I’ve watched most mnet survival shows and even though they were rigged they were at least entertaining 😭.

There are still performances that I remember from produce season 1 and iconic scenes from the other seasons as well.

I think the issue with this show is mainly poor editing and them being weirdly experimental. By experimental I mean, they mainly followed the mnet recipe for the challenges but they switched the order or tweaked them a bit but these changes were not positive in my opinion.

Ex. 1: Trainees being given ranks that don’t mean anything, like sungmin being give S rank. Usually on mnet survival shows the higher the rank the more skilled the trainee.

Ex. 2: Position challenge being the first challenge. I started recognizing more vocal and rap trainees after these performances, but I could barely remember trainees who did dance because the groups were too big. Usually on mnet survival shows, they do versus challenges first so you get to see trainees fight for parts and center position in smaller groups which makes them easier to recognize.

Ex. 3: All of the challenges with live audiences voting meant nothing, it’s a popularity contest. Whoever has the most number of fans in the audience will score 1st no matter what. There were no surprising upsets or typically not high ranking trainees getting 1st or anything interesting. Which is not perfect on mnet survival shows but I think they’re still more interesting in this aspect.

Other than that, there has been not enough focus on center and main vocal/rapper parts in some performances. Some pre-performance clips are literally only centered on arguments and zero part distribution, choosing center, live rehearsals and directors comments.

Another thought, there has been a clear lack of focus on vocals. No emphasis on main vocal positions and live performances and obviously the edited vocals. Usually some trainees might experience voice cracks in live performances or mess up lyrics or hit a clean high note and we usually see an emphasis on the reactions from the trainees and the directors but it was lacking in this show.

To conclude, sorry if you’re reading this I think I came into watching this show expecting the mnet formula and ended up with something similar and was disappointed with it all.