I am in a rambling mood this morning, so here goes...
After watching just the first episode one acutely realizes just how tied to South Korean culture this project is.
Respect for elders that comes from Korean brand of Confucianism, politeness and feeling of "fairness", obsession with education and celebration of skill and cleverness -- factors that make The Genius such a unique show simply don't exist in western media. Western society not only does NOT recognise knowledge -- it actively shuns, jeers and leers at it:
Even more important than smarts is an atmosphere of decency on The Genius -- even Gura who plays up his role of devious "villain" has defined lines in the sand he will not cross, not only because that will hurt his TV image but also because ultimately they're all decent people. That's why it's such a shock when these lines are crossed in season 2 even though western audience wouldn't even register these petty acts as anything shameful.
At some point all players have to decide just
how far they're willing to go for victory and many players would rather "die" than look indecent on TV:
This concept is expressed as early as opening monologue:
You can also see Korean perfectionism and hard working obsessiveness in the way just how intricately designed the games are. Game design is just on completely other level compared to any other game show. The Genius plays 2 tabletop/social/parlor games each episode. Many of them -- fascinating and deep enough to garner dedicated research of their own.
For example here are two articles dedicated to "Monorail" from season 3 alone:
Same could be said about "Food Chain" -- a main match game that has a
dedicated podcast episode featuring person who made playing Food Chain his day job.
TG is a rather small production. It is filmed weekly for several hours on a
soundstage decorated with fake walls (which is still more than Crime Scene production team does because they just designate walls with chalk lines a-la von Trier's Manderley and call it a day). Staff's hard work designing the show masks small scale and budget.
Set design, mirrors and gold highlights, green broadcloth tables, women in evening gowns, men in formal three-pieces, croupiers, cards, dice and chips -- everything is designed to evoke chic, glitz and glamour of high stakes casino.
And so are music choices. Many background tracks are consciously lifted from "casino heist" movies like
Ocean's Eleven,
Now You See Me or
The Thieves. David Holmes' 70s-inspired soudntrack for Ocean movies is complemented further by other
similarly funky music selection.
And the "casino heist" analogy is a perfect fit because great episode of the The Genius exactly that to a tee. You have a montage explaining the rules and restrictions, people planning how to overcome these rules and "rob the casino", plans going haywire and players improvising on the spot and pulling it off and twist in the end when one member of the team turns to be the mole all along.
That's what TG producers have in mind when they are designing the games and rigging the props hoping that there will be an observant player capable to take advantage of their secrets.
Due to unscripted and improvisational nature of the show, players sometimes don't in fact crack the secret:
But sometimes players manage to find tricks that production team never intended to be used. It is regular occurence -- players consistently go off the grid from original rules, cheat the producers, fake items, double and triple- and quadruple- betray each other. That's what makes The Genius the best, smartest game show of all time.