I'm Watching IN THE SOOP: FRIENDCATION, and You Should Too
Saya finally gets to relive her feels from the Hwarang days.
the tl;dr
Highly recommend to all. It's very peaceful and funny and I feel incredibly healed after watching it.
the ts;wm
I started In the Soop: Friendcation (인더숲: 우정여행) by accident when the first episode released a few weeks ago.
I had just come off a 48-episode round trip with Arsenal Military Academy, and I wasn't feeling quite ready either to move on or to jump into a new high-intensity drama.(1) At the time of writing, there are two episodes out, but I am already an absolute goner.
This show is so funny but also gentle. At times it's quiet, pure quiet, and at others, it's boisterous in the way only young men joyfully set loose can be. The group consists of Park Hyung-shik, Park Seo-joon, Kim Tae-hyung (aka V from BTS, hereafter known as Taehyungie—these three were all in Hwarang together), Choi Woo-shik and Peakboy, who is the only one I didn't know before but I like him a lot as a gentle giant type.
They are collectively known as “the Wooga Squad” for reasons unknown to me but very likely better known by you, dear reader.(2) 😄
The things these kids come up with! Let me tell you, if you didn’t like them before the show, you surely will after. They’re just each so wholesomely endearing in their own particular way.
Park Seo-joon—who, I’ll be honest, I don’t love (3)—quietly plays mama bear and caretaker to everyone, while Peakboy is like the comfortable hyung who makes you feel really safe. And little baby Taehyungie is just so... so little! Like a drowsy, tousled bunny, faithfully following the hyungs. Hyungshikie and Wooshikie (yes they are my friends, be quiet) join the group a little later so we haven’t seen too much of them yet, but we wiiiilllll, I’m excited! (4)
I don’t watch much variety and my exposure has been limited to the mid-2010s Na PD type (i.e. the Grandpas/Noonas/Youth Over Flowers series etc.), which means I have a Pavlovian expectation of meeting a devious twist in a dark alley—but not this show! It also serves an easily digestible runtime of just under an hour, unlike the stamina-sapping 90-minute runtime of other popular variety shows.
In the Soop has a simple but wonderful conceit: describe your ideal fantasy vacation, and the production team will make it happen.
There are no secret budget constraints, the dream doesn’t have a booby trap at the bottom—it’s all exactly at face value, but better.