I read on twitter that these kids will probably debut sometimes around Feb - March next year which is... too long from now! I'm so impatient and unfamiliar with K-Pop world. When the show first aired/announced I thought the debut is coming soon after. They had the first MV out, too. Only now that I realized I have to go through this whole show first (IDEK how many eps there are, wiki says 10), then they'll debut once they wrapped everything up. I... don't know if I could survive with that long with so little contents. I've been listening to Hellevator on repeat for a while now and I'm scared that this will ruin the song for me.

Anyway, with the debut being so far away, I kinda lost my enthusiasm... I still enjoy the show, just not as ~hyped as before. Now I get why they put in filler plots like playing at the game center. It's kind of sad being in such a small fandom with limited resources and contents, I need them to debut ASAP! Also, with the whole country's attention pulled to survival shows, it seems that SKids isn't gaining as much popularity as I thought it would. JYP is one of the big 3, surely they have the power? Their show is at 11 PM on a weekday, that's very late for a show that supposed to be marketed to school girls (I mean the members' average age is 17.8, who else are they targeting?). I don't know about Sixteen at all, but Twice is such a successful product of a survival show I wish the boys would've gotten the same attention and success. Also also, it is mentioned that this is a non-elimination show which actually kind of ... IDK hampered the excitement even more? In a "Oh, they're going to debut anyway so I don't have to watch the show, I'll just wait and see their debut and decide later whether I want to support them or not" kind of way. Yes it's still good to build the hype and get people to know the kids, but I'm not sure how effective the show is. I think most young girls in South Korea are still stuck on Wanna One, I see so many foreign fans instead of Korean ones in various platforms. I don't watch a lot of shows or follow a lot of groups so I don't know how the boys' talents & personalities appeal to the viewers. But they're okay, great talent, nice visuals, a little bit awkward but who's not when they're just debuting.

Anyway, in this episode I enjoy watching the critics from JYP part. JYP asked about their experiences, give suggestions, and changed their parts. The playful part was... okay? They cute. My favorite would be Felix. The MV shooting part is nice as well.

I was super excited that they FINALLY released Hellevator song. I've been wanting to buy it since the MV was out, I ripped the song off of YouTube simply because there is no other choice. It's probably part of a media play to see how popular the song is, people kept the MV on loop and it reached 7M views before the official release. I personally like the color version of that scene with Hellevator written on it compared to the black and white one on the official release. Not everything dark has to be monochrome, kids.

I just mentioned about non-elimination thing but the fandom is currently under some kind of fear that there's possibilities of elimination. Stray kids were seen in public recording their show two times and Minho was missing in both occasions. I don't know how to feel about this, he could be sick and just resting, he could be deemed unfit for the group, he could be a plot twist to the show to apply mental pressure on the boys, he could be whatever. He's still in all other official medias of them (VLives, clips, group photos, naver Thursday Kids posts, etc.). I guess at this point we just don't know.

To be completely honest I'm in favor of weeding out the weak links before debut. They need to be a solid group! Weak links would make them look amateur, just like JYP said. A shock therapy might work to push them further.