I tend to be quite receptive to survival shows, but never having been much of a health freak myself and generally disliking people who obsess over their own physique, I was on the fence about whether I'd enjoy this show. Couple that with the first episode being mostly introductions to contestants I'd never heard about, I was in no hurry to dive into this. Once the quests began though, I realized, "Ok, they've struck gold here."

The show's proports to looking for perfect body. As a reality show, this translated to a sequence of quests, challenges, punishments even, that aimed to test contestants strength, endurance, agility, dexterity and balance. Interestingly, despite the show looking for physical prowess, a lot of challenges hinged on mental fortitude, teamwork, wit and sheer unrelenting will. Not unlike most survival shows, it starts by setting storylines in motion. Giving you interesting figures to route for. Underdogs, Davids competing against Goliaths, Last picks facing Favorites. And since the show wasn't purely a test of physical mastery, we did get to see some truly hair-raising upsets. I'd push you to watch the show if you haven't, just for these moments alone.

The show takes a lot of its pages straight out of Squid Game's book, wearing its inspiration on its chest by even giving the finalists a feast before the final salvo of challenges. There's also this hint of the game organizers being unfeeling and merciless that further pushes this narrative. I'd say that's part of why the show works. You'd point out how they've had women compete against men twice their size, to which I'd just say that it points out a bleak reality some people aren't willing to admit. Would it have been better if we instead had men and women compete separately and had two champions? Perhaps, and I'm open to that show too. But I do not think having them compete together hurt the show much at all. In fact, my favorite moments from this show came from the underdogs blatantly defying the odds and proving themselves stronger regardless. Heck, even when the underdogs were bested, it was still deeply satisfying to see them shatter expectations or even just refuse to give up.

Speaking to the design of various tasks, I think it was handled well for the most part. For instance, the first quest was one where the bigger body easily had an advantage, so it was preceded by a quest where smaller bodies were favored. Even during that quest, you had the option to choose between one that favored head-to-head brawling and one that favored being quick and agile. Some of the quests that favored one attribute more heavily, had room for other attributes to shine as well. This is ultimately what I'd like the show to do more of in upcoming seasons, coz the show did have quests that aimed to test a more limited skillset, where some teams were forced to sacrifice members to bad match-ups. They did nail the thematic aspects of the quests though. Carrying sand across a rickety bridge, the 5 punishments, dragging a beached ship to the dock, holding up the weight of your own bust, hanging on for dear life... Yeah, they had some stellar quests and I'm hyped to see what else we'll see in the future.

Some of the stronger criticism I have for the show goes to the editing choices. It did have this tendency to drag out stuff for the sake of building up anticipation. Sure, this is a common problem with reality shows, but even by those standards, this show went a bit too far at times. I'd have to fast forward segments at the start of each episode where they'd just go over minutes of footage from the previous episode. On narrative, I think the show missed an opportunity to build stronger storylines for some of the finalists. Perhaps they just didn't have the footage, but this certainly dampened some of the excitement for the finale, since most of the people they were routing for had dropped out already. Besides this, I think the rest of my gripes would contend with how fair the show was in certain spots. Whether luck was more of a factor than it needed to be. Hard to truly eliminate luck from shows like this. It's worth remembering that this isn't actually a sport. There are no formal rules, no regulating body and the show won't really ever be truly fair or equal. I guess there's still a line that can be crossed that alienates audiences but for now, the show plays around it well.

I'll end the review back where I started it, episode 1. I thought it was hard to get through an episode that was mostly just a whole lot of introductions to people I didn't recognize since I'm not from South Korea. Well, if anything shows that the show's been successful, it's that it got me to care about so many of these figures. I'd certainly enjoy that episode on a rewatch now. The quests did a great job endearing me to the contestants, but there were also those brief segments between quests that just let the surviving contestants mingle amongst themselves that really showed you how cool these people were and how much they respected each other. That sportsmanship persisted throughout the 9 episodes, even some of the most fierce of competitors. I hope to see some of them try again if a season 2 happens. As for myself, I contemplate now... Hey, maybe I should get in shape and test my limits too. Uhh... Where that'll lead is yet to be seen. Maybe I'll set that deadline for season 2's review.