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Review: Busted Season 1 (범인은 바로 너!) (2018)
This series was a lot of fun! The mysteries were written in a way that was engaging for the audience, and lots of work was put into preparing the clues and puzzles. As well, each of the cast members had something entertaining to bring to the table.
I enjoyed myself thoroughly and I am pretty excited to watch the next seasons!
Writing
There was one overarching story, and all of the mysteries in every episode were tangentially related. I really liked the fact that the types of mysteries were different every episode. Sometimes it was a murder mystery, sometimes it was just a challenge to do certain tasks (e.g. transporting Yeon-seok). Because the story wasn't always about murder, that gave rise to the challenges being different as well.
I'm going to be making a lot of comparisons to Who's the Murderer, the Chinese mystery game show, because it is the only other mystery game that I watch lol. Anyway, the writing in Busted was a lot more streamlined than it was in Who's the Murderer, but I actually thought it worked out well. I watched these shows to relax, and I don't mind if the show guides me to where I need to be because I don't want to use my brain when I watch these shows. Who's the Murderer does tend to focus on red herrings, because each player is a suspect, whereas in Busted, the focus isn't so much on who is the culprit, but just, problem solving. The streamlining also allows the cast members to be led to certain clues, which in turn means that the show can spend more money on fewer clues. So the streamlined writing was an asset in this show.
Another thing I wanted to mention was the episode length. Most episodes were around 1.5 hours or less, and I am very happy with that. In Who's the Murderer, the episodes started off being 1.5 hours but are now extended to up to 3 hours, which becomes extremely tedious for viewers if the writing is too dense, which it sometimes is for Who's the Murderer.
So overall, I am happy with the writing for this show.
Format
The format of this show was very loose. It wasn't like Who's the Murderer, which had a very rigid set of steps and tasks.
Sometimes the detectives were tasked with smaller mysteries, where clues were available in a small area. Sometimes, they had to go all around town looking for leads. Of course, this was made possible because of the scale of production, as opposed to shows like Who's the Murderer that is usually confined to a warehouse.
A lot of the challenges in this show aren't really typical of a murder mystery. Most murder mysteries will not include weird contraptions lol. But I didn't mind that, because they were fun. There are less logic puzzles and less realistic clues, and a lot of simple brainy puzzles, and that's fine. It helped keep the mood of the show light and fun.
In Who's the Murderer, the players are supposed to be tricking each other. This is not the case for Busted. Most of the time, the players work together, and I really like that teamwork feel. Even in the case where the players were supposed to work against each other, they still did a lot of teamwork together, and it helped the story move faster so we didn't spend a ton of time just watching the players brainstorm.
I think the loose format of the show made it feel a lot more like a variety show or a game show rather than something more serious (like an "assignment"), if that makes sense. The loose format also kept things fresh for the audience, and it allowed the cast members to shine in their own ways, since they had different strengths.
Production
As mentioned, this show seems to have a lot of money put into it, as clues are hidden in different locations, and huge contraptions are made for the puzzles. Of course I can appreciate it.
In this show, I am guessing that the players are given clues so that they move in the right direction, because sometimes the clues are not intuitive XD But I am fine with this. As I mentioned, I don't mind when the story is a little streamlined because this is supposed to be a fun show for relaxing.
Episodes
It took me a bit of time to get used to the format, because there wasn't really one. The episodes were really just a set of smaller challenges.
We had guest characters show up often, and I thought they were fun because they usually kept in-character.
There was that one episode where our detectives were up against another detective group. I did struggle to remember all of the detectives on the rival team, so I wonder if it might have been better to introduce a rival team another way. Maybe they could have a smaller rival team, or maybe we could split up our detectives into two teams and have them face off. Or maybe the show could introduce these rival detectives one by one and then have them show up later as a collective unit, at which point, we would have at least had some recollection of them. I'm just nitpicking though. I still had a lot of fun watching that episode.
Cast
We had a variety of personalities in our group of detectives. We had more serious detectives like Jaesuk, Minyoung, and Jaewook. We had the comic relief members, Kwangsoo and Jongmin. And we had the young junior detectives Sehun and Seong. Before I started this show, I really only knew Sehun and Jaesuk, but over the course of the show, I got to know all of them and enjoyed what they brought to the table.
Sometimes, Kwangsoo and Jongmin did play up the gags, but I appreciated that they did also try to brainstorm with the cases lol.
We also had some recurring characters, like Yeonseok and K, though Yeonseok's character was more in line with the detectives (more casual), whereas K as well as the other NPCs were always in-character.
Admittedly I love the teamwork dynamic that was developed over the course of the show. By the end, I really felt like they were a family uwu.
Overall
This was a lot of fun. I like the challenges. I thought the overarching theme was fun. I thought the cast had good chemistry together. I'm really looking forward to next season!
I enjoyed myself thoroughly and I am pretty excited to watch the next seasons!
Writing
There was one overarching story, and all of the mysteries in every episode were tangentially related. I really liked the fact that the types of mysteries were different every episode. Sometimes it was a murder mystery, sometimes it was just a challenge to do certain tasks (e.g. transporting Yeon-seok). Because the story wasn't always about murder, that gave rise to the challenges being different as well.
I'm going to be making a lot of comparisons to Who's the Murderer, the Chinese mystery game show, because it is the only other mystery game that I watch lol. Anyway, the writing in Busted was a lot more streamlined than it was in Who's the Murderer, but I actually thought it worked out well. I watched these shows to relax, and I don't mind if the show guides me to where I need to be because I don't want to use my brain when I watch these shows. Who's the Murderer does tend to focus on red herrings, because each player is a suspect, whereas in Busted, the focus isn't so much on who is the culprit, but just, problem solving. The streamlining also allows the cast members to be led to certain clues, which in turn means that the show can spend more money on fewer clues. So the streamlined writing was an asset in this show.
Another thing I wanted to mention was the episode length. Most episodes were around 1.5 hours or less, and I am very happy with that. In Who's the Murderer, the episodes started off being 1.5 hours but are now extended to up to 3 hours, which becomes extremely tedious for viewers if the writing is too dense, which it sometimes is for Who's the Murderer.
So overall, I am happy with the writing for this show.
Format
The format of this show was very loose. It wasn't like Who's the Murderer, which had a very rigid set of steps and tasks.
Sometimes the detectives were tasked with smaller mysteries, where clues were available in a small area. Sometimes, they had to go all around town looking for leads. Of course, this was made possible because of the scale of production, as opposed to shows like Who's the Murderer that is usually confined to a warehouse.
A lot of the challenges in this show aren't really typical of a murder mystery. Most murder mysteries will not include weird contraptions lol. But I didn't mind that, because they were fun. There are less logic puzzles and less realistic clues, and a lot of simple brainy puzzles, and that's fine. It helped keep the mood of the show light and fun.
In Who's the Murderer, the players are supposed to be tricking each other. This is not the case for Busted. Most of the time, the players work together, and I really like that teamwork feel. Even in the case where the players were supposed to work against each other, they still did a lot of teamwork together, and it helped the story move faster so we didn't spend a ton of time just watching the players brainstorm.
I think the loose format of the show made it feel a lot more like a variety show or a game show rather than something more serious (like an "assignment"), if that makes sense. The loose format also kept things fresh for the audience, and it allowed the cast members to shine in their own ways, since they had different strengths.
Production
As mentioned, this show seems to have a lot of money put into it, as clues are hidden in different locations, and huge contraptions are made for the puzzles. Of course I can appreciate it.
In this show, I am guessing that the players are given clues so that they move in the right direction, because sometimes the clues are not intuitive XD But I am fine with this. As I mentioned, I don't mind when the story is a little streamlined because this is supposed to be a fun show for relaxing.
Episodes
It took me a bit of time to get used to the format, because there wasn't really one. The episodes were really just a set of smaller challenges.
We had guest characters show up often, and I thought they were fun because they usually kept in-character.
There was that one episode where our detectives were up against another detective group. I did struggle to remember all of the detectives on the rival team, so I wonder if it might have been better to introduce a rival team another way. Maybe they could have a smaller rival team, or maybe we could split up our detectives into two teams and have them face off. Or maybe the show could introduce these rival detectives one by one and then have them show up later as a collective unit, at which point, we would have at least had some recollection of them. I'm just nitpicking though. I still had a lot of fun watching that episode.
Cast
We had a variety of personalities in our group of detectives. We had more serious detectives like Jaesuk, Minyoung, and Jaewook. We had the comic relief members, Kwangsoo and Jongmin. And we had the young junior detectives Sehun and Seong. Before I started this show, I really only knew Sehun and Jaesuk, but over the course of the show, I got to know all of them and enjoyed what they brought to the table.
Sometimes, Kwangsoo and Jongmin did play up the gags, but I appreciated that they did also try to brainstorm with the cases lol.
We also had some recurring characters, like Yeonseok and K, though Yeonseok's character was more in line with the detectives (more casual), whereas K as well as the other NPCs were always in-character.
Admittedly I love the teamwork dynamic that was developed over the course of the show. By the end, I really felt like they were a family uwu.
Overall
This was a lot of fun. I like the challenges. I thought the overarching theme was fun. I thought the cast had good chemistry together. I'm really looking forward to next season!