Running Man: Episode 294

by gummimochi

Technological advancements can often be a double-edged sword—while it makes so many tasks more convenient nowadays, many of these developments now replace the need for humans to fulfill those very tasks. So this episode will test the age-old question of man vs. machine, the human brain vs. programming code, and find out which side will win out. Will it be the future robot overlords or their creators?

EPISODE 294. Broadcast on April 10, 2016.

We open at a cafe in Gangnam where Jae-suk and Suk-jin are told that they’ll be traveling without the help of a GPS today. Jae-suk is confident in getting around, but worries about “two-chi” Suk-jin: a gilchi (someone with poor sense of direction) and a yangahchi (a delinquent).

In fact, all digital devices are banned, and it’ll be up to the cast members to track down today’s guests. All they have is a book of maps, and the 2D analog format drives Suk-jin batty.

Haha figures he’ll go ask the local real estate office or precinct. Ji-hyo has the same idea, but doesn’t even know where the precinct is. Kwang-soo gets lost, so he asks a policeman for directions, who asks why he drove in the opposite direction. Lol.

Both Suk-jin and Jae-suk arrive at the hair salon in Cheongdam-dong… and Suk-jin says hello to our first guest: Girl’s Day Hyeri(Answer Me 1988). He’s more than pleased when Jae-suk calls to say he’s still on his way, then puts him on hold to take a quick selca…

… and Hyeri bursts out laughing as Jae-suk appears from the bathroom. Turns out Jae-suk had arrived first, and now these three are a team.

Meanwhile Gary and Kwang-soo are headed for the same place: the YG Entertainment building. That’s where we meet WINNER’s Mino (Song Min-ho). Over in Cheongdam-dong, Haha and Ji-hyo find a real estate office and precinct, respectively.

Haha and Ji-hyo arrive at similar times, and soon after he confirms the address, he hears someone run up the stairs. He bursts upstairs upon seeing Ji-hyo, and they both charge at WINNER’s Nam Taehyun.

Then it’s back to the SBS building in Mokdong, where everyone belatedly realizes that Jong-kook isn’t here (he attended the KU Asian Music Awards in Guangzhou, China).

Today’s episode of Man vs. Machine is inspired by the recent five-game match between professional baduk player Lee Sedol and AlphaGo, a computer program developed by Google DeepMind in early March (in short, the computer won 4:1).

There’s a huge prize for the ones who can beat the machines today, and they can win R-coins in the missions which will be advantageous later on. We’re only told that Jae-suk, Gary, Haha, Mino, Taehyun, and Hyeri all receive 3 R-coins available at the SBS building before moving on.

In the car, Jae-suk suggests they go for the mission involving a robot arm. He calls Hyeri out for trying to act like she knows how to read a map (she doesn’t, which I realize could be a generational gap difference), and Suk-jin tells Kwang-soo to just follow Jae-suk.

While Haha and Gary are impressed with Mino’s confidence about a rap battle mission (he was a finalist in the rap audition show Show Me the Money 4), both Jae-suk and Suk-jin’s car pull up to the warehouse.

Everyone rushes inside where they hear the mission: whichever side can pop 30 balloons the fastest, wins. As Suk-jin warms up, so does the robot arm. Once the whistle blows, things start off easy with one or two balloons, but then a whole flurry floats to the top. Suk-jin tries to keep up whereas the robot arm precisely pops the balloons onscreen.

Still, Suk-jin doesn’t give up but loses with three balloons remaining. Hyeri tries her best too, but loses to the robot.

Haha remarks how a robot isn’t able to write emotional lyrics like a human can. He and Mino are admirers of Gary’s, which makes the latter beam. At the story of how how he almost became an H.O.T member, Gary clarifies that he auditioned many years ago.

They’re confused when they arrive at their “rap” battle station and see stacks of boxes instead of an audience. When asked to show a bit of their skills, Haha busts a quick rhyme, followed by Mino…

… and then the PD says they’ll start now by bringing in a robot who can “wrap”. HA. Haha: “What the?! It was this kind of ‘wrap’?”

Here the guys will try to beat the robot in wrapping the boxes 20 times. Haha starts off with a sprint but then starts wheezing halfway through and gives up.

Elsewhere, Ji-hyo pops all of her balloons… only to learn she was one balloon away from victory. Jae-suk stands ready for his turn, unaware that a balloon floats up behind him. As more keep floating, we see the culprit: Kwang-soo.

Kwang-soo adds more when the flurry arrives, and Jae-suk gripes at how many balloons there were once he loses. Just as he steps down to see Kwang-soo hiding, two more balloons float into the box.

As Taehyun steps up to the plate, we cut back to him explaining that he’d been scouted for a handful of sports. He keeps up with the flurry—and gives us an entertaining facial expression—then checks back once that last one pops… to see that he’s beaten the machine.

Back at the wrapping station, Mino runs two rotations before he yelps that he’s already tired and dizzy. He’s on his knees by the fourth rotation, and in the time he tries to catch up, the robot finishes the job.

So it’s up to Gary to beat the robot—he starts off quick too before wearing down around the sixth rotation. Still, he’s pulling ahead and by the fifteenth rotation, Haha tells him to go for one last sprint.

Gary gathers all of his strength for those final few rotations and beats the robot by a half-turn. All three of them get 2 R-coins each.

Although Hyeri insists on finding the way to their next mission, Jae-suk gently asks if he should do it upon hearing her strained groans. Suk-jin’s team can’t find their atlas, which Taehyun had confiscated a few minutes ago.

Having no idea theirs was stolen, they decide to steal the one Jae-suk’s team has instead. Jae-suk’s car pulls away just as Kwang-soo approaches, leaving him to think they caught on to the thievery attempt (but still not knowing the other team has two books vs. one).

Gary and the others arrive at their next mission: escape the maze before the robot does. Is that… a robot vacuum? Just looking at it is a blow to their pride, and the team is given a handicap in the form of a blindfold.

Glad to see that the maze set is gettin’ some reuse, as the team watches the robot vacuum travel through the maze. When Gary mentions that he’s already memorized the pattern, the PD says they’ll start from opposite ends then. Gary laughs, “I didn’t think of that.” No, no you didn’t.

So Gary and the robot vacuum start from different entrances. Hm, I’m skeptical since the robot starts in the same entrance as the simulation, and the vacuums nowadays use its sensors to learn the landscape of a room.

As Gary blindly crawls to a dead end, the vacuum pulls out of the other entrance. Mino crawls through the maze, but then arrives at a crossroads. Watching from above, Haha admits that he’s headed the right way.

Soon both Mino and the robot vacuum are just one turn away… and it’s Mino who climbs out first.

We see that Jae-suk’s team beats the robot vacuum in the maze too, then speed past the coffee machine challenge. When we check back to the R-coin count: Mino (11), Taehyun, Haha, and Gary (9), Jae-suk and Hyeri (6), Kwang-soo and Ji-hyo (4), and Suk-jin (3).

Today’s final mission takes place in a decked-out set, where everyone is told that Jong-kook is engaged in three rounds of a man vs. machine battle of his own. They place their bets on who would win—those who guess correctly can add to their R-coin count.

We cut to the first round of Jong-kook vs. the juicer fight to make freshly-squeezed orange juice. Does it actually count if the machine needs to be fed its fruit manually? Still, Spartakooks squeezes one powerful fistful after another… and beats the juicer.

Hyeri, Haha, and Kwang-soo lose coins for placing all their bets on the machines, and the news has Haha wondering if Jong-kook isn’t some kind of cyborg himself. Jong-kook won the second battle too, so Haha, Suk-jin, and Ji-hyo also lose coins.

Unfortunately, Jong-kook couldn’t beat the blender, and so Gary, Mino, and Kwang-soo pick up more coins. Today’s final mission is a word chain game against the computer, where one would come up with a word that begins with the last syllable the previous word ended with.

There’s also a board of chance such as looking a word up in a dictionary or asking the on-call announcer (Announcer Kim Hwan, natch), which they can buy with their R-coins.

Everyone stands in a line, and Kim Hwan announces that the crew believe that Kwang-soo will be eliminated first. Offended, Kwang-soo replies, “I totally read a lot of books.”

The J-bot computer is a 2013 model (Haha: “It’s the same age as my son!”), and Jae-suk is the first one to input a word. He starts off with “summer” which J-bot responds with neumhwang a Joseon-era word for a public official’s pay.

Mino enters a noun after his first guess, then Gary responds to J-bot’s response with “ulterior motive.” Haha’s syllable is “Deok” which has the others chuckle to reply with “Deok-sun” aka Hyeri’s character in Answer Me 1988.

Haha inputs deokhu (which refers to an obsessive “geek”) and the computer sasses back that he needs to find an acceptable word. Haha finds another, then after Hyeri responds back at her turn, Taehyun is left with gwi.

He inputs gwishin aka “ghost”, and the computer pulls a noun from Ji-hyo’s attack of eeppal aka “tooth/teeth”. Suk-jin gives the computer a palindrome, which J-bot spits back with an immediate response.

It’s Suk-jin’s turn again, and he writes in a response with seconds to spare. Kwang-soo gapes when he has to answer with a word that starts in pon. He writes in “phone case”, which is unacceptable.

He uses a chance to use his dictionary, and Kwang-soo yells that nothing starts with pon. He cries for help and yells when no one offers anything.

He doesn’t make the time limit, and the floor drops beneath him so that he falls into the pit below. It’s only when Kwang-soo is sitting beside Kim Hwan does the host explain there was “font”.

Round 2 starts with Ji-hyo, who starts off with “us.” J-bot answers with “linen” and Ji-hyo immediately apologizes for making things so complicated right off the batt. Taehyun opts to use a chance… to send the computer back the opposite direction.

That means Ji-hyo is left with the “-nen”, but then she skips her turn. So it’s up to Suk-jin who has less than ten seconds to answer. His first guess is wrong, so he uses a dictionary chance, which essentially buys him another minute.

Twenty seconds later, Suk-jin pitifully cries, “There isn’t anything!” Desperate, Suk-jin inputs “Nancy Lang”. Ha, as in the performance artist? Suffice it to say, he’s eliminated too.

We skip to Round 4 after Ji-hyo is eliminated. Taehyun starts things off, and after Hyeri’s turn, Haha’s word must start with kwol. He chooses kwol-gi “rally”, and then later Mino has chelles following Seychelles.

He uses a chance to hand off this turn to anyone, and gives it to Taehyun. And then Kim Hwan chuckles nervously when Taehyun uses his announcer chance. He apologizes when he says he doesn’t quite know the word he found, but when Taehyun inputs “Shelley” in anyway, it works.

Apparently 18th century Romantic poets still count (Percy Bysshe Shelley), but he’s not out of the woods just yet with hoong. He uses another announcer chance, and this time Kim Hwan delivers with hoong-geo, an archaic expression for a king’s death.

Haha is later given tto, and uses his chance to hand off this turn to someone. That lucky person is Taehyun. And sure it might suck to be put on the spot again, but think of all the screentime!

Taehyun’s first answer isn’t acceptable, but his second one is: peer. We skip ahead after Jae-suk, Haha, Gary, and Taehyun are eliminated, and now only Hyeri and Mino remain.

Hyeri and Mino input their turns, and the turns continue until Hyeri is given yoong. She uses yoong-ja aka “loan”, and round and round we go with the word chain.

The final two and the computer fill up the first page, and Hyeri sidesteps another trap using myosu (“expert”). Mino is given jeup but both of his guesses are unacceptable.

With his elimination, Hyeri is considered the human champion. But it’s not over—she still needs to beat J-bot. So far J-bot has only conceded defeat to one word “swindler” (which ends with kkun). She starts off with “manager”, and the computer gives back “funeral.”

So she responds with “doctor”, and J-bot replies with “hunter” (sanyangkkun). Gah, if only she’d started off the round with either of those words.

Her first guess is unacceptable, but she keeps guessing until time runs out and drops into the pit below. Even with the defeat, she’s still the winner among them all today. Aw, maybe she can use the blindfold to get a good night’s rest.

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