Queendom 2: Episode 1 Review - The Gang's All Here
By ZD
Image: MNET
Finally after a very long wait and two boy group seasons (Kingdom) later we are treated to a Queendom season 2. Right off the bat I will say that despite my love for KEP1ER and VIVIZ they are both way too new and already way too popular to be on this show. Many people see Queendom 2 in a similar fashion to another K-Pop reality show called Idol Rebooting Project: The Unit, who's sole purpose was to give idols who were in groups that were considered flops or just did not reach industry standard levels of success, a second chance at becoming a successful idol in a successful group. Now, I know a lot of people are going to be angry that I see this show this way and to be fair that isn't the intended purpose of the show, but as season 1 of Queendom showed, it can be a great platform for groups to gain more, well deserved, attention. Oh My Girl and AOA (before being destroyed by inner controversies and conflict) both gained loads of positive exposure on Queendom and the former launched forward into massive levels of success after the show aired. Back to my point of why KEP1ER and VIVIZ shouldn't be on there; it's another example of MAMAMOO in season 1. Many people felt that MAMAMOO was a much more successful and popular group than the rest of the other groups by a huge margin and because of that, some people felt that Oh My Girl (who was #1 for a several rounds of the show) should have clutched the victory after what was in my opinion a much better finale performance despite MAMAMOO having several stronger performances throughout the season. All this can be seen as biased speculation and fandoms just wanting their favorite group to win, but no reasonable person can argue that groups like MAMAMOO, KEP1ER, and VIVIZ are exponentially more popular than the other groups in their respective seasons. In my opinion, it's a shame and a missed opportunity to not have rising 4th generation K-Pop groups like weeekly or Purple Kiss (though they appear in the audience) as competitors in the show as this would have leveled the playing field and been a much more fair competition. It makes sense that they didn't have StayC or IVE in the competition because both those groups are very popular already and would have unbalanced the competition only to add two other groups that cause the same negative effect and one even being a group the network (MNET) airing Queendom 2 has a direct investment in (KEP1ER), but I digress.
This review, and all following entries, will contain spoilers of the respective episodes and these reviews are supposed to be more of a supplementary read and my thoughts and analysis of each episode and competition rounds. I highly suggest watching each episode if you can or if you just want to get straight into the meat and potatoes of each episode and would rather read it than watch or listen to it, then these reviews are also for you. Now that I've got all that out of the way, it's time to review Queendom 2, episode 1.
The beginning of the show has a gorgeous and very cool introduction with 6 members (pictured directly above) representing their respective groups. All 6 idols are walking through a very Roman or Greek style palace like area with tall pillars and make their way to a chessboard located in the middle of this fantasy location. This entire scene is filmed beautifully and artistically which is not normally something you can say about an MNET show, but it's already a good sign that this season will have a much higher budget than season 1's Great Value/Dollar Store looking sets. At the very least they hired a talented director to do the opening scene because it's most certainly not the same director in charge of the rest of the program as we will soon see.
The first member to be featured sitting at the chess area is SinB representing VIVIZ, who to be completely transparent is who I am rooting for in this season. After she says the groups name they fade out to a performance of VIVIZ's debut title track "Bop Bop", which for those who haven't seen the rest of the episode yet makes one wonder what they will perform for the rest of the episode? B-sides? Thankfully we get this question answered in this same episode. After their shortened special performance of the song the shot pans back to the chessboard area and the camera turns around to reveal Yves representing LOONA. They fade out to a dance performance version of LOONA's b-side "Satellite", which is one of their plethora of great songs outside of their title track catalog. Two things that give LOONA an advantage in the competition is that each of the 12 members are all well rounded idols (strong singers, dancers, and visuals) and the group has a massive collection of nice songs spanning back to 2016 which is before the whole group debuted in 2018 since they had their very unique debut process by each member being revealed with their own solo debut. To be honest I doubt they will delve into any of the solo songs, but depending on the future rounds requirements, it's something that is fair to note. When they do the pan shot again back at the chessboard they reveal Yuna representing Brave Girls, they then follow the formula we've seen thus far and fade out to a performance of their hit song, Rollin' which is most known for helping them find a resurgence of popularity in 2021, 4 years after the initial release, in very similar fashion to EXID with their single Up and Down receiving belated success. Despite this reason rise in popularity, I still predict they will be one of the weaker groups in the competition simply because even though a lot of people love Brave Girls and are very happy for their newfound success, a lot of those same people stan one of the other groups more than them and I feel that they will have a hard time moving on through the rounds simply due to the much larger fanbases of the other groups. When we return to the familiar chessboard scene, we see Exy representing WJSN (Cosmic Girls). They launch into a beautiful performance with the intro of their song Secret, but using that as a red herring to actually end up performing Save Me, Save You which is a very significant song as it marked their first music show win in 2018, several years into their career being seen as one of the more popular underdog groups, this also marked their first single as a 10-piece group when their C-Line (Xuanyi, Cheng Xiao, and Meiqi) went to China to promote in their respective side projects and still have yet to return here in 2022. If Queendom 2 has a round where guests are allowed and the C-Line makes an appearance, that would be a very selfish way for Starship Entertainment (WJSN's label) to utilize them, but it would most certainly make a major impact in gaining votes for sure. The next member revealed is Yujin (former CLC) the leader of KEP1ER and they launch into an underwhelming performance of what I think is an original song mashed with a song that is from the show they formed on, Girl's Planet 999. Honestly, if any of that information I just said is wrong, it's because I couldn't have cared less about their opening performance. I understand that they have a very small song catalog and this is exactly why they are too early into their career to be in this show and the girls themselves even say several times throughout the show that our only signature song is "WA DA DA". I like KEP1ER but this opening presentation with some odd cheerleader sounding song where they just say their groups name a lot left a lot to be desired for them in the opening round. But since they are MNET's group, I'm going to predict they won't have any issues moving on throughout the rounds and that's not even taking their fanatical fan base into consideration. Finally the soloist of the competition is revealed to be Hyolyn. She performed Nine Lives and Dally. Hyolyn has fantastic stage presence and is a former member of the legendary 2nd generation K-Pop groups and will most likely fair better than Park Bom (2NE1) did in season one who was eviscerated by the other girl groups and was eliminated immediately. However, despite Hyolyn being a very strong performer and MNET's editing really pushing this fact amongst the conversations the groups have amongst themselves later on in the episode, I still feel like unless you're Sunmi, Chungha, or IU that it's a very tall order to compete against the other groups with very loyal fanbases. Time will tell, but that's another one of my early predictions.
Image: MNET
Finally now that all the groups have been revealed with that epic intro that gave off heavy Game of Thrones vibes. They briefly reveal Taeyeon (SNSD/SM Entertainment) will be the Master of Ceremonies for the show. They then show a lobby area where all the groups will meet each other for the first time in the competition. Brave Girls are the first to enter the room and are very fascinated to see who will be in each section of seats and are particularly curious about the solo seat who we already know is Hyolyn, but the show heavily emphases during the entrance of each group that they genuinely care about who the solo performer is or not. Now whether or not the girls were directed to act this way or not is unknown, but it's either a great coincidence or staged. We go through several clips of how and when each group was told by their respective companies that they would be participating in Queendom 2. A lot of these reveals are par for the course, but the most notable reveal was LOONA's for two reasons. The first is that they talk about the fact that LOONA's parent company Blockberry Creative has gone through several financial struggles and that the group's future has been uncertain several times. The other nice touch was that the girls were tricked by their managers into thinking they were going to a post concert interview after their most recent concert, but it was actually so they could have it revealed to them that they would be competing in Queendom 2. During WJSN's segment it was nice seeing inadvertent appearances of the C-Line despite them overlaying the song they weren't in over that clip which was a but humorous and a bit ironic.
The show returns to Brave Girls sitting in the Queendom lobby awaiting the appearance of the other groups. The Queendom logo on the large screen in front of them informed them that the group that will soon be there debuted in 2016 and as soon as WJSN arrives we now enter the world of terrible MNET editing that any K-Pop fan who watches these types of competition shows are very familiar with by this point. The overuse of the same gulp clip and many generic, royalty free sound effects are littered throughout the remainder of the show. They overlay horribly comical or unnecessarily suspenseful music over every scene totally detracting from any value the interactions between the girls holds. They do the very annoying technique of showing the same scene over and over and over and over again from different angles for absolutely no reason and you hear the same sound byte accompanying the clip over and over again. LOONA is the next group to enter to the sound of super mario coin sound effects for no reason simply as a failed attempt for the show's editors (who should all be fired) to emphasize how many members LOONA has. Drawn out silence between WJSN and LOONA, which I'm sure didn't happen, accompanied by dramatic music is placed to show the non-existent tension between the two groups. KEP1ER is the next group to enter. Before they arrive they show several clips of the girls saying "we're so new, I wonder if they'll even recognize us" as if that group isn't one of the most over-promoted groups of 2022 that formed on a major network's show. Inserting these faux worries just further validate my points earlier that they are too new to be in Queendom 2. More fake dramatic tension between WJSN, LOONA, and KEP1ER and Brave Girls being made out as if they are awkward moms around a lot of teenagers is used to fill in more of the 2 hour long inaugural episode. For some reason when asked how old she is, KEP1ER's Yeseo in the subtitles says 18 despite the fact that she is known to be 16 years old. I'm not exactly sure what MENT's strategy was there to lie about a well known idols age, but there are no words to express my confusion. It's also humorous later that when Yeseo reveals how old she was when Hyolyn debuted it also contradicts MNET turning her 18 all of a sudden. The next group to enter is VIVIZ and every MNET show has to have a villain and for some reason they have chosen VIVIZ, particularly SinB. At every moment they get they have VIVIZ mention that counting their time as GFRIEND they are 8 year veterans and they kept using that as a way to brute force seniority over everyone except Hyolyn. They also have an infamous scene where SinB is portrayed as a total bitch to Yeoreum and the rest of WJSN for absolutely no reason other than WJSN joking that as VIVIZ they are not their seniors, but all this was just more inserted fake drama that no one in any natural conversation would actually say. They also had VIVIZ wear over the top stage costumes to intimidate the other idols and even made it seem like it was Eunha's maniacal plan. All this antagonzing of VIVIZ was very off putting and that's not just because I'm rooting for them because all this drama will have zero weight in the scoring process, aside gullible people believing the drama and not voting for VIVIZ. Hyolyn enters and nothing worth noting that isn't more ranting about the terrible show editing happened except a wholesome moment between her and her label mates WJSN are encouraged by the other groups to hug and then it just ends up being Exy hugging her on behalf of the group, but this moment was fine and the least egregious thing that has been portrayed in the show thus far.
The next segment they reveal Taeyeon as the MC of the show and explain the stakes of the show and that the group who emerges victorious essentially gets a very well furnished comeback showcase on MNET's dime. They then each choose who they want as their rivals, time will tell if any of these selections hold any weight later on. If it does matter later on, I'll explain their picks in a later review, but for now it's potentially a waste of time. The only thing worth noting is that no one chose Brave Girls as a rival which means that if these rival selections were genuine, that no one found Brave Girls to be a threat.
Next they choose the order they want to perform in; if anyone chooses the same spot then they must negotiate or re-choose until a final order of 1-6 is determined. Hyolyn, WJSN, and LOONA all chose the 6th spot. LOONA immediately gave up the spot and agreed to go 5th, WJSN was determined to stay 6th, and Hyolyn who clearly didn't care when she went chose 2nd. The final order ended up being VIVIZ 1st, Hyolyn 2nd, KEP1ER 3rd, Brave Girls 4th, LOONA 5th, and WJSN 6th. There's also a brief segment that I'm sure had to be added in post where they mentioned that since 11 of the 12 (except Hyunjin) members of LOONA got COVID-19 and wouldn't be able to properly compete in the first round. The compromise they made is that LOONA's first performance would be pre-taped once they recovered, but at a handicap of a potential max first round score of 90%.
Before VIVIZ's performance, they have a very nice video package where they are thinking of what to perform in the first round with the theme being Hit Track. With expected leniency and because they are in essence still GFRIEND, they decide to perform a GFRIEND song, but can't decide between Rough and Time for the Moon Night so they call their former leader Sowon and consult her. It's very emotional when they talk to her and reminisce on their time as GFRIEND and in the end she advises they do both in a half and half style fashion and they really like the idea. Their performance of the two legendary K-Pop songs was a beautiful presentation. Their stage costumes were pretty white dresses and they even had a crown that each of the girls wore at one point during the choreography. At the very end their debut dates as GFRIEND and VIVIZ showed on the screen and all the competitors and audience were very emotional. It was a nice touch and a very powerful first round performance, but I'm a bit concerned of their future competition plans because I don't think hitting the nostalgia nerve over and over again will continue to be a fail-safe, so I'm very curious to see what they do going forward.
Hyolyn did a very theatrical performance of Sistar's hit song, "Touch My Body". The performance had a lot of energy the high LED screen stages were vibrant, the imagery, the large amount of back up dancers, the fake flowers at the bottom of the stage, there was even flames. Her entire presentation had a tropical theme that was very consistent and gave off Summer Queen Vibes which was very appropriate for the song and because that's what Sistar was known for. There was also a very nice dance break where she was accompanied by back up dancers holding and pretending to play trumpets and saxophones so that part was kind of funny. Overall, she did very good, but it will be very curious to see, as a solo performer, how she fairs against the other groups and in the voting.
To close out the show they showed previews of episode two with a lot of out of context drama, so we'll see how insanely inaccurate a lot of those scenes were made out to be. Overall, I'm very excited to see the rest of the show. I think it's a real shame how MNET's poor and sometimes even malicious editing really detracts from the interactions between the girls and the friendships that could be made that are hidden behind staged drama and very annoying editing techniques. I really hope several of the girls become great friends beyond this show and I'm excited to see what the other rounds hold and what awesome or underwhelming stages Queendom 2 holds for us in the future.
Image: MNET
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