Damn Idol Episode 95
Album 9. Mole
One week before Episode 10 of Coming Up Next aired.
The content of Episode 9, which went out over the airwaves, was ordinary.
It didn’t heap screen time on Sedalbaegil, nor did it heap screen time on Take Scene.
It simply showed, faithfully, the preparation process for the final
But if there was one part that became an issue, it was the scene of Han Sion training the members.[Again.][Again.][No, try making the sound from a little farther back.][Again.]
To begin with, Han Sion had thought the footage of him training the members wouldn’t be aired.
Or that it would only be shown lightly.
Given the circumstances at the time, Coming Up Next had no reason to put a scratch on Han Sion’s image.
But the situation had changed, and Producer Gang Seokwoo aired Han Sion’s training scenes without filtering them.
It wasn’t that he had made him unlikeable through malicious editing.
Even so, Han Sion’s training became a matter of controversy.-Fuck, I do look favorably on Han Sion, but isn’t that a bit much? lol-Exactly. He’s not some shaman, and the micromanaging is way too severe.
-Are the members just nice, or is Han Sion the bad one? If I were Sedalbaegil, I think I’d feel pretty bad.
-They’re fellow contestants, but him acting like a judge is off-putting.
-Seems like the program lost its fairness after Chris Edward hyped him up. With an attitude like that, I feel like the producer should’ve stopped him at least once.
The public agreed that Han Sion was a genius.
From
After all, no one knew how many hit songs he had made while appearing on a program that was only ten episodes long.
But if asked whether that made Han Sion look like a once-in-a-century genius, that was another matter.
So-called once-in-a-century geniuses were often described with the phrase “unprecedented and unrepeatable.”
It meant “there had been none before, and there would be none after.”
In other words, unless a fairly long time passed, they were figures difficult to see again.
And in the eyes of the public, Han Sion was not quite at that level.
Contestants who caused a sensation with every song they sang on an audition program?
They existed.
There might not have been many of them, but they definitely existed.
There had even been a rapper on Show Me What You Got whose every released track topped the charts.
A contestant who created a sensational buzz with self-composed songs?
Of course there had been.
A contestant who received rave reviews from top experts in the industry?
There were even more of those.
Of course, those experts might not have been on Chris Edward’s level, but in any case, the category was the same.
That was why the public’s reaction to Han Sion was exactly at that level.
A genius has appeared after a long time.
And if one examined those words carefully, it meant that the genius called Han Sion was not greatly differentiated from other geniuses.
Of course, the reactions of the insiders who had actually watched Han Sion were different.
Even without mentioning Chris Edward, Lee Hyeonseok, Jo Gijeong, and Gang Seokwoo thought Han Sion was a genius difficult to compare with anyone else.
The members of Sedalbaegil did as well, of course, and among the judges there were some who thought similarly.
Because they had witnessed Han Sion’s talent in its raw, unproduced form.
But the public could only encounter Han Sion through mass media, and it was difficult for them to accurately feel just how great his talent was.
Also, in the eyes of the public, who consumed culture lightly, a 100-point genius and a 1000-point genius could look similar.
That was why Han Sion in Episode 9 stirred up controversy.
Around this time, Choe Daeho, the CEO of Lion Entertainment and a judge on Coming Up Next, had fallen into contemplation.‘Should I bury him completely…….’
Driving Han Sion out of the entertainment industry would be easier than twisting a child’s wrist.
A single cough from Choe Daeho would descend on Han Sion and Sedalbaegil like a typhoon.
In that sense, fleeing to the indie scene had been a foolish choice, yet in one way, a clever one.
As befitted the meaning of the word independent, that was a place Choe Daeho’s influence did not reach.
But that also meant it was a narrow place he didn’t need to reach.
It didn’t matter whether Sedalbaegil gathered 100 audience members for a performance there, or 1000 for a concert.
As long as they didn’t set foot in the mainstream of show business.
But soon, Choe Daeho felt it was a waste.
He was not someone with an enormous interest in Han Sion’s musical achievements.
Of course, he thought they were impressive, and he thought the guy had been born with talent.
While filming Coming Up Next, he had even applauded him as a judge.
But what Choe Daeho was interested in was show business.
No matter how outstanding someone’s musical talent was, if it didn’t sell, he had no interest.
The problem was that Han Sion was a product that would sell extremely well.
From his atmosphere and looks to his ability to show the public a stage.
He was born to become a star.
If only Lion Entertainment could properly push him, creating a group that surpassed Drop Out or NOP would not be a dream.
That was why it felt wasteful, and why he was troubled.
Whether to burn Han Sion so thoroughly that he could never rise again, or to make him come back to Lion Entertainment.
The very expression “come back” was extremely self-centered thinking, but that was how Choe Daeho thought.
In the meantime, he heard the news that Han Sion would appear on
“He answered like that?”
“Yes. That was his answer for now, but…… it’s a bit ambiguous, hyungnim.”
“What is?”
“It felt fifty-fifty. A fifty percent chance that he really regrets turning against you, hyungnim. A fifty percent chance that he knew he was being sounded out and answered accordingly.”
“How would he know he was being sounded out?”
“By intuition? The kid was really smart.”
Jo Taehun said that, but humans were animals that heard what they wanted to hear.‘So Han Sion is thinking it over too.’
If so, it meant there was a possibility that Han Sion might wrap Sedalbaegil up nicely and come back.
He knew Han Sion was more cunning than kids his age.
But he noticed that Choe Daeho was sounding him out through Jo Taehun and gave the answer he wanted to hear?
There was no way he had that much political sense.
In the end, Choe Daeho made his decision.
He would not bury Han Sion completely.
But he had to knock that arrogance flat.‘Would about a year do?’
After making it so he could do nothing at all, he planned to reach out through Blue, who had been on good terms with the contestants.
Having decided on that stance, Choe Daeho finished discussions with M Show as well.
The protagonist of Coming Up Next Episode 10 would be Take Scene, but they would not go so far as to drag Sedalbaegil down into ruin.
And so, one week later.
Episode 10 aired.
* * *
“The broadcast content is more ordinary than I expected?”
The words that came out of Choe Jaeseong’s mouth matched my impression after watching Episode 10.
Coming Up Next Episode 10 was exactly as expected.
They gave Take Scene more screen time, and the stage was edited around Take Scene as well.
On top of that, they broke immersion by inserting the judges’ conversation in the middle of our stage, and when Lee Ion’s pre-hook came up, they caught it in a full shot and obstructed it with large subtitles.
Not only that, they also processed scenes that would have looked quite cool if shown in proper close-ups as bust shots instead.
Even so, however, the production team had not ruined Sedalbaegil’s stage itself.
The power of directing and editing was enormous, so there were dozens of ways to turn the best stage into the worst.
The fact that they had not done so could be seen as relatively moderate editing.
To give an overall review of Episode 10, Take Scene was the protagonist, but Sedalbaegil was also portrayed as a supporting actor who had done its best.
After that, the scores so far were tallied and Take Scene’s victory was announced, and Take Scene’s debut date was revealed.
August 26, 2017.
Only two months remained.
When I connected to the internet and checked the articles, the whole world was talking about Take Scene.[Coming Up Next Episode 10. The winning team is Take Scene!][A new big catch in the music industry, Take Scene’s debut date confirmed for August 26.][A perfect team from beginning to end. Take Scene, a victory with reason.][Coming Up Next Episode 10 viewership rating 11.8%.][M Show Bestowed Grace, and Take Scene Repaid It. Will Take Scene’s Debut Stage Be on M Show?]
It was truly astonishing how impossible it was to find the words Sedalbaegil.
Of course, if you looked at the contents of the articles, there were places where our name was mentioned from time to time.
In sentences like, “Sedalbaegil was strong as individuals, while Take Scene was strong as a team.”
But there really was not a single article title with our name embedded in it.
That wasn’t all.
A considerable number of Sedalbaegil videos had also disappeared from M Show’s official YouTube channel.
The official mission videos remained, but the other videos had been temporarily made private.
It was proof that M Show and Lion had definitely reached an agreement.
“Hmm……”
“This is kind of severe.”
The members must have looked at the internet too, because they seemed somewhat surprised.
“Aren’t there a ton of small media outlets in Korea? How is there not a single article?”
“Usually, what those media outlets upload are copied articles.”
When a major media outlet wrote an article, small media outlets that sold provocative ads copied it.
They changed the wording moderately so they wouldn’t get caught by copyright, then uploaded it. Sometimes a person did it, and sometimes AI did.
That was why articles whose contents were more or less the same, but whose titles alone were provocative and whose sources were unknown, poured out.
What did they call that in Korea again?
Was it a rewrite article?
Anyway, if our name wasn’t in the original article at all?
Then our name wouldn’t be in the copied articles either.
In truth, the business game at the current point was a game of whack-a-mole.
If Sedalbaegil tried to stick its head out, Lion Entertainment would strike it down.
If someone tried to work with Sedalbaegil, Lion Entertainment would strike them down again.
After hearing me out, Onsaemiro asked.
“Then what do we do?”
“Do you know who the most pitiful one in whack-a-mole is?”
“Pitiful? Who?”
“The first mole. That guy always gets hit by the hammer.”
Choe Daeho was neither a god nor an emperor, so he could not control everything.
There were definitely companies in the entertainment industry that wanted to work with Sedalbaegil.
There would even be some for whom it wouldn’t matter much if Choe Daeho became a nuisance.
But the problem was that no one wanted to be the first mole.
At the current point, they did not want to take Sedalbaegil’s side for no reason and receive Choe Daeho’s concentrated fire.
It would be nice if someone else stuck their neck out instead and drew Choe Daeho’s gaze.
That was probably about the extent of their thinking.
“So our goal is to make it so countless moles pop out.”
“How?”
“For now…… this.”
I opened the YouTube app and showed them a freshly uploaded video.[(Official Teaser) Didn’t You Come to the Wrong Program? We’re Downfall Detector!]
It was the teaser video for Downfall Detector, which would be uploaded two days later.
My name, Han Sion, was not in the title, but my face was plastered huge across the thumbnail.
When I played it, the video began with footage from Coming Up Next of me singing
After that, the stages of the songs I had gotten onto the charts connected in rapid succession.[How do you feel?][I’m delighted.][Why?][Because I was a huge fan of this program.]
Then I appeared with the parts attached, sitting in the lie detector chair.[Being a fan is nice and all, but you—do you know where you are?!]
After a few captions pretending to be cheerful, a scene of Jo Taehun asking a question appeared.[Money is more important to me than my fans’ love!]
My face, looking as if I had been rendered speechless, was shown in close-up……
Then the screen transitioned to the program title.
The video had been uploaded about twenty minutes ago, but the comment section was already in an uproar.