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queendom puzzle recap/review: ep 4

july 15 2023

I'm back reviewing/recapping Mnet's latest Saw trap, I mean survival show, Queendom Puzzle! I'm not gonna lie, it took me SO LONG to watch episode four. Mostly because I got spoiled for the cover stage rankings and they pissed me off so badly I lost all motivation to continue. But the remix battle is actually only like, the first third of this episode? So once I pushed through that, there was some new and interesting content waiting for me, and episode five (which had already come out by the point I caught up) was pretty intriguing too.

Episode four continues the remix/cover team battles, and the next team to go is the Shut Down team, consisting of Hwiseo, Riina, Sangah, and Fye. At first they easily sort out the parts— Riina takes Jisoo's part, Sangah takes Lisa's part, Fye takes Rose's part, and Hwiseo takes Jennie's part.

Are you noticing something a little strange there...?

Well, later Hwiseo comes back and asks if they can rearrange the parts. Apparently, she only took Jennie's part because Shut Down isn't a very vocally impressive song, so she didn't really care about being a vocalist. But this rearranged version of Shut Down they're performing has added high notes, and Hwiseo really wants to do them. Hwiseo wants to swap parts with Fye, but Fye is adamantly against swapping. Rose's part has a lot of English, which Fye is better at than Korean, and Fye also doesn't want to give up her vocal part since she was already forced to rap in Snap. She's a vocalist— she wants to sing. Which is fair, in my opinion.

Sangah tries to help by pointing out that Jennie's part actually does have a fair amount of singing and that she even starts off the song, so Hwiseo will have plenty of opportunities to make an impact. But Hwiseo isn't backing down, so they ultimately have Riina and Sangah vote on who should do which part, and they decide to keep everyone on their original parts. So they just wasted an hour arguing over nothing, basically.

Riina and Hwiseo have a conversation later about why Hwiseo wanted the part so badly, and Hwiseo says it's not about being The Main Vocalist— she just likes doing high notes and is confident in doing them. At the end of the day, she thinks Fye is a good singer and can pull off the notes; Hwiseo just also wanted to do them. It's a survival show, after all. Everyone needs to really show off their abilities to succeed. Riina consoles Hwiseo and gets her spirits back up, and they end the conversation fired up and ready to compete as a team.

Everything after that goes off without a hitch, from recording to rehearsal (although Fye takes off her shoes in the recording booth, which hurts my soul). Their team has a Red Riding Hood concept and a lot of gimmicky choreo, which ends up being a little much for me, but it does keep the stage interesting. Fye has a great voice and pulls off the high note very well. I don't really like this song, but they perform it competently enough. Unfortunately, it's not enough for the audience. Shut Down only receives 152 votes, sending them straight to last place. Funnily enough, every other team in the green room wonders if there was a glitch on the voting machines.

In my opinion, this low score is due to a couple things. First of all, this is a Blackpink song. The members themselves heavily associate the parts with the members (Fye getting "Rose's part" instead of "the main vocal") and it's not a song that's really impressive to perform unless you're a member of Blackpink. Secondly: the live audience. At this point, everyone knows that these live vote things are popularity contests. They're not objectively voting for the best performance— they're voting for their favorite girl's performance. Hwiseo unfortunately didn't keep this in mind when forming the groups. At this point, filming was ahead of the show's release, meaning her own popularity bump hadn't really come into play yet, and no one else on this team had a significant pre-existing fanbase. They just were never going to get the votes they needed. Hwiseo should have either 1) put herself on the Nxde team instead or 2) swapped Fye for Yeeun, had Yeeun take Jennie's part, and take the vocal part for herself. But hindsight is 20/20.

Next up is the Only One team, a duet between Kei and Soeun. They struggle to get in sync at first, afraid to really go for it and touch each other. Kei has a bad case of the hover-hands, and Soeun can't stop giggling nervously everytime she accidentally touches Kei. Their choreographer is essentially like, "Not gay enough," and suggests that they tie their hands together and go about their business in order to quickly build a sense of closeness. They think it's a great idea and begin happily going around town holding hands. The performance itself is really beautiful and artistic (and has a quote from Blue Is The Warmest Color— my God, they are NOT playing around here). Kei's voice is amazing and Soeun manages to hold her own vocally. Unfortauntely, they only get 184 votes. Kei has a respectable fanbase, but this performance only being a duet really killed them. The girls are sad but they comfort each other and eat pizza.

We quickly move on to the Don't Call Me team. They come in ready to prove themselves, since they were voted the least anticipated team. During practice, Miru struggled to learn the choreo and was helped by Yeeun, who speaks a little bit of Japanese and was able to help her understand the moves a little bit better. Meanwhile, Wooyeon wants to prove herself after her disatrous up-down battle, in which she panicked, lipsynced the whole song, and got slammed with downvotes. Her confidence took a huge hit from that, leading her to be unable to speak up when it came to picking parts in Charismatic and getting stuck on sub vocalist five. Here, she snags the main vocal role and manages to pull off the high note. This team has a couple of popular members and manages them well, giving Yeoreum a dance break and frontloading the performance with Yeeun. They sneak into second place with 201 points.

My one problem with this stage is that the vocals are just... too clean? I know that girl group members struggle with always having to be pretty and proper, so I don't really blame them, but the vocals here are just too prim and don't really fit the song or the performance. It's no wonder they got voted last just based off a vocal clip— the vocals don't do their performance justice.

Moving onto the last stage, we have Dance The Night Away, consisting of Bora, Chaerin, Jiwon, Yeonhee, and Seoyeon (aka Cherry Bullet and friends). Chebul and Yeonhee immediately clash, while Seoyeon minds her business in the corner. Bora and Yeonhee battle over the role of sub vocalist one, a very desireable role since it starts off the song alone, does the high note, and leads the dance break. Yeonhee thinks she should do it, since she's the better dancer, but Bora thinks she should do it as the better singer. They vote on it and obviously, Bora wins since she has the Cherry Bullet members on her side. Yeonhee graciously concedes and stresses that they're part of a team, so she respects the team's vote.

The performance itself starts off strong and then kind of loses me. They start throwing in a lot of elements near the end (confetti! a live band! risers!), cluttering up the stage and distracting from their performance (reminds me of the WJSN Pantomime performance from Queendom 2). Bora fighting so hard to be center for the dance break only to be visibly off center for it is funny, and then you can't even hear the high note over the instrumental, confetti blasters, and general chaos going on onstage! Ultimately, they place fifth with 166 votes.

For anyone not keeping track, here are the final results:

  1. Nxde- Dohwa (ex-AOA), Jihan (Weeekly), Nana (woo!ah), Suyun (Rocket Punch)
  2. Fighting- Juri (Rocket Punch), Soojin (Weeekly), Jiwoo (TripleS), Elly (Weki Meki), Yuki (Purple Kiss), Jooe (ex-Momoland)
  3. Don't Call Me- Yeoreum (WJSN), Yeeun (ex-CLC), Wooyeon (woo!ah), Miru (ex-NMB48), Zoa (Weeekly)
  4. Only One- Kei (ex-Lovelyz), Soeun (Weeekly)
  5. Dance The Night Away- Bora, Chaerin, Jiwon (Cherry Bullet), Seoyeon (TripleS), Yeonhee (Rocket Punch)
  6. Shut Down- Riina, Hwiseo (H1-Key), Sangah (Lightsum), Fye

And my personal ranking:

  1. Fighting
  2. Only One
  3. Don't Call Me
  4. Shut Down = Dance The Night Away
  5. Nxde

Mnet again makes a big fuss about how great this program is, because its single-handedly letting these idols make friends, perform together, and improve their skills, which is technically true but not in the way that Mnet means. I'm sure they are making friends and improving their skills, but at the end of the day this is a popularity contest and a way for Mnet to make money, so them patting themselves on the back like this is always annoying. They take the contestants to a luxurious rooftop restaurant and let them have a good time chatting and eating before going into setting up the next round.

A flashback reveals that the girls are currently divided into "Queendom" and "Puzzle" groups, which were decided after the remix battle. The first member of each team was decided via lottery, then everyone else was drawn by lottery and got to choose which team they wanted to go to. Yeonhee is designated the first Queendom member and Kei is the first Puzzle member. Yeonhee is understandably scared as shit to be up against Kei, a super talented and popular idol, and for good reason— the first four or five constestants all pick Kei, leaving Yeonhee alone. Jiwoo finally breaks the streak and joins Yeonhee, and a couple other heavy hitters like Hwiseo and Dohwa join her team as well.

Taeyeon explains that each team will perform five songs in total, three cover vocal songs and two original dance songs, and the total score will determine the overall final winner. You know it's a good system when even the contestents are having to confusedly explain the rules to each other, no one seeming quite sure of what they're saying. I've learned to just accept that I have no idea what's going on (it's all rigged, anyways)!

The Nxde team (aka the winners of last round) are awarded some beef and a ~secret mission: they get a chance to steal a member from the opposite team for their own. Dohwa, part of the Queendom team, wants to steal Kei. Jihan, Nana, and Suyun, who are all on the Puzzle team, all want to steal Hwiseo. They randomly draw lots to see the stealing order, and Taeyeon mentions that they can also steal a member back if they want. Jihan goes first, promptly stealing Hwiseo. Dohwa puzzles over stealing Hwiseo back or going for her original plan, stealing Kei, and decides that if the other team wants Hwiseo then it's a good idea to deny them the member they want. Dohwa ends up stealing Hwiseo back. Nana considers stealing Hwiseo again, but ultimately decides against bullying poor Queendom team, and steals Jiwoo instead. Suyun goes last, and steals Yuki.

At this point, Queendom team only has eleven members to Puzzle team's fifteen, so Puzzle team votes on which two members to expell. Jiwoo is voted last and sent back to Queendom team (Nana looks politely pissed), and Soojin is also booted out. Soojin is visibly a little bit upset, especially since the voting happened out in the open and she could basically hear people choosing to vote her out. No one was really explicitly shit-talking her or anything, but it's still hurtful to hear people directly say that you're the least valuable or least talented member of the team. Queendom team welcomes her with open arms, though, comforting her a little.

They choose their songs for the battle by having tall babies Riina and Jiwoo race to place their team's sticker on their song choice. This is a classic Mnet trope, pulled straight out of the old days of Produce101. Get those girls RUNNING!

The first round choices:

Everyone wants Rush Hour, and Jiwoo and Riina almost knock over a cameraman with the force of their frantic sticker battle. Puzzle team wins, and Queendom team decides to go for Weekend instead.

Round two (aka the ballad round):

Puzzle team immediately decides they want If We Ever Meet Again. Queendom team isn't sure what to go for, and while they're discussing what to do, Puzzle team has already called dibs on If We Ever Meet Again. Queendom team decides on Hopeless Romantic instead.

Round three:

Everyone really wants Time Of Our Life, and Queendom team finally gets a much-needed win here. Puzzle team makes the baffling choice of taking Wannabe instead, which I feel like isn't a very popular song or a very vocally impressive song. Their reasoning for this is that they want an "explosive" ending, and Event Horizon, while popular, is too laid back and too similar to their second song.

With the vocal songs squared away, it's time for them to pick their dance songs. They'll choose these songs by having a dance off, and the winning team will get to pick their top two songs. Nobody wants to dance, so Bora graciously decides to break the ice and make a fool of herself for Puzzle team. Yeonhee steps up to the plate for Queendom team, and that's where the episode cuts. Thank God.

They do go ahead and preview the semi-final songs, the teams of which will be fan voted (which ended horribly for GP999, so I'm not sure why they're doing this again). Puzzlin' (prod. Young K) is a fine song, i DGA (prod. Bobby) is one of the worst songs I've ever heard in my life and likely is going to be the song everyone wants to perform (unfortunately), and the last song, I Do (prod. Ryan Jhun) is okay (it samples the Wedding March, which I guess is fun?). Good to see Ryan Jhun disbanded Bugaboo so that he could focus on his real passion— making mediocre music for Mnet survival shows.