I’d wanted to do this last year. It was last January when I first came up with the idea of doing an episodic review of “Running Man”, the South Korean variety show that’s been on air for almost a decade and a half. I’d started watching the show way back in 2012, and over the years it’s become mandatory Monday night viewing for me, as it has for millions of Asians across the world. I put it off for 2023, but it’s always been a bit frustrating how, amidst Anglophone media’s current obsession with Korean culture, the variety show has gotten so little attention. Online, I can’t seem to find much coverage of this hilarious show that goes past the latest gossip; how is it that, despite being a staple of peak Korean TV in its own right and literally getting Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg and Ryan Reynolds onto the show, Running Man can still remain so under the radar?
With that in mind, I thought I’d do my bit for a show that I’ve adored for a decade and more, and review this year’s crop of episodes (or at least, the ones that air before SBS gets fed up and puts it out of its misery). Yes its track record these days is, to put it politely, very spotty; yes it has absolutely zero budget and the viewership is a tiny fraction of what it was in the glory days of 2013. But sometimes, the cast and crew shine through and give us sparkling humour, dynamic games and a fun time all around — just like they have for the past 14 years. This show’s still got it, and if I can get one person who’s never heard of Running Man before clicking on this page to check out an episode or two, then I’ll be forever grateful.
Updates at around 23:00 HKT every Monday!
(I might split this into three or even four posts as the year goes on; 52 YouTube URLs will definitely crash this site… or maybe we won’t even get there, but let’s not think about that just yet.)
Episode 686/7 January
Guests: Dong Hyun Kim (boxer), Noh Sang-hyun, Keum Sae-rok (both actors)
And we begin 2024 with an episode that comes out guns a-blazing. Today was proof that even with its funds much-reduced, a wonderful bottle episode can be done with the right guests and the right concept; putting them into little “apartments” and watching them squabble might feel old-hat for longtime viewers, but what the hell, it’s still amazing. Seeing the teams steal from each other is textbook RM, but seeing them hypocritically protest at having the same done to them is another level of funny; likewise, I kind of guessed that a ghost would come Sadako-style out of the television, but the ghost subsequently attaching herself to HaHa and awkwardly climbing onto his shoulders still made me choke on my soda. If they can keep this level of production up for a while, then the show might just catch a second wind. (It probably won’t, but a man can dream.)
Grade: A-
MVP: The assistant director who said “sod it, it’s my last week, I’ll play the ghost”
Episode 687/14 January
Guests: Jo Se-ho (presenter and perennial guest), Eom Ji-yoon (comedian), KyuHyun (singer in Super Junior)
Halfway through this episode my mother said “this is all very oddly edited, don’t you think?” That encapsulates my problem with this episode, and indeed a typical episode of late-period Running Man: the pacing of everything is all off. Specifically, they seem anxious to show off every game they’ve come up with, yet aren’t willing to show us the course of a whole game; sure, the bits they show are very funny, but we’re rushing from segment to segment, which made the whole thing feel rather fragmented (the rather jarring cuts didn’t help either). The last 30 minutes of the show are devoted to that old fall-back of watching the presenters once again cook and bungle cooking; unlike last summer’s intimate setpiece, this time it just devolved into a lot of shouting. Ji-yoon might be a bit outspoken, but the viewer can’t help but feel like her as that section unfolds: the only sane person, dropped into a melee of unproductive chaos.
Grade: C+
MVP: Yang Se-chan
Episode 688/21 January
Guests: Dong Hyun Kim (boxer), Hong Jin Ho, Jonathan Yiombi (broadcasters)
And we’re back to normal for this one: just the cast, ambling along the streets of Seoul, looking for something to eat. Food is always an easy fallback for a variety show like Running Man — who doesn’t like watching people chow down on delicacies, tastefully shot and appreciatively reacted to? But they’ve done this exact format a lot in this last decade, and for the most part it’s intriguing viewing, but not especially diverting: I found myself drifting off to other things while watching this episode, and only the tongue-twister section felt like a truly hilarious bit. Of the three guests poor Jonathan Yiombi, constantly being picked on by the cast, is easily the standout: his wounded innocence after whatever injury the cast have inflicted on him makes you immediately empathetic.
Grade: B-
MVP: Jonathan Yiombi
Episode 689/28 January
no guests
I blow hot and cold on Running Man’s bottle episodes: sometimes they showcase the chemistry the hosts have built up over the years; sometimes they go on for too long till the bit’s gone stale. Yet this week’s episode tips the scale HEAVILY in its favour: not for years have this cast been so uniformly, side-splittingly funny. Apart from some slight awkwardness in the opening minutes, everything just works this episode: the face-reader delivering silent but deadly diagnoses of the cast with a (mostly) straight face, Haha and Se-chan’s attempts to sneak out and steal food… even Jaesuk’s increasingly tired “hyperactive child” routine felt like a natural fit. But all these are just sideshows to the fifty-minute extravaganza that is “Jihyo trying to cook ginseng chicken soup”, unquestionably the funniest and quietly triumphant thing the show has given us since at least Kwangsoo’s departure. Almost 700 episodes in, we’re still underestimating the one-woman powerhouse that’s Song Jihyo — and time and time again, she’s still proving us wrong with how awesome she is.
Grade: A
MVP: Song Jihyo
Episode 690/4 February
no guests
Look, I get that not every episode can have huge props or rent out a whole holiday resort. But sometimes I feel like the show is too heavily dependent on the “walk around and wonder what there is to eat” format — we had an example just two weeks ago, for heaven’s sake. Economy runs aren’t anything out of the ordinary on Running Man, but to have an episode that blatantly makes it the focus — to have an episode that shamelessly coasts on having the presenters react to stuff for ninety minutes and nothing else — is a step too far, and makes the seams holding the show together far too obvious. It says a lot about late-period Running Man that the best part of this episode was when they (ostensibly) cold-called Lee Kwangsoo; when your show’s best bit relies on somebody who’s been gone for three years, your show is definitely in trouble.
Grade: C
MVP: HaHa (mostly because of that ridiculous suit)
Episode 691/11 February
no guests
In a sense this episode is a sort of recap for the past few weeks: an epilogue to the episodes where Seok-jin was absent, a return of Jihyo’s dubious cookery, and a continuation of this show’s tendency to just wander the streets of Seoul in search of something to eat. Some of those episodes worked well, some didn’t, and that evens out into this good-but-not-great episode where most of the bits worked but didn’t stand out. The return of previous butt-monkeys in extended cameos add a bit of fun to the mix (these hosts always work best when they gang up to pick on somebody) but otherwise this is an episode to watch and then forget — which, considering that it’s Lunar New Year, is perfectly fine.
(Also, I know we should always take the persona with a pinch of salt, but Jaesuk would make a terrible politician.)
Grade: B-
MVP: Jonathan Yiombi
Episode 692/18 February
guests: Ahn Bo-hyun, Park Ji-hyun (actors)
We haven’t had a good old-fashioned detective episode in months, if not years, and although nothing can reach the grand heights of the Sukjin-as-Sherlock-Holmes or Yoomes Bond escapades, this was a pretty solid outing for everyone involved. Sure, the questionnaire segment — now a (slightly overused) mainstay of the show — was shoehorned in a bit awkwardly, and the detective work and the double-crossing were less intense or climatic than I thought it would be. But all of it was still enjoyable, and I thought the final reveal was more ingenious than several others we’ve had in the 2020s — and the way Jaesuk solved it shows why he, for all his annoying spotlight-grabbing tendencies, fully deserves his reputation as the brainiest member of the show. (Please, please, PLEASE don’t tell me that the production team have been feeding him clues all this time. I would be devastated.)
Grade: B
MVP: Yoo Jaesuk
Episode 693/25 February
Guests: Dong Hyun Kim, Hong Jin Ho (do you still need me to introduce these people?); Sakura, Chaewon and Kazuha (members of girl group Le Sserafim)
What, you may ask, do the fresh-faced girls of Le Sserafim — perhaps THE up-and-coming girl group of 2024 — have to do with stock market investments? The answer is absolutely nothing, which is why this episode felt extremely weird throughout; both Kazuha and (after the first half-hour) Chaewon had little to contribute, and the guests were also clearly out of their depth with this fancy concept. I loved the first investment episode when it came out, but that had more to do with the cast’s hilarious reactions to their wins/losses than the actual thrill of capitalist gain; this time round, all value in its conceit has long depreciated. Thank God for the very amusing relay race in the last five minutes — at least this episode wasn’t completely junk.
Grade: C
MVP: Sakura Miyakawi
(I refuse to embed a video for this episode. Sometimes the people in charge of that account pick the weirdest bits.)
Episode 694/3 March
Guests:
- Part 1 — Dong Hyun Kim, Hong Jin Ho (auditioning for a long-term gig); Sakura, Chaewon and Kazuha (members of girl group Le Sserafim)
- Part 2 — Lee Eun-ji (comedian)
Two-part episodes such as this one are always hard to discuss: not only are the guests different, making a discussion of the episode as a whole difficult, but the vibes are different as well: you can go straight from a light fluffy romp straight into a tense, mysterious thriller. Blatant attempt to ride the Le Sserafim train for a second week notwithstanding, it was still a smart move for the production team to carry on the comedy theme — the hijinks of part one, although not much improved from the last week, flow largely smoothly into the university capers of part two. If anything, my main complaint of the latter hour was that it could so easily have been extended; (mostly) effortless talent like Lee Eun-ji’s deserves a broader canvas than just 58 minutes. Still though, it was a breezy, amusing hour, and kudos to the cast for being undaunted even in the face of such depressing weather.
Grade: C (part one) / B- (part two)
MVP: Yang Se-chan (part one) / Lee Eun-ji (part two)
Episode 695/10 March
Guests: Dong Hyun Kim, Hong Jin Ho (just make them cast members already)
The promo revealing that they would revisit the “Jaesuk talks history” format set off alarm bells in my head: their first attempt last summer genuinely infuriated me, what with an out-of-his-depth Jaesuk droning on about Korean history to a bunch of visibly disinterested cast members, and said cast members trying to liven things up with feeble non-sequiturs. I am happy to report, therefore, that this is a much-improved sequel: Jaesuk sounds less like a mansplaining know-it-all and more like an actual tour guide, while his students were much less afraid to look like idiots — and therefore managed to make a history lesson funny. Of course this format was always going to be hampered by its cultural specificity; if you are not Korean, then this episode may come across as informational overload for you, as it was for me. But at least it showed, once again, that Running Man’s frequent recourse to its own history (even something as recent as this) can still turn a doubtful germ of an idea into a great 90 minutes of entertainment.
Grade: B-
MVP: Dong Hyun Kim
Episode 696/17 March
no guests
Another bottle episode, another series of vignettes where the cast amble into restaurants, engage in some light banter and then move onto the next restaurant. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the “walk and talk” format, and I do like seeing these six funny people interact with each other, but the problem with such episodes is that it relies wholly on the cast’s charisma — and that can fluctuate wildly, as evidenced in the quiet withdrawal of Jihyo and Jungkook (both of whom can be very, very funny when up for it) this week. What’s more, this is our fourth such episode in three months, and it’s obvious that this particular format is fast becoming a crutch — one for which my patience is wearing a little thin.
Grade: C-
MVP: Ji Seokjin
Episode 697/24 March
Guests: Kang Hoon (actor), Hayoung (singer in girl group Apink), Ma Sun-ho (bodybuilder), Jonathan Yimobi (man always on call)
(couldn’t find a decent copy of the entire 100-minute episode anywhere, but have been able to watch about 80 here and there; below are a few thoughts which will be arranged into a paragraph whenever I decide to actually watch the whole thing through)
- All the mentions of football this winter were bound to lead somewhere, so now we have this
- The 2002 World Cup really is beginning to have “England ‘66” vibes for the South Koreans; yes fourth place is an impressive feat but A. it was on home soil and B. surely an inability to build on it in the past 22 years indicates a latent rot
- Poor Jonathan Yiombi, forever picked on by RM as a butt-monkey… but his teammates saying emphatically “you’re Korean” was weirdly heartwarming
- Jaesuk would probably make a more effective coach (fake it till you make it in action once more), but Jongkook is always the more entertaining one to watch
- Carrying on from the above: it irritates me that nobody ever says that much about Jongkook’s innate sense of comedy, his bursts of anger are just exquisitely timed
- They’re lining up Jungsook PD for the main director job, aren’t they…
- Ji Seokjin really has a way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
- Watching football is a moving experience when two elements are present: unpredictability, and close-up glimpses into player personality. The crew does their best with the latter, but sadly the result was never in doubt, and so what we have is just a functional episode
Grade: C+ (tentative)
MVP: Kim Jongkook
Episode 698/31 March
no guests
A statistic: there are more Gen-Xers in the cast of Running Man than there are millennials. There are in fact fewer millennials in the show than when it first started; a schoolmate of mine once derided the show as “Running Uncles”, and that was in 2015. The show has been hit-or-miss (but mostly miss) in trying to catch up to that Zoomer crowd, but there are rare occasions when the cast members manage to take that age gap in stride, and this episode was a very good example: yes these men and Song Jihyo look ridiculous trying to play AR dodgeball and “modernise” their image, but they embrace it to its fullest. From Sechan’s attempts to look sexy, to the fashion consultant’s unsparing advice, to Sookjin’s very clumsy attempts in adjusting to augmented reality, this is a good, solid episode that shows what wonders can unfold when both the cast members and the show stop trying to take themselves too seriously, and just cut loose for a bit.
Grade: B+
MVP: the fashion consultant
Episode 699/7 April
no guests
Let me just say that there was no need for the cast members to go on an eleventh-hour shopping trip: the pantsless outfits may have been an attempt to make them feel awkward, but to be perfectly honest none of them looked tacky; even on HaHa, the mismatched outfit gradually looked like a natural fit. The last-minute twist was an obvious attempt to ratchet up the tension in an episode where there was none: it was obvious that none of the cast would have been embarrassed by their outfits, just as it was obvious that they would never in a million years have gone into the freezing waters at the theme park. What we have, therefore, is a very low-stakes episode, coasting along with a few feeble attempts to keep the audience onboard — and look, even if I’m okay with that, will it work for other viewers?
Grade: C+
MVP: Kim Jongkook (mainly because he really carries his clothes)
Episode 700/14 April
no guests
The concept of the greatest hits is a layered and fraught one. At one level, it is an implicit boast: I have enough hits, you see, to stand out and form a collection of my own. At another, it is a crutch: I am known by these things, and with luck I will be known for more — or perhaps I have peaked and this will be my epitaph. Yet another is an admission of longevity: I have fought for so long in the show business, and here is my struggle, delivered through my work. And a final one is monetary: here are the things you know and love, all killer no filler. Buy them, and you will want for nothing.
All those layers apply to Running Man in this episode. It could be argued, of course, that Running Man had long turned into a programme consisting of nothing BUT greatest hits: in 2024 alone, we’ve seen them do nothing but talk and eat four times, call on the same guests over and over, and even reuse entire episodic concepts from the years before (and if the promo for next week’s show is of any indication, ideas from the MONTH before) — and it’s getting boring. You can only serve up the same stuff so many times before the meal becomes stale and dry; it smacks of lack of originality, a tendency to settle for less. It even smacks of giving up.
And yet. There is no doubt that fourteen years and 700 episodes in, the six remaining cast members are not just here for the paycheck; gone are the days where people accused Jihyo or Sukjin of phoning it in. These six people may grow old, they may grow tired, but on the surface at least, they still commit, and commit hard. And when that happens, so too does the magic: the swing episode was a genuinely uplifting segment, just as the darts episode was a genuinely thrilling moment; none of these would have worked had not these people held each other in heartfelt affection and given it their all. Sure, there are shades of repetition here, and they laid on the togetherness pretty thick, but here’s the thing: it worked.
And then there’s the Yoomes Bond finale. In some ways the return of Jaesuk’s most famous persona on the show is a microcosm of this episode and the show itself: well into his fifties, one might detect a slower gait and a reluctance to run, and there are DEFINITELY traces of exasperation with the format to be spotted here and there (this shit again?). But what I like about Jaesuk is that there is an agility to him that creeps up when his back is against the wall, and once he really got going there was an astonishing thrill, an unspeakable pleasure, at watching the wily old grasshopper at work once more. Despite his feeble protests, it still feels like there is an irrepressible energy in the man — one which reveals itself in the annoying dance moves he insists on showing off every other week — and when channelled well, it can be an absolute delight to watch. There’s a lot of debate to be had about whether Yoo Jaesuk IS Running Man — I certainly don’t think that’s the case, and the man himself would be the last to say so — but in those 35 minutes, he definitely embodied it very well.
So what next for this show? The six of them are still misty-eyed about the future, but I’d be surprised if they actually followed through on any of the promises made during this episode; while I’d love to see 300 more episodes and the return of Kwangsoo (as well as Somin, Gary, Kang Hanna…) I am likely to die of old age or exhaustion before any of that happens, and even that I’m not sure I really want to slog through 450 hours of largely mediocre, reheated material for the rest of the decade. But at least I can look forward to the next hundred, two hundred, even seven hundred episodes with faith that, for now at least, these six people still have so many more hits in them than we might think.
Grade: B+
MVP: Yoo Jae-suk (though I must say that everyone else shone very well this week)
Episode 701/21 April
Guests: Kang Hoon (actor), Eunkwang (singer in boy band BtoB), Ma Sun-ho (bodybuilder), Bae Hye-ji (newscaster), Jonathan Yimobi (seriously, just make him a cast member already), Dong Hyun Kim (ditto)
(since this is practically the same as their first futsal episode, have decided to write my thoughts down in point form again)
- Really? The same idea twice in five weeks?
- Why do away with the recruitment process? That was my favourite part of the last futsal episode; sure the cast is largely unchanged from last time, but couldn’t they have tested the new recruits a little more?
- Exactly what does Dong Hyun Kim do these days? He and Jonathan Yiombi seem frightfully easy to get hold of…
- Didn’t expect Kang Hoon to get a character narrative (so to speak), his thoughts of betrayal and ultimate vindication meant that this episode achieves the rare accomplishment of having a redemption arc — hard to come by these days
- Again, I feel like Jaesuk actually makes for the better coach, but Jongkook once again is the more entertaining one (I laughed so hard at him being sent off)
- Bae Hye-ji may not be a natural artiste, but she immediately knew what was expected of her and rose to meet the occasion — always a good sign
- I wonder if those penalty trickery moves ever work in real life?
- I never expected Jaesuk’s team to win this time either, but the fact that they actually put up a decent fight made this episode better than the last; football is not really my thing (you’ve read my blog), so I was not looking forward to this, but the laughs were more frequent and less forced, so there you go
- Ji Seokjin REALLY has a way of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory
Grade: B-
MVP: Bae Hye-ji
Episode 702/28 April
Guests: Kang Hanna (actress and guest with most appearances), Joo Jung-hyuk (actor)
While I’d love to see 300 more episodes and the return of Kwangsoo (as well as Somin, Gary, Kang Hanna…) I am likely to die of old age or exhaustion before any of that happens.
— me two weeks ago, completely unaware of the recording session that had taken place the very same day
How do you review what is basically your wildest dreams come true?
Back in the halcyon days of 2018/19, there were rumours afoot that one of the female cast members was about to leave Running Man for good. This never got past the gossip stage and both of them stayed on for a while longer, but watching the episodes from that period, it’s not hard to see the groundwork being laid for a replacement: over the course of a few short months, the actress Kang Hanna seemed to drop by every third week or so, an undeclared ninth ranger participating in the cast’s latest hijinks. Possessing both the goofy determination of Jihyo and the quirky girl-next-door charm of Somin, she forged a distinct presence in the show, and won over many viewers including all three members of my family. But then her contracted episodes seem to have run their course, and then she left without a word. We (that is to say, our family) all missed her, but with her acting career taking off, we’d given up all hope of seeing her on RM again.
So imagine how I jumped out of my seat last week when it was announced that she would be returning for another round. I have nothing against any of the well of guests which RM seems to have returned to time and time again this year, but none of them seemed to bring as much energy as Hanna did while throwing herself into yet another task. Clearly somebody in the production team knows this, because they made her the face of an entire episode, and let me tell you what a glorious thing it was to see her chaos (or the chaos she represented) running amok through this week, from the terrible dance moves to the attempts at betrayal to the narration she gave to the camera. It was weird at times, but then again that’s her trademark.
But if this show was all about Hanna it would fail — Running Man is an ensemble show, whatever people say, and the fact is that everybody seemed much more alive than they had in the past few months: they argued with each other, threw themselves into tasks with gusto, and were arsed enough to move and groove along with her. HaHa hasn’t thrown himself around with such abandon for weeks, maybe months; yet here he was, moving like it was 2015 again. Compare the clip above with the episode with Le Sserafim — where notorious dancer Jaesuk literally had to ASK them to cut short the dancing segment — and it’s obvious that everyone here has risen to meet the occasion. Even Jong-hyuk, and the guy hasn’t even been on a variety show before.
For the most part, Hanna’s return is a shrewd business move: promote her and Jong-hyuk’s latest show (a show that isn’t even on SBS), and recall the glory days of 2018, when this show still provided water-cooler moments every week. But then again, part of business is choosing the right people for the right job, knowing what combinations will spark up the most exciting results. They might not be very good at it, but in the return of Kang Hanna, Running Man hit on the perfect combination — and what life it has given this week’s episode.
Grade: A-
MVP: Kang Hanna (please, come back more often)
Episode 703/5 May
(now on a new page!)
Inkpot Shuffles in the Twilight 
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