Running Man: Episode 270

by gummimochi

Our cast is thrown for a loop this week when they find themselves tangled up in a game of someone else’s making. Every room in this place holds unique surprises and mysteries, some of which will leave them baffled while others will make them want to pull their hair out in frustration. Will they be able to uncover the secret to this seemingly endless maze or be trapped and never see the light of day again?

EPISODE 270. Broadcast on October 25, 2015.

We start this episode off with the cast enjoying a lavish meal, though understandably (and rightfully, given the preview) suspicious as to why they’re being treated to one. Kwang-soo asks if they’re in the middle of a mission right now, and Suk-jin says he feels like a calf being fattened up before slaughter.

A masked man enters bearing an invitation to a special party; there’s a limousine waiting to take them there.

Nothing good can come out of a place with a hanging “R Escape” banner, but for now, we see Haha step cautiously into the vast space. Once he sits in the chair, another masked figure welcomes him to Mission Town.

Haha is posed with an initial question: Whom does he like more—Michael Jordan or Bob Marley? For a guy who loves basketball and reggae, it’s like asking him to choose if he likes Mom or Dad better.

No one else’s questions are any easier, like Suk-jin being asked whether he likes being called Big Nose Hyung or Race Starter. Or Gary to choose between his songs. Or Jong-kook to choose between two types of exercises.

I especially love Kwang-soo’s (“Would you rather betray or take vengeance against your cast members?”) and Ji-hyo’s (“Do you like sleeping in more or taking a nap?”). One by one, they give their answers.

Haha, for instance, chooses Bob Marley and directed to the room to the right, where he gasps at the giant couch… and the rest of the gigantic furniture. Suk-jin—I mean, Big Nose Hyung heads to the room to the left, filled with tiny furniture.

Jong-kook sits on the tiny chair, which squeaks under his weight. In the other room, there’s plenty of room on the couch for Ji-hyo, Gary, and Haha. Both rooms bear signs of times from around the world, but Jong-kook points out that the minutes are all different.

Jae-suk says the sign bears no significance, and when asked why he thinks that, he fires back, “I don’t know!”

Once Kwang-soo joins them in the smaller room, the guys are given their mission: all of them must knock out all the blue marbles with the red one within 60 seconds per turn. In the giant room, the trio is given a similar mission, where they’ll try to knock the exercise balls out of the space together.

So apparently marbles was an overstatement because the guys are dealing with teeny BB pellets instead. Kwang-soo is up first, and it quickly becomes apparent that aim no easy thing to master here.

He doesn’t get it, and then Jong-kook gets pissy that the hyungs didn’t help out with replenishing Kwang-soo’s supply of pellets. The hyungs jump to pull the age card over him, but it’s Suk-jin who ends up having to collect the rogue pellets.

Even in this high-stress situation, hearing the chair squeak whenever someone sits on one just cracks me up. Jae-suk only has one more pellet to knock out, but there’s only ten seconds to spare and everyone’s yelling at him… and he takes his rage out on the tiny spheres.

The confined space is undoubtedly putting them all on edge, and now every squeak makes their blood boil. Tension runs high in the other room too, since they must also keep their red balls within the space.

Haha’s nagging adds to Gary’s building migraine until he finally asks if wants to get flicked on the forehead. The smaller room is strewn with pellets and remarks that wound each other’s pride.

Both Gary and Ji-hyo roll their balls into the space, and Haha’s inches out then back into the space. Despite succeeding at their mission, they’re told that only one of them can leave this space per successful attempt.

Feeling antsy, the Monday Couple and Haha play another game to who gets to leave first: whoever rolls their ball closest to the line wins. Haha wins, and chooses the door to the right.

However, that door only leads to another space where he must choose between two doors yet again. He chooses the one in front of him, which opens up to a maze he must crawl his way through.

Back in the smaller room, Kwang-soo and Jong-kook are the only ones who have yet to succeed. The hyungs egg Kwang-soo on about his most recent movie Mutant, but that’s enough for him to succeed. Jong-kook does too, which is when the guys are shown the same message: only one of them can leave per complete successful attempt.

When Suk-jin asks why they have to listen to the game’s grandmaster, Jong-kook replies because that’s the mission. Kwang-soo: “If you’re not going to listen to him, you may as well go home.”

We see Ji-hyo take the other door, which leads to a life-size maze (vs. the half-size Haha is subject to crawl through). Suk-jin has to traverse that same maze, but then stumbles across a hidden door that leads to yet another maze full of doors.

Something makes Ji-hyo jump, then someone reaches out to grab her moments later. Her screams can be heard in the next room, and Suk-jin finds himself back in the first maze. Every turn leads seemingly nowhere, and then a mysterious figure grabs him too. What the?

At one point, Jae-suk loses his VJ Kwon-ryul within the door maze, then finds himself back in the larger maze. He hears Gary’s voice nearby, but soon they’re both taken.

Back in the smaller room, Jong-kook and Kwang-soo are busy trying to throw pellets into a teensy container. Once they succeed, Jong-kook argues that he should leave first because he technically succeeded before Kwang-soo did.

It doesn’t matter if they play rock-paper-scissors for it because Jong-kook beats him anyway. Peeved, Kwang-soo throws pellets at him and makes a move to throw a pitcher at him too.

Jong-kook makes his way through the maze, prattling on about how one must never take the obvious route. Too bad that there’s a masked shadow or two on his tail that quickly grab him and tear off him nametag.

Jong-kook is led to where the others are, waiting for their next turn. In order to escape this room, the dice must land on the same number. If not, they must wait ten minutes before trying again.

When Kwang-soo finally joins them, Ji-hyo says she believes that one of them may have constructed this maze. Suk-jin and Haha are free to leave, but neither can shake off the uneasy feeling while moving on to the next room.

And for good reason too, because one of the masked men gives chase. Hearing his screams, Haha rushes for the opposite door, back into the first maze. He arrives at a door… which leads back to the big room.

But that’s not all—the screen flickers on with another mission. Oh crap, he has to escape this room all over again? Haha hollers, “I was here four hours ago!”

He has no choice but to complete the mission — pop a balloon by knocking over a domino of ten books within 100 seconds — and hurries to move the balloon under the last book… and it simply bounces on it without a pop. LOL.

It’s only been a few hours, but it seriously looks like Haha’s about to crack. A little later when the others are free to move too, Ji-hyo climbs on Kwang-soo’s shoulders to get a better view.

She sees an exit, plus a couple of masked hunters headed their way. Jae-suk jumps up to get a look too, but that’s when he meets the gaze of a pair of hunters. Time to run!

Gary and Kwang-soo head for the smaller maze, but the hunters are on their tail. Ji-hyo and Jae-suk waited in a corner with bated breath until the shadows move on, then head for the mini maze as well.

They catch up with Jong-kook in the octagon maze, but there are hunters afoot here too. We see Haha get caught by the masked men too, who show no mercy for the guy who JUST escaped the first room again.

The bird’s-eye view of the chase makes it all more heart-pounding, and soon the Monday Coupleis taken out too. Stuck in the neutral zone again, Suk-jin says that whoever built this maze is a psycho.

He’s also first to throw the die, which Jae-suk kicks back up into the air. It lands on a dud, and Jae-suk says he was trying to kick it over—yunno, for the entertainment value. Jong-kook and Kwang-soo get to leave first, and the latter uses his height to his advantage to peer over the walls.

Jae-suk gets another kick in when it’s Suk-jin’s turn to throw the die again. This time it flies over the wall. HA.

While Jong-kook makes sure to check out every corner, Kwang-soo wanders through the maze aimlessly… and right in front of a hunter. But this time, the masked hunter does nothing and Kwang-soo shushes him. Could it be…

We rewind the clocks to when Kwang-soo was left all by his lonesome in the smaller room. He had exited through a different door, then smiled to the camera: “This is fun.” Innnterrresting.

One week earlier. Kwang-soo had called for a meeting with the PD, and had said that the recent “Happy Kwang-soo Day” special was particularly memorable. It was for us all, man.

Remember how Kwang-soo vowed to get his revenge? He’s here now to sort-of-not-really air out his resentment, especially how people keep ragging on him about his looks. Jong-kook may have said that he looked old, but Haha was the one who called him ugly outright.

It’s been five years for crying out loud, and he feels ridiculous for even bringing it up. Not only that, Ji-hyo’s always telling him not to talk to her, and Jae-suk always likes pointing out how much it annoys him whenever the spotlight’s on Kwang-soo.

This plan is to release all that pain, treat all those wounds, and overcome the hardships he’s faced over the years. Kwang-soo’s idea was to build an intricate maze with the help of the Running Man set designer. Aha, and the maze of doors was Kwang-soo’s idea.

Not only is it funny watching Kwang-soo get lost in said maze, but the set designer does too. There’s an upside-down room we haven’t seen come into play yet in this episode.

Kwang-soo had thought of everything from the small to the big room to even the half-maze because he knows what annoys his fellow cast members. He had made mention of a secret door and a room so he could monitor the cast as well. There was only one more thing he needed: What must the others do in order to win?

Kwang-soo will win if he can lure the other members into the final room before him. On the flipside, he’ll lose if the others don’t get to the final room or if the others discover an arm band or ankle bracelet on his person.

With that, Kwang-soo had transformed into the grandmaster. He had worried that no disguise would be able to do the trick (“Because even if I wear a fish head, [people can still tell] that it’s me”) but it’s apparent that the crew had successfully masked his voice.

But then it was just him and Jae-suk in the limousine, and Jae-suk had thought it weird that Kwang-soo would be the last to enter the building. “Are you a spy?”

He had laughed it off, and when Jae-suk had left, he had promptly scolded the crew for being so obvious from the start. The suspicion hadn’t ended there because Suk-jin and Jong-kook had accused him of designing the maze when they were in the smaller room.

We catch up to the recent past, where Kwang-soo leaves the maze through the secret door. He had ran around the entire maze to enter his surveillance room with the password “Asia Prince.” Hee.

From his comfy chair, Kwang-soo sat back and watched the others run through his web of games. At one point, he had said that the others have been at this for hours and none of them have suspected a thing. “Are they all dumb?”

In its own way, it’s pretty entertaining watching Kwang-soo watch the others, pointing at them for going the wrong way, laughing when they get caught by his masked hunters, all while happily eating a muffin.

When the time had come for him to join the others, he let out a scream and re-entered the maze looking for hunters. Once he did, he kept up the act until he joined everyone in the neutral zone.

In that room, Jae-suk had said he knows who the architect is… then grabbed Haha. Suk-jin had spit out his “the guy is a psycho” comment, and later the entire group is back in the maze.

Gary wonders if they have to rip off some nametags, which gets all of them thinking: What if there’s a clue hidden beneath the masked hunters’ nametags? They play a round of rock-paper-scissors, and if luck would have it, Kwang-soo gets to be the one hunting down the hunters.

Just then, they’re met with a pair of hunters, and Kwang-soo is reluctant to tear their nametags off. Once the hunter is cornered, Ji-hyo rips off his nametag, which reveals a clue.

In that earlier conversation with the PD, Kwang-soo had agreed to whatever terms the staff would come up with to level the playing field. Looks like this is it—beneath the hunters’ nametags, the collective hints would read “Lee Kwang-soo’s wrist.”

Now the tables have turned with the cast looking for the hunters. When the group stumbles upon the big room, they lock Jae-suk inside. They also find Haha in the smaller room, and then Jong-kook pushes Kwang-soo inside.

Suk-jin gets shoved inside too, and the Easy Brothers inform Haha about the hint. They can’t seem to shake off the feeling that the times have something to do with it too. They’d be right because the first and last times resemble a “k” and “s”. Oho.

Not only that, there are clues pointing to Kwang-soo’s name everywhere. There are four of them in the big room, and they all stare at the sign, trying to figure it out. Gary pops in to say that the “mok” hint they found could point to a creature with a long neck (mok) and the first and last times resemble Hangul characters.

Soon, they start to wonder that a maze of this scale needs a designer and that Kwang-soo vowed to take revenge on them. And then Jong-kook says Kwang-soo might be wearing a band.

Jong-kook is the first to leave the first time they succeed, willing to wait for a couple more people before going masked cape hunting. Kwang-soo tries to grab Haha when he tries to escape first, but fails.

Jong-kook tries to break this situation down logically with Jae-suk when he enters the field. But that’s when a group of hunters approach and the two try to fight them off in the corner. Once the scuffle ends, Jae-suk gets his nametag ripped off, but Jong-kook has taken down one of the hunters as well.

Looking at “soo“, Jong-kook thinks the clues correspond to the days of the week (soo-yo-il is Wednesday and mok-yo-il is Thursday). Gary argues that it’s the “soo” in Kwang-soo’s name. Pair the weird times and all the books about a “prince”, Gary yelps, “Asia Prince!”

Speaking of whom, Kwang-soo can hear their mutterings from inside the small and cramped room. He runs back to his surveillance room before heading back out to join the rest. In the maze, Haha places a firm grip on Kwang-soo’s arm. Uh oh.

Unfortunately for Haha, he can’t feel a thing (since Kwang-soo has that band tightly wrapped around his arm) but still inspects Kwang-soo. They traverse through the octagon maze until Haha finally worms his way through to the final door.

One by one, they enter the last room… except Kwang-soo, who hangs by the door. He resists when Gary tries pushing him inside, which stirs even more suspicion. Both Haha and Gary attempt to push him inside, and Kwang-soo struggles against their grip.

Slowly but surely, the guys pull him inside and sealing his loss. Gary regales the others on how he figured everything out as soon as their first hint, adding that Kwang-soo is surprisingly strong.

Aggravated, Kwang-soo says his sweet victory was at hand up until the final few moments when he just couldn’t keep it together. Kwang-soo: “I put everything together, and yet I’m the one left most irritated.”

Upon hearing that his goal was to stress them out, the others agree that he completely succeeded in that area. Since Kwang-soo failed in his own plan, he’ll be the one receiving punishment. LOL, as if this day couldn’t get any worse. Caption: You asked that we make it fair…

As they walk outside the maze to deliver Kwang-soo’s punishment, Gary apologizes for figuring everything out. Kwang-soo: “I had no idea that you’d be the one to figure it out.” Kwang-soo also shows the cast his surveillance room, saying defensively that he wasn’t the one who came up with the password.

Now it’s time for Kwang-soo to crawl his way to his noona and hyungs who let him know whenever he makes a wrong turn. Once he makes it to the other end, Kwang-soo gives up his forehead to be used as a makeshift clapperboard and end the shoot.

He’s told to count to three, and Kwang-soo calls out: “One, two–” SLAP.

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