[Opinion] Hey, Did You Watch "Invincible Youth Season 2?"

So, did anyone else watch “Invincible Youth Season 2?” The first episode of this highly anticipated variety show aired on Saturday night and fans have begun to express their opinions. As a fan of variety shows and a keen fan of “Invincible Youth Season 1” I thought I might give my first impressions of the show. Do note that these are personal opinions based off first impressions and do not reflect the opinions of Soompi or any other person. With that out of the way let’s get started.

The G8 members meet for the first time.

First off, the ratings. “Invincible Youth Season 2” got 7.0% compared to its competitor “World Changing Quiz,” which got 12.5% according to AGB Nielson.

In terms of ratings, it’s just picking up from where “Invincible Youth Season 1” ended off, single digits. There is a lot of potential in that time zone though compared to the Friday night time slot, with “World Changing Quiz” previously averaging a rating of 16%, so hopefully they will break into double digits as the show progresses but there are a few things that the show needs to improve upon before it can get that far.

So starting off with the item that I like to most complain about in terms of variety shows, which is program editing and scale.

Wow~ Pretty painted house~

They’ve definitely upped the production scale for the show. There are a lot of things like the painted houses, cameras etc that “Invincible Youth Season 1” never got in its beginning and didn’t really match even till the end, BUT editing as a whole seems to be worse. Everything seems a bit forced (I’ll be coming back to this later). There are too many obvious sound effects that is trying to excessively over-exaggerate funny points or points worth considering while camera shots seem to be purposely aiming for those artistic shots that “Infinity Challenge” has annoyingly made popular with their telepathy special. It seems to be that the production staffs trying to make up for the fact that the G8 members are still a bit awkward and trying to cover it up by making forced suggestions to the viewers about where they should be laughing and paying attention.

I admit other shows do this as well, but the frequency of these editing suggestions personally make it seem like the production team is trying to forcibly shove these suggestions down our throats.

Seems Familar…

Also stuff like CG and the sound effects seem to be borrowed a lot from “1N2D” and a few other KBS shows. So there is a lot of re-used CG elements in the subtitles etc with the only changes being made to suit the show being a color change to lighter colors like pink and light blue to reflect the show concept but they are definitely the same as “1N2D” and other KBS shows (Just compare the fonts, subtitle borders, sound effects for subtitles and style of subtitle with 1N2D and other KBS shows and you’ll see what i mean).

More of this kind of individuality in Invincible Youth Season 2 please.

This is a bit disappointing, mainly because” IY1″ for the most part had a set of CG elements and sound effects that were clearly more individual to the show and re-using effects personally give off the impression that they haven’t yet figured out the individuality of the show and what direction they want to take. Of course “Invincible Youth Season 2” isn’t the only KBS program that does this, with pretty much every other program following what appears to be a standard KBS Style Format, but even then most of the other shows seem to appear more individual. Whether it’s because the “Invincible Youth Season 2” doesn’t modify the styles enough or I am getting more used to the style format but this re-use of production elements just appears more obvious in “Invincible Youth Season 2.”

The all male MC Team – One Comedian, One Entertainer, One Actor, Zero MCs

When the MCs and members were first announced I had some worries about the roles of the MC and the composition of the members and unfortunately most of these worries I had seem to be reflected in the first episode. There is no “true” MC. Lee Soo Geun is more of a comedian and it shows in the episode. He tries too much to be funny rather than actually organizing the situation in an effective way. Boom is pretty much the same and is slightly worse because he definitely wants to be funnier than being an effective MC. Ji Hyun Woo is just a supporting character and I haven’t seen enough of him to pass judgement. I really don’t understand his purpose besides being the handsome guy that might act as a story element, in which the G8 members try to work well to look good to him. This worked in “Invincible Youth Season 1” because male guests were less frequent but if we have something like that for every episode, it’s going to get old pretty quick and it will lessen the impact a decent male guest will have in terms of bringing about fresh scenarios within the show.

The G8 members, all of them are fairly young

Team composition is slightly unfortunate now that I’ve seen the first episode. The age composition is a bit a too narrow, there is only a seven year difference between the oldest member and the youngest member (Woori borrn in 1988 and both Suzy and Ji Young born in 1994).

And that’s being slightly dishonest since the biggest age group by far is the 89-line with Bora (They are putting her in the 89 group since she was born early 1990), Sunny, Hyoyeon and Yewon. So that’s more than 50% of the group made up of 89ers and two members that are from 1994, one member that is from 1992 and one member that is from 1988, making it only four age groups in total.

This isn’t that bad since “IY1” had five age groups, but their gaps were much bigger with Narsha born in 1981 and HyunA born in 1992, creating an 11-year gap.

I miss Kim Shin Young and Narsha.

If there’s on thing I miss most in this team, it’s someone much older who can act as the core of the group and have a sense of command. I also miss a female MC that can relate more closely to the girls. Really not sure why they went with three male MCs, since having a female MC that is slightly older or much older than the girls would have been very good at balancing the team composition a bit. There was a sense of clarity when Song Eun Ee and Kim Shin Yong were in the MC team during IY1.

In terms of characters, it seems like Sunny will be the one that will be playing the role of Narsha and Kim Shin Yong due to her experience. To be honest I think that it might be a bit excessive and she’s going to end up being slightly in the middle and being rather awkward in character.

I’m pretty sure she did her Gi Exercises on MBC “Bouquet” as well, she does it again near the end of the episode

Being a bit of Rainbow fan and Woori fan, I’m hoping she will show something new on the show. At least on the first episode, she’s pretty much the same as ever and her character is exactly the same as on MBC “Bouquet” and the show about Rainbow they did before on cable TV.

From what I can see, Yewon, Kang Ji Young and Sunny will most likely end up being the most important characters on the show. They definitely seem to be the most natural and interesting. I can see them doing well at least in initial few episodes.

Didn’t we do this before?

Everything else they did in the episode seems same old: chicken catching, getting sesame seeds, speed quizzes etc. It’s like they compressed everything they did in IY1 into the one episode.

Now my biggest and most important complaint.

Pretty much the only relative unknown idol and has a lot to show off.

All of these complaints all boil down to one conclusion. The show seems to lack the innocence that “IY1” had. In “IY1” nothing was prepared: it took them ages to do even basic things; the staff never really helped; there were no forced missions to help them along major chunks of the episode. A lot of the girls on the first IY were also relatively unknown and not THAT popular (Even SNSD, while big weren’t yet the massive entity they are now, Secret and T-ara were complete unknowns, 4minute and Kara, while popular weren’t really that well known etc). In “IY2”, the only unknown is Yewon and most of the other girls are established celebrities. It kind of ruins the element of surprise since most people would have seen most of them from other shows.

Remember the days when they used to spend more than a minute on stuff like this?

In “IY1,” it was nice to see them take it slowly and build upon skills one at a time. In “IY2,” they seem to be rushing through everything and trying to get them experienced in rapid time. Maybe this is why some of it seems forced to me. The girls definitely don’t seem to be as bad at the basic work compared to the “IY1.”

It was just the first episode, of course and it will be interesting to see how they progress. But some of the more intangible elements like my innocence complaints are a rather hard thing to fix, especially if the staff keep racing through the concepts at lightning speed.

Towards a better future for the show.

Overall it wasn’t a terrible start but it didn’t really grab my attention like the first episode of “IY1” and the G8 aren’t really interesting me unfortunately. Maybe once they start fishing then it might get more interesting but I definitely plan to keep watching the show in the hopes that it improves with each episode.

Now I tend to be rather harsh with my opinions and I don’t expect a lot of people to agree with me. Don’t forget, though, personal opinions are personal opinions so don’t feel like you have to agree with me. If you feel like you should correct me if I’ve got something factually wrong, or simply find that you need to correct me, I’m more than willing to discuss your points in a civil way.

*Note: The content of this article represents views and policies solely of the writer, and in no way represents the editorial stance of Soompi.com or the whole editorial board.