The 8 Show – K-drama Episode 4 Recap & Review

The King

Episode 4 of The 8 Show begins with 4F’s back story. She is bad at making decisions as she picks 8 before going with 4. In her room, she struggles with what to buy and keeps writing affirmations on how she can keep going.

At present, everyone struggles due to the lack of food. But they get more time as the audience enjoys their misery. 4F has low blood sugar and is barely conscious while 5F starts hallucinating. 2F wants to end the game but 1F starts begging as he is as good as dead without the 1 billion. Even Jin-su realises he cannot face the loan sharks without the 900 million won and agrees to keep the poop. 4F offers to take half as she too didn’t secure much time with her talent show. 

7F takes one for the team and goes to explain but 8F easily agrees. All she wants is to buy clothes with the money she secured by withholding the food. Everyone bends over backwards to please her but 7F thinks it is a good deal as she isn’t thinking of worse ways to make them suffer.

1F and 2F graciously refuse to send their waste to Jin-su but he is overwhelmed by the rest as he wonders if 4F is even taking her share. Turns out she isn’t. 

Meanwhile, 8F has everyone playing King to entertain her and extend the time. They have to pick numbers anonymously at random. The one who gets selected as King asks two numbers to do a dare. 

It keeps getting wilder till 8F dares 2F and Jin-su to make out. She refuses and 8F changes the dare to 2F fighting 6F. The fight begins and they all realise that 2F is a trained fighter and 6F has no chance. That is till 2F’s injured hand from her breaking the tiles in her talent show worsens when she throws a wrong punch. 

6F gets his chance and beats her to a pulp. 8F refuses to stop him unless 2F surrenders but she cannot speak anymore. The men stop 6F who rejoices that he has secured them multiple days. 

To prevent more violence, 4F comes up with an out. If someone wants to skip their dare, they can get tased as a punishment. Following this new rule, Jin-su is dared to grope 5F under her shirt. He is conflicted before he chooses the taser. But he not only blacks out, he pees himself. However, it secures him even more hours than 6F beating 2F.

A total of 30 days have passed since Day 1. The King alternates between 8F and 4F. If 6F is selected for a dare he almost always wins. The losers are almost always Jin-su or 2F. Finally, 1F figures that the game is rigged. For example, in the coin toss, 4F can feel heads or tails with her palm because it is a heavily embossed coin. So she just flips to the side 6F calls. Angered, 1F, 2F and Jin-su tell 7F their theory. 

7F anyway knew that 4F and 8F were picking the King ball by making it sticky with acetone. He catches 4F one day and tells her to play fair so no one catches her. 

The next day, 1F pulls the King and dares 7F and 8F to a coin toss. He also asks 4F to use the back of the hand to catch the coin (that way she can’t flip her hand to the side 8F calls). Jin-su feels like it is karma when 8F loses. At the end of The 8 Show Episode 4, before 7F can tase 8F, 6F kicks him and tases him as he declares it is time for a plot twist.

The Episode Review

And that ladies and gentlemen is how you use all the usual tropes to create a plot twist that viewers did not see coming. Sure, we knew that there would be one and the signs have always pointed towards 6F but this is straight-up going to cause anarchy in the tense society the participants had created. And 6F rightly says it is time for a plot twist as it is The 8 Show Episode 4, the mid-point of the K-drama. 8F herself partakes in a lot of wild things but she never does anything that can truly endanger her.

4F is also an open book as we see her lying about sharing the waste and then teaming up with 8F and 6F. The same guys who almost let her have a seizure and starve. She will do anything to make her affirmations come true even if it means cheating.

But what is 7F’s game? We can reason that he is being logical when he voted for Jin-su as he had rightly lost the talent show. But why is he playing both sides? He is very much giving Squid Game’s Cho Sang-woo who graduated from SNU. Sorry, we really can’t help but see the parallels.