Asian Junkie Asian pop. Without discretion.
After an eventful Episode 7, Mnet shifts gears and serves us a undercooked recap episode for Queendom Puzzle. They’ve done this before, but usually it’s a half-and-half deal, 1 hour of recap and 1 hour of new content. Episode 8 runs just under an hour and is completely ignorable.
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Filmed pre-elimination, we have the entire cast back together again, which is part of Mnet’s pitch for fans to watch. Except Seoyeon has a schedule, so she’s only in the first 10 minutes.
Anyways, the girls divide into four teams and are are tasked with killing God finding the editing room, so they can delete all footage of them smoking behind the studio before they get leaked to Dispatch. While scurrying throughout the empty hallways of CJ ENM‘s offices, Kei takes the time to pander to other Mnet properties like Amazing Saturday. Meanwhile, Dohwa (welcome back) strikes fear into the heart the PD, who meekly gives up his all-access security badge.
Mnet is so gracious to show us such amazing facilities like the gym, the coffee machine, the rooftop garden, the fire escape and the … giant pile of refuse in the hallway.
Eventually everyone finds the editing rooms, where they find the projects open and waiting for them to view. They proceed to do live reacts to the All-Rounder Battle, footage we have already seen. We also get some cut content from the ultimately meaningless Dance Battle, featuring more Bora doing her chicken dance, Bora interrupting Fye‘s dance, Bora pushing Yuki to dance, and so on. Congrats we’re halfway done with the episode.
The next segment of this Very Special Episode has Team Giant Baby (Zoa and Jiwoo) working on their BJ skills (that’s broadcast jockey you sickos), this time going through the entire show so far, and not really adding anything insightful. There’s no extra footage or cut content here, just Zoa and Jiwoo being kind of cute I suppose.
That’s it! Go away!
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Wait! Come back! Here’s the voting results as of 7/31 23:59:59:
Top 7
- woo!ah!’s Nana
- WJSN’s Yeoreum
- Rocket Punch’s Yeonhee
- CLC’s Yeeun
- PURPLE KISS’s Yuki
- Lovelyz’s Kei
- H1-KEY’s Hwiseo
The Middle 7
- Dohwa (AOA’s Chanmi)
- Rocket Punch’s Suyun
- Weki Meki’s Elly
- woo!ah!’s Wooyeon
- Rocket Punch’s Takahashi Juri
- tripleS’s Jiwoo
- Weeekly’s Jihan
Bottom 7
- H1-KEY’s Riina
- Shiroma Miru
- Cherry Bullet’s Bora
- Weeekly’s Lee Soojin
- Weeekly’s Zoa
- Cherry Bullet’s Jiwon
- Fye
Biggest things to see is Bora is in the elimination bracket, while Yeonhee is a Top 7 candidate. I think people who are picking Kei for Top 7 aren’t picking Bora, and vice versa. Jiwon in Bottom 7 is a surprise, as well as Jihan not being in Top 7, though she’s probably 8th or 9th. I don’t imagine those who were in the Top 7 before the vote reset being in danger of being pushed out. Yeonhee (and maybe Yuki?) are the bubble spots.
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Random Thoughts
- Who wanted this?
- Quote of the episode is “the tongue has its own ego”.
- The reason they’re all in school clothes is to film a YouTube only segment which isn’t officially translated. Why didn’t they just put this content into the real episode? Only the devil knows.
- Mnet declaring they’ll replay Dohwa’s sneaky tongue until she turns 60.
- Also Mnet complaining about money during the “Bad Blood” recap when they turn in 60 minutes of filler episode and use their own building as a field trip destination.
- Also also Mnet eliminating Chaerin and then being like, “Whoops, what’s all this charming Chaerin footage doing on the floor?”
- I know I said I wanted a Giant Babies show but not like this…
- Mostly pissed off at this episode because Seoyeon wasn’t here at all.
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IATFB’s Shitters Section
Honestly, I was surprised that Hojo even bothered with this, as we saw this recap episode coming and thought it was a waste of time.
I think people who are picking Kei for Top 7 aren’t picking Bora, and vice versa.
That certainly was the case with me. Nothing really changes with my Top 7, but because they don’t seem like they’re going to be doing full-time activities, I’d rather just focus on whichever nugu faves deserve more attention than anything else.
Additionally, the whole tone of Queendom Puzzle has been a bit weird to me. Mnet has made it so that for the first six episodes or so felt like there wasn’t much at stake, and thus it began to bog down a bit. But then it went from 0 to 100 in Episode 7 with the elimination drama, and now they’re doing a bye week again before they start chopping away on the final two live episodes. From a complete lack of tension to holy shit here’s the final group in about two episodes, basically. Like the pacing just bizarre to me.
