Netflix just dropped a Korean reality TV series called "Devil's Plan" which is similar to "The Genius Game" with a lot of group games and strategy puzzles....and of course I'm heavily absorbed into it, watching the first 2 episodes the first night it dropped and the next 2 episodes on the 2nd night. What can I say, I guess I'm a sucker for that kind of programming, it's like my Star Wars: I would wait in line at the theater and dress up as Chewbacca or something if need be. MJ was into the game too, but for different reasons: she liked commenting on all the Korean celebrities who popped up on the show: who she liked, disliked, who's a nepo-baby, who's well-respected, etc. The social aspect of the show of people interacting with each other, whereas I'm just more interested in the strategic aspect of what's the optimal way to win the games and maximize one's winning chances. I approach these shows like chess analysis videos; MJ approaches them like watching "And Just Like That" (the Sex in the City sequel). I suspect due to her more frequent interactions with older people at the hospital, MJ would like "The Golden Bachelor, featuring 60-year-old and 70-year-olds finding true love.
But yes Devil's Plan immediately started off with a variation of one of my favorite games ever (Mafia) and introduced some characters with different spins: they basically divided the traditional "sheriff" role in mafia (who can figure out who other characters are in the game) into a "reporter" who had that ability and a nominal "sheriff" who absorbed the power of the masses by being able to kill anyone else in the game (usually that's a role for the whole group in a vote to see whom to kill). Oh and they introduced a "virus" and "vaccine" aspect of it since it was filmed after the pandemic and all. (I feel like now that we're 3 years removed from the epicenter of Covid, people want to think about anything BUT Covid, but hey that's just me). They also introduced a character called the "Fanatic" (hurray for different subtitle choices on Netflix) called the 광신도 or 狂信度 in Kanji characters, which are divided into "crazy," "belief" and "degree." Someone who believes in something to a crazy degree. The role was depicted on a card with a crazy clown figure with crazy/evil eyes, and the character's special ability was to gain points for being killed off as soon as possible, so basically someone who was a suicide fanatic. Now I get why they named "fans" after this word; you have to be really crazy about something to the point of caring about nothing else. It's the trait in some humans that gets manipulated unfortunately into religious fanaticism or cult fanaticism, all the Church of Scientology believers and zealots; usually not a danger to society until they cause mass suicides like Jonesboro and Heaven's Gate, etc. I fear fanatics of anything, even if it's rabbits, baseball, chocolate, or cartoon characters; being obsessed with anything makes others wonder how far you're willing to go to get what you want, and going too extreme makes you wonder if they're "crazy." I'm like the opposite of a fanatic: I do almost everything in moderation, and just when I feel like I'm starting to get pulled in to something too far and might be too late to pull back, I pull back to a normal base and count myself fortunate for not going overboard, even for shows like "Devil's Plan" where I understand I need to go to sleep and wake up the next day to go to work. In that sense, MJ is a TV series fanatic.......last Friday nigth she binge watched a Korean TV show right through all 12 (maybe 13?) episodes without stopping and claimed she went to bed "very late" or "sometime early in the morning." Sure signs of fanaticism, as well as the crazy eyes with bags from staying up late without sleep.
Netflix kind of curbed my fanaticism for Devil's Plan by releasing only 4 episodes per week; one game was a memory game with a Where's Wally-like photo of a hospital with numerous people walking around like patients, nurses, doctors, people who needed surgery, and the contestants had 20 minutes to memorize the photo and then answer questions about the photos. Not exactly a game for memory experts who memorize sequences of hundreds of numbers; this game was more visual, good for more "photographic memory" people who could see a photo and remember all the details of it, like what color outfit people were wearing, etc. (Again, it was hospital-themed to remind us that yes, there was a pandemic, I guess). But I appreciate the amount of details needed to draw a painting like that; someone had to really commit to drawing all the rooms, the layouts of the beds, the detials on the walls...I wish I could be doing that all day long really. Bring on more fun drawings!
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