YG Treasure Box (2018)

Messy in its outcome, pretty brutal in its build up & showcasing a fair share of individual talents

I had very minimal names/faces recognition but I did know some things about TREASURE before starting this survival show, because there were quite a bit of controversy around their agency YG and the way they debuted the group as the show was filmed just before the eruption of the "Burning Sun" scandal. It is sometimes strange to watch, like an uncanny capsule of time. Given how messy and delayed their debut was (the survival show ended in January 2019 and they debuted in August 2020), I'm very happy that the group ended up to be successful.

This survival show has almost a documentary vibe, showing the viewer some of the reality of the producing behind the survival show. Of course, it is catered for and audience and polished, but it does really show the cruel reality of the competition.

Contrary to some agency led survival show featuring a quite limited amount of trainees, YG decided to gather a relative big amount of participants forming various units. The units were not necessarily competing between each other but rather there were forming a mix, the agency searching the best combination for the group. The way the competition was set up was clearly showcasing individual talents that then would be assembled into a coherent ensemble. Even if not all of the participants have equal screentime, it is showcasing enough to make room for a lot of potential lineup, pushing the viewer to play the assembly game with the main producer (YG).

Not going to lie, the show was really rough on the participants : YG had a real gift at traumatizing his trainees. It seems that the underlying objective of the production team was to have at least one or two people crying by episode. They also did one of the worst thing in my opinion for a survival : not announcing the full lineup during the finale of the survival but rather organising a live announcement on a platform post finale, that needs to be looked up separetely to get the full picture on the group.

I would recommend this survival show to people that want to learn more about TREASURE and its genesis. Once you have watched the outcome, you might need to do further research to really get what happened between the announcement of the group lineup, some subsequent announcement and then the launch with a reviewed lineup.

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