We’re still in the arcade, halfway through a Gaming Olympics which has so far seen the favorites come in last thanks to the power of dramatic irony. We finish up this week with two more games, a critical injury, and the most lackluster punishment ever devised in Run BTS history.
Setup:
After DDR and basketball, Jin and Namjoon are currently the two winners of the group, which it’s safe to say no one expected. This episode they’ll be virtually driving and actually playing air hockey, and their energy levels are still through the roof all the way to the moon. Strap in!
The Moments of Pure Joy:
- 1.
They praise Namjoon and Jin, slightly disbelievingly, before piling on Yoongi for having unlucky hands; he agrees he’s bad at games without argument
- 2.
Namjoon and Jimin are exposed for being the only ones without their drivers licenses when they question if you can play a racing game without one
- 3.
Jin has to count on his fingers to figure out that he’s been driving for 7 years - since he was 20 - and they praise his vast experience behind the wheel
- 4.
Jin goes up against Yoongi first, who also knows a lot about cars, or so they claim
- 5.
Yoongi may know about cars but he doesn’t know shit about video game selection menus, as he accidentally chooses like, a Honda Civic, where Jin has a sports car
- 6.
As he races Yoongi keeps saying that his car is “full axle” which could be a translation issue with him or an education issue with me, because I have no idea what he’s talking about
- 7.
They both seem to have a lot of mishaps in the road, but Jin comes out ahead - when Yoongi blames it on his car choice, we learn that the cars have the same stats they just look different
- 8.
Taehyung goes up against Hoseok, and they do a lot of posturing and one-liners like they’re in a racing movie before slapping hands and getting to it
- 9.
They’re both very good but Hoseok ekes it out, first doing a very sexy winner pose and then singing a really nerdy victory song to sort of balance the scales
- 10.
The two unlicensed ones, Jimin and Namjoon, go next, and it starts off strong when Namjoon goes in for a fist bump and Jimin high-fives it, turkey-style
- 11.
Jimin is trying to learn how to shift while Jungkook yells at him to throw it up and down indiscriminately, though I think he’s sincerely trying to help
- 12.
Hoseok is also giving shifting advice to both of them, but let me tell you that very little is penetrating
- 13.
Taehyung starts taking pictures of their focused faces, and Jungkook and Jin also take little peeks to mock how far Namjoon’s chin is thrust out
- 14.
Jimin, on the other hand, has his black hood up over his pink hair using a death glare at the screen, but he still loses and shoots us a rueful smile through the camera
- 15.
Jungkook got a bye and gets to go against Jin, at something of a disadvantage for not having played it before
- 16.
Disadvantages don’t matter to Jungkook, though, because he has iron will and total concentration, beating Jin via superior positioning
- 17.
Hoseok versus Namjoon isn’t much of a contest, as Namjoon ends up driving into a cliff wall, then the wrong way, and basically loses sight of Hoseok almost instantly
- 18.
Jungkook satisfies his own inner voices by dancing around in running man circles behind them to the techno beats of the game, then gripping Yoongi’s shoulder to thrust his ass into the air more completely; no one comments on this or really even notices
- 19.
Hoseok versus Jungkook starts with more posturing and fist bumps, because video game car racing is awakening some sort of horrifying macho impulses in all of them
- 20.
They both take it sooooooooo seriously, Hoseok with his most Dance Captain face on as he blocks Jungkook from passing him over and over again
- 21.
Hoseok wins and sings his little victory song, then does a car racing dance that drops him nearly into the splits, and thank god the macho impulses are gone
- 22.
Namjoon points out that Hoseok was a racecar driver in Dope, so this was clearly pre-ordained
- 23.
Final results: Hoseok, Jungkook, Namjoon / Jin, Yoongi / Jimin / Taehyung
- 24.
The last game is air hockey, with five of them lined up behind the table while two of them go head-to-head; please remember this positioning
- 25.
Yoongi and Hoseok go first, and Yoongi hits the puck like he’s worried he’ll have to pay if he damages it while Hoseok gets so overeager that he whiffs multiple times while hooting
- 26.
Yoongi is very bad though, and they predict he’ll lose the whole thing as he scores not a single goal - he takes his loss with a sweet smile
- 27.
Jungkook goes against Taehyung, and Taehyung immediately hits it off of the table even though he didn’t even hit it that hard
- 28.
This proves prophetic, as two points later Jungkook launches the puck off the table while defending and it flies DIRECTLY into Jin’s dick
- 29.
I cannot overstate how much this puck nails Jin in the penis, since Jin (as we learn later from that hair-dying picture he posted on Twitter) has a habit of resting his dick on the lip of nearby surfaces, and in this case that’s the edge of the air hockey table
- 30.
They all laugh so hard they almost cry, while Jin’s eyes are actually full of tears as he starts speaking in English in distress
- 31.
The five spectators cross their hands over their dicks like protective codpieces and take one step back from the edge; they look very polite
- 32.
Jungkook pulls out two pucks as if they’re going to play with both of them, and it’s mostly for entertainment but you can see the moment that he really, really wants to do it
- 33.
At one point during the Taekook battle the puck bounces off the wall close to Jin and he has a traumatic flashback that causes him to shout and wiggle away like a mackerel
- 34.
Namjoon begins doing the score update in Japanese for some reason, and everyone rolls with it
- 35.
Taehyung’s style is more about strong defense while Jungkook likes a surprise attack that sometimes leaves him overextended; it takes them all the way to deuce until Taehyung closes it out
- 36.
Jin goes against Jimin, but he really mostly goes against himself, because he hits the puck wildly without aiming it at all and mostly bounces it back to himself over and over again, scoring goals both for and against himself at random
- 37.
Jimin doesn’t move his paddle more than a few inches at a time, which means he also scores some own goals too
- 38.
Jungkook is laughing so hard at Jin’s frantic flailing that it only eggs Jin on, as expected
- 39.
By the end Jimin and Jin have scored so many goals on themselves that they’re nearly crying with laughter until Jin finally wins
- 40.
Namjoon got a bye and goes up against Hoseok
- 41.
Hoseok is trying visibly to be more patient and less twitchy, but he is who he is
- 42.
Namjoon on the other hand truly is patient, looking for openings and using his absurdly long arms to pull ahead
- 43.
Namjoon thrusts his chin out confidently every time he scores, then manages to whiff so hard that the puck glides past him into his goal at glacial speed; Jungkook nearly dies laughing
- 44.
No one is protecting their groins anymore, too caught up in the excitement
- 45.
Namjoon starts screaming “hotteok” every time he hits the puck, like a battle cry, and now Jimin and Jin are losing it
- 46.
The hotteok strategy results in another own goal; Jungkook has to go sit on a nearby bench to recover
- 47.
Yoongi is very pleased at how entertaining this match is as the hotteok strategy again backfires; Jungkook, who has returned to the table, sinks to his knees in mute hysteria
- 48.
Namjoon pulls it out, slightly inelegantly, but Hoseok compliments him anyway
- 49.
Jin and Taehyung take the next semi-final, and Jin remains a weird blend of laser-focused and flailing that means he still plays most of the game alone but also manages to keep it close
- 50.
Taehyung tries a surprise attack with the puck and pulls ahead, then takes it all the way home
- 51.
Namjoon and Taehyung are in the finals, which makes me think that having long limbs is actually the key to air hockey dominance
- 52.
Namjoon hits the puck into the air but instead of letting it settle back flat he just keeps hitting it until it flies almost off the table
- 53.
It’s at this point the audience may take note of the fact that Jungkook, Jin, Jimin, and Yoongi are all standing well to the side of (and in Jin and Jungkook’s case behind) Namjoon, while Hoseok has backed several feet away from the table on Taehyung’s side; they were all leaning up against it during the Taejin showdown
- 54.
Namjoon ones again screams “Hotteok power” every time he hits the puck, this time in a weirdly high voice like an old man from an anime, but I shouldn’t criticize because he wins
- 55.
Yoongi and Jimin face off in the losers’ match to determine the true last place
- 56.
Yoongi gets silly during it and sloppily hits the puck, which flies off the table into an affronted Jin’s finger, but at least it’s just the finger this time
- 57.
It’s a somewhat close, if less skillful game, and when Yoongi takes the victory he holds his hand in the air like he won a gold medal
- 58.
Final results: Namjoon, Taehyung, Jin / Hoseok, Jungkook, Yoongi, Jimin
- 59.
They tally the final results and Namjoon is the winner! Unsurprising as he won two of the games outright but very surprising to him on a personal level given the theme of the episodes
- 60.
Namjoon even gets a prize for winning, which he is very excited about until he sees what it is, which is a bunch of bags of chips, but he tries to be gracious
- 61.
Once they learn there’s no prize for second they instantly don’t care about the rest of the rankings, not even considering me, who cares very deeply about this sort of thing
- 62.
They do care about who got last, so they can mock him soundly, and when it ends up being Yoongi no one, including Yoongi, is surprised
- 63.
The producers remind them that 6th place also gets punishment, which they already gave away by shouting “Jimin” before they announced last place, so Jimin is ready for his fate
- 64.
The punishment is that they have a balloon stuffed into a collar that’s attached to a device that tightens it a little every time you click it; each one of them has to hold it up to their ear and do a click as they do the closing remark on the episode
- 65.
Jimin takes the tack of doing a long remark before going, where Yoongi tries to get it over with immediately, but Jimin ends up popping it and scaring the shit out of himself
- 66.
Yoongi sends us out with one last taunt of Jimin for being just slightly worse than he is, and that’s it!
The Finish Line:
This is the point that I realized we truly are in the first golden age of Run. Everything before these last episodes had great moments, but these arcade episodes in particular are perfect encapsulations of what I love about watching (and now re-watching) this. Ridiculous antics from beginning to end, smack-talk and the genuine thrill of competition, rules-lawyering, unexpected outcomes, and of course the glory of victory and the agony of defeat.
While this punishment is very small potatoes compared to what we’ll see in the future, this is also a seminal moment where two people are punished for individual results and not as part of a larger group. There’s also no spy to contend with, so it’s just Bangtans going head-to-head to avoid popping a balloon next to their ears. The winner gets snacks, but to Bangtans success is much less motivating than avoiding failure, and the producers really knew what they were doing when they started this.
Also for what it’s worth I suspect the rest of the rankings went Jin, Hoseok, Jungkook, Taehyung for 2nd-5th, and yes this matters to me. It matters! I can’t believe they left me hanging.