Running Man ep 191 – Stars of Running Hill

Running Man ep 191 – Stars of Running Hill

Aired: 3/30/2014

Overview

The members return to 1854 Gold Rush era Australia, and play games to collect stars until only one remains.

Staff Scores

Planning and Direction: 4

The opening segment in the library was pretty good, giving the members lots of chances to ham it up with their acting skills. The minigames to win stars were fine but nothing special.However, the final mission was a real mess, requiring a ton of ‘fudging’ and heavy scripting in order to make it last longer than five minutes. Some of the segments within the final mission (Jaesuk bowling and gold panning, HaHa’s bullwhip) were good, but the main mission itself was quite awkward, with an ending that was both dull and predictable. Also, there was a bit too much focus on the terminally boring Woo Bin.

Postproduction: 5

Fairly standard Running Man, with nice visuals and poor audio.

Songs Featured:

Gert Wilden – Die Schwarzen Adler Von Santa Fe Theme
Yoko Kanno – Tank (Cowboy Bebop OST)
Rain – LA Song
Riz Ortolani – Day of Anger
Ennio Morricone – Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo
John Williams – End Credits (Raiders of the Lost Ark OST)
Hard Rock Sofa – Here We Go (Fast & Furious 6 OST)

Cast Scores

Yoo Jae Suk: 6

A very nice performance from Jae Suk again, as he provided most of the good moments in the individual missions and had several funny interactions with Kwang Soo and HaHa as well. He also was the best in terms of interacting with the local visitors and park workers.

Kim Jong Kook: 5

Solid work from Jong Kook this week, who got to play the “weakling” for a change, and did well for the most part.

Ha Ha: 6

HaHa was quite good, teaming up with Kwang Soo (Ha&Soo 2?) for much of the main mission and doing a solid job at portraying his character. His bullwhip segment was also one of the better ones in the episode.

Ji Suk Jin: 4

Had some of the funnier moments in the opening segments, but was out very quickly in the final mission and didn’t appear much as a result.

Lee Kwang Soo: 6

Kwang Soo was solid throughout the episode, and had several nice comedic interactions with the other members, particularly Jae Suk and Ha Ha.

Gary: 3

Gary didn’t appear much when he was still ‘in’, and then was out early and did not appear at all.

Song Ji Hyo: 4

Ji Hyo was OK when on-screen, but was massively edited out for the majority of the final mission.

Guests

Rain, Kim Woo Bin

Rain didn’t appear much at all, and Woo Bin appeared a bit too much considering his lack of personality and variety skills.

Episode MVP: Yoo Jae Suk

HaHa and Kwang Soo were good as well this week, but Jae Suk not only worked well with them, but carried a lot of the show with his solo segments as well.

Final Score: 4

A very up and down episode, as each segment had both good and bad moments mixed in throughout. Similarly, some of the cast members were quite good while others barely appeared. While the setting at the theme park was reasonably fun, the structure of the game caused the action to slow to a crawl, and the ending was awkward and predictably scripted, making this a slightly below average episode.

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