Spoilers ahead for episode 1-5.
The perpetrator in question is the show Universe League, which so far has actually been a great show and I would recommend it but a series of unfortunate voting systems/mechanics have led to a super talented trainee, Jiang Fan, who had a pretty decent amount of online support being one of the first 5 eliminated from the show. Obviously rigged eliminations are worse than what’s happened to him e.g. the produce series scandal but his elimination is the most nonsensical I’ve seen which didn’t involve rigging.
To understand the absurdity of how this happened I’ll try and explain the shows format as simply as I can. To start with, the show is set up to have three separate teams which originally all contained 14 contestants and are led by different mentors. During the rounds they would compete against each other with varying rulesets but so far one thing has remained consistent, the yellow card system.
What is the yellow card system you ask? Well, after the performances from each team in a round, the team that placed 2nd overall would receive 3 yellow cards and the team that placed 3rd would receive 6. These cards would go to the individual trainees on each losing team who had the lowest individual scores from that round and would stay with them throughout the show. The important part being if they received two yellow cards total they would get eliminated.
This in itself isn’t a bad system and is actually quite a fun and unique way of deciding eliminations… however once we dive into how these individual scores were determined in each round things get nonsensical.
During round 1, team and individual scores were based solely on a live audience vote. This wasn’t the best decision as it’s such a tiny fraction of voters but audience voting isn’t anything new. Unfortunately time and time again we’re reminded that Korean voters are often quite bias against foreign trainees on survival shows, especially Chinese trainees which Jiang Fan happens to be so despite doing really well, his team placed 3rd and he individually received few audience votes so he became one of 6 to receive a yellow card. Ouch. This isn’t the worst part though.
Then round 2 comes around, this time whilst the live audience still played a part in deciding which team won overall, the individual rankings which would determine who got a yellow card on the losing teams would be based on online voting. This should have been a good thing as based on Jiang Fans online support, even if his team lost (which they did, 3rd again) he should have been able to avoid a 2nd yellow card by individually placing high on his team.
But nope, turns out the votes that determined the second rounds individual ranking was from a period of online voting that started and ended before the show even started airing. Yes, you heard me right. They had a wave of voting that took place for a short period before the show started when all we had was a 3 minute performance of the signal song (that only highlighted a few contestants), 1 behind the scenes clip, some teasers and a bunch of random shorts, including moving posters of the contestants.
I don’t think I really need to explain how nonsensical this is but essentially this really talented trainee who won a bunch of viewers over with his great performances throughout 5 episodes got eliminated because he didn’t get votes BEFORE the show started and BEFORE we saw any of his performances. Now the obvious reason why this happened is because the show is filmed far in advance so I’m assuming the pre-show vote was the only completed vote at the time of filming episode 5 but I’m genuinely confused how they thought using it and eliminating trainees based on it made any sense. That’s completely absurd.
He wasn’t the only one mind, there was 4 others too that ended up getting eliminated with him but I’m not sure they would’ve survived even with a more logical voting system. Jiang Fan on the other hand was notably one of the most talented contestants on the show, arguably being the best dancer as well as being a great vocalist and a good rapper but we lost him despite having pretty decent audience support. The producers even clearly loved him and gave him a ton of air time and yet it was all for nothing.
To end on a more positive note, the show is still really good and has a ton of talented contestants so I’m still excited to continue watching. And honestly, whilst Jiang Fan may have survived a few more rounds with a more logical voting system, I don’t think there was any chance of him actually debuting here so whilst the absurdity of his elimination hurts, it’s not like a debut-candidate was taken out of the equation so the show isn’t ruined or anything. Hopefully we see him get scouted or end up on Boys II Planet!
Feel free to share other crazy survival show eliminations!
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