.

Seriously, I hope someone is checking in on this kid. I’m worried about the mental health of all 93 of them, but something about Gyuvin just really makes me put up my noona-antenna.

And that’s it for this recap! I hope you’re doing well.

Here’s something to cleanse the palette a little. Honestly I prefer this to their stage performance. I just wish it were in focus.

See you in the next one!

#boys planet #kim gyuvin #lee seunghwan #kum junhyeon #hiroto #hui #lee hoetaek #park gunwook #en garde #boysplanet

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