Please watch the Korean game show "Genius" with me

Love MJ but will not spoil the end of S1 for you. So glad to see her back.

I'm not sure what Dongmin or Junseok will add to the procedings but who am I kidding, I'll watch it anyway.

whaaaaaaaat? how can you not be excited about dongmin?!

I suppose I shouldn't say too much about the last season because people haven't finished watching, but I don't see how he will fit into the model of the show despite the role of the guy most like him in the last couple of eps.

Sanggook seems to have the best handle on things so far but I suspect he could end up being Dongmin-like in trying to game the whole thing. My tips are for MJ and Asol to be the winners with Macho and Donghwan most likely to do a Sangmin.

I clearly watched too much of the Genius because after two eps I was largely otm upthread.

i think dongmin has shown himself to be more than a bit more clever than sanggook

True but he ran the gaming aspect from the beginning - remember, he only left really because he withdrew himself as a result of the pressure he'd put himself under. We didn't see his like again until the final few eps.

Haha so for all of my fucking excitement about this show, after season 1, I had a hard time watching season 2 because it was on dailymotion and i kinda lost steam. Welllllllll the subtitler just posted links to all 4 seasons on m3g4-uplode on their twitter so guess who finally started season 2?!?!

(i am told by a friend who burned through all of it years ago, when i originally brought it up, and he warned me that season 2 is the worst because there's some shitty bullying issues -- so now i am additionally watching for that to start lol)

but apparently S3 rules so i will be watching it in pace with my friend who only watched 1-2 so we can comment per episode.

it weirds me out so fucking much that i only know one of these people from outside of this show, and that one guy is in season 2: the dude who dances in the elevator on top of PSY in the gangnam style video.

Yeah, there's one particularly dark episode in season 2. You'll know it when you see it.

I miss this show.

season 3 is soooo good

still haven't seen 3. might watch it for christmas. might watch season 1 tbh.

S3 was probably my favorite too. This show was one of the best things I never would have heard of without this website *wipes tear*

season 3 is good but season 4 is even better - there's more competition and certainly some shocking twists. season 1 is probably still the best and has a certain charm the others never quite manage to have, but also in some ways doesn't quite reach the same levels of complexity in games or schemes as the best moments in 3 and 4. one of my favourite tv shows ever

i def got to the ep in S2 that everyone was down on, and shit honestly i would've been even more of a jerk to the bully-ee, if that makes sense. (i would've never admitted to grabbing the id, and prob planted it somewhere that made it look like someone else used it)

i mean sucks for ihm but then i realize why he's fmaous (hacked a university website to steal a picture of an actress graduating or something?) and i'm like i hope you got double-crossed 42 more times on the way out the door tbrr

Ha, I didn't know any of that.

I'm actually unclear on why stealing the ID wasn't a violation of the rules. I thought they said "no stealing" somewhere upfront.

Though I seem to remember instances of people swiping garnets from each other now and then as well.

I guess it's that if you leave a thing out in the open, then finders keepers applies.

I'm watching the rules again and paying particular attention to the phrasing:
- Two players who wish to trade cards will do so by approaching the dealer's table together
- When ID is presented to the dealer, the dealer will give you the cards
- Both players will reveal their cards and begin trading
- Card trades must be for the same number of cards
- When the trade is complete, the cards will be stored again and the IDs will be returned

They take care (or at least, the subtitler does) to never even say "your" ID. Even at the beginning I thought "there's definitely an opportunity here to give someone your ID or trade with someone to ensure you're working together"

pic.twitter.com/ln5A9lDN0c

— Bumdidlyumptious (@Bumdidlyump) March 13, 2020

loooool. might have to rewatch these as plague viewing.

haaaa

Plague rewatch in place, about 8 into S1 and this is just as incredible as I remember it. Even from a purely televisual point of view, the editing is amazing - the music cues are perfect to drive the drama along and the use of flash forward and back wrongfoots you as a viewer all the time.

great show

I mean I liked Squid Game and everything but it just made me want to rewatch THE GENIUS, so here I go.

ha me too, i rewatched the first ep after watching the first SG ep. Still great.

I rewatched last year, Sangmin in S2 is still some kind of pinnacle of television.

I'm happy I've forgotten all the craziness and can appreciate again.

spoiler ep 1 that Garnet switch is still wow!

also rewatching this. it is the best.

all the old links still work? can someone post them again pls

I had to download the files from a reddit thread

Links also pinned by @Bumdidlyump on Twitter.
But is there a torrent? I hate these fkin download sites.

i couldn't find a torrent when i looked and went to one of the fkn download sites.

Well the foreign remake has finally turned up and one episode down it just reminds me of how much I love this show. Helps that the first game is Eat or Be Eaten, which is one of the best.

Genius Netherlands, all episodes subbed in English on YouTube

Having gone all the way through, it scratches an itch but it's not as well made. There's only one flash forward/back for example and it's kind of throwaway. The immortality ring is absolutely wasted - ok, I'm comparing it to S2 which it was never going to compete with, but such a wasted opportunity.

It's fine, and I'll watch later seasons if there are any, but don't drop everything to watch it.

finally! thanks for the heads up

update for the uk too

https://tbivision.com/2022/12/08/banijay-brings-korean-format-the-genius-game-to-uk-denmark-norway/

the devil's plan is on netflix US, directed by jung jong-yeon who did the genius. i'm an episode and a half in and it seems like its picking up where the genius left off. ridiculously complex but well-balanced rules, flashbacks, a retired starcraft pro, expressionless dealers, its got it all

It feels much more padded, though. What should be one episode takes two.

ooh thanks for the heads up. from the sound of things it seems to be very much genius s5

the uk version is taking contestant applications right now too: https://thegeniusgameuk.com/ i hope it ends up living up to the original

In the second ep of Devil's Plan and it's absolutely Genius S5, even uses the same graphics style while explaining rules. Agree to a point about how stretches out it feels but much like Genius it uses editing remarkably well to create tension and drama where there would normally be none. Not sure I completely understand what the prison mechanic is for.

Yes, there is an application form for the UK one. < wink >

Ha, this thread made me dream last night that I was mining for Garnets in minecraft.

ok, while the devil's plan was not as good as the genius it was still the best new show on a streaming service since idk when.

things it was missing:

-supers that comment on what the players are thinking when they are being cheeky, dumb, sly, etc
-a song that always plays when someone does something badass and shocking that also breaks someone else's heart (yes i miss "extreme ways" by moby)
-better casting. not everyone can be an evil mastermind but we were seriously lacking a dongmin or a sangmin

things it did well [spoilers ahead]:
-living together. it allows more room for a metagame to develop and it deepens relationships
-prison. a comeback mechanic involving sequestering the losers in a dungeon is exactly what you should do with netflix money
-secret out-of-game advantages. si-won and seok-jin figuring out the code in the pieces and what to do with it was absolutely thrilling

watched a few episodes and the games have been a fair bit more complex than the early genius games were right from the start, which has made them compelling even . the prize matches are interesting as an alternative to the elimination matches from the genius, most of which weren't that great, but i think those were still a more interesting way to deal with eliminations since they gave the opportunity for a comeback. on the other hand, not eliminating anyone immediately is also a positive here

oh i forgot to finish a sentence. *compelling even when there aren't dramatic betrayals happening

I'm about 2/3 through and you're right on what it's missing. Extreme Ways (or an equivalent) would improve things massively, although the editing is a dream.

The bullying has been pretty shocking though and two things stand out: the second (? the one with dice and prison and personal and group rules) was pretty horrific, the pile on pushing specific players back continually - and on no stronger reasoning than they played the roles assigned to them in the previous game. The aftermath next game (the one with the numbers) was also terrible with Dong-joo using weirdly domestic violence defensive language - "it's her fault for choosing to trust him so she deserves everything that's coming to her".

So yeah, still great but the changes from Genius make it lesser.

i'm not sure if the incidents you're referring to stood out to me, but there's almost always some bullying-ish stuff that goes on in these shows that i find disturbing. or at least extremely hierarchical behavior based on seniority. but that's part of what makes the shows interesting, the tension between traditional hierarchical SK social structure and the alternate world of the game that incentivizes breaking those rules. however there was something weirder going on in the devil's plan b/c of orbit's whole MO of creating a big alliance but calling it "saving everyone" instead of a "majority alliance." i think it ironically made their behavior towards those on the outside of the alliance look a lot crueler than it otherwise would've if they'd just called it what it was.

anyway, we get a season two!

https://www.soompi.com/article/1624800wpp/netflixs-the-devils-plan-confirms-production-of-season-2

Thanks for the revival of this thread because I would never have known otherwise now that I don't use twitter where I would faithfully along with Bumdidlyump's subs alerts. I look forward to binging some eps the next few weeks!

Ok, most apparent difference for me was a technological one. Whereas previously I had a dodgy 720p rip with Bumdi's subs overlayed as she was releasing in real time, to seeing this is in outrageous 60fps 4K... so much lip tint, concealer & 성괴 scars... and that's just the men!

Lowkey loved that pro-Go player Yeon-Woo was pretty useless even in her element (the land grab/tetris game)...

...but even moreso that ORBIT only really excelled in the game with the least science/strategy (Hi/Lo which has a huge luck factor in the dealt cards). Probably his edit, but he came off as a tiresome blowhard trying to gamesplain at every opportunity, rarely to any success. Joon-Bin had the sickest burn: "Perhaps keeping your cool is also a science."

Loved the prison (kettle and can wash-up anyone?) but the bonus quest was amazing, tho I wish it had gone to a true underdog at that point.

The living quarters being part of the game gave me flashbacks to Society Game (shout-out to the OGs on this thread).

But yes, more of this, I would love to rewatch The Genius again esp in HD and legit subs.

i try not to think of society game, still scarred by MJ's loss

equation hi/lo required maths skills which is why orbit was able to succeed there. a lot of the other players were just not very good at coming up with optimal equations from their cards.

rewatching S2 before looking at the devil’s plan and it’s a lot of fun obv and also sangmin is obv GOAT but nothing will be the slow burn of discovering the mechanics and possibilities with that group of people in S1.

genuinely one of the best things i’ve watched.