Gleeks

While casually browsing Netflix for something that could be playable out in the open while repairmen go around the house, I saw a Korean reality/game show The Devil's Plan. I clicked it and after a while went huh, the game vibes are similar to The Genius, which I very much enjoyed a few years ago. So I looked it up and oh, there's a creative team overlap, that makes sense!

So The Devil's Plan, although it opens melodramatically, it is almost the same format as The Genius in that there's complicated board-type games to play, and there is an accumulative currency ("pieces" in TDP, garnets in The Genius) gained through games that confers survival and other benefits in the long term. But the major difference between the two is that TDP is played over a single week instead of The Genius going for weeks, with one episode per week, and in TDP the players live together in the set over that time Big Brother style.

I wonder if what happened is that the makers of The Genius got the idea from seeing how some of the players (primarily season 2 onwards, is my impression) organically met up for dinner after recording sessions, where they socialised without game stress, analysed the games they just played, and worked out feelings that might have accumulated on-camera. I think I remember some of the players mentioning that some production staff joined them for those dinners as well, and from there maybe someone got the idea that these off-game sessions could be part of the show itself. Plus the shorter timeline really amps up the intensity of the game relationships and does not give the players true breaks to recover regular headspace.

I think it's really interesting that TDP season 1 isn't as cutthroat intense the way I remember season 2 and 3 of The Genius being, which you'd assume it would be considering that all the players MUST have watched The Genius and other similar shows beforehand. It might be the choice of the players themselves, but the show format itself has two games a day, where one game match has the players competing against each other, and another game that they have to win collectively, and the teamwork of that second game counters negative feelings that might have come out from the regular match. I liked that, I thought it was very clever! I also wonder if the living-in format also reduces drama since players have to spend ALL their time with each other, and Korean social community rules guide them into working out peaceable solutions.

Early on in the season someone mentioned that women have never won these kinds of shows. I haven't seen any other similar game-type shows that must exist, but it had not missed my attention that all the Genius winners have been men, and so I was ROOTING for Lee Si-won or Seo Dong-joo to win The Devil's Plan. They were both sharp and smart, and Si-won in particular was involved with a lot of clever strategizing and figured out the hidden game in the prison. It would've been amazing if she went all the way! But alas. >:( The player who did ended up winning was also satisfying, though I did laugh that he was of a similar "type" as Jin-ho, who won The Genius's season 1.

Despite following the Chucky TV show closely in season 1, I never got around to catching up with the later two seasons before it got cancelled. But the show has dropped on (our) Netflix! Only the first two seasons, but that's still given me the kick to rewatch season 1 before finally checking out season 2.

I just finished season 1, and I have to say that bingeing it feels really different from the anticipation and build-up of watching week to week, plus it makes the mild swerve at the back half of the season feel more of the swerve that it is. I love the lore of the franchise, and the arrival of Tiffany, Nica, Andy and Kyle was SO exciting back then, but in this rewatch I got annoyed by it because it took time away from the new characters, and all the great character work that we got at the start of the season thins out to make way for the amped-up shenanigans.

Which is all the more a shame because although they organically got the story to a point where it makes sense for Jake and his bully Lexy, and his crush Devon, to work together and trust each other, I felt there they needed one or two more scenes to acknowledge that growth and what Lexy especially had learned about herself. There was even an opportunity for it when Lexy, who has gone through a hero arc, confronts Junior, who has gone through a villain arc, at the end and they could've both expressed how they'd gone on different journeys and are seeing each other from new vantage points.

Also, Devon doesn't get as much as the other two to work with, innit. He's the Perfect Crush and then the Perfect Boyfriend, and despite being a teenager he always knows the correct sensitive thing to say at any given moment, even when he sadly backs away from helping out. They don't explore what should be his fascinating headspace, as a boy who has a widowed cop for a mom, and is deep enough into true crime that he has has a competently-made podcast. Devon doesn't even really get to react when his mom dies, I was so startled by that! That said, a sincere and cute youthful gay romance, especially in a horror franchise, is special in itself, so my guess is that a black boy like Devon being smart and desired is more subversive than if he were not, regardless of the lack of depth in the character himself. (Which also results in spiffy gender dynamics among the teen characters, where the "Smurfette" is the bully that needs redeeming instead of the love interest.)