The 8 Show – K-drama Episode 7 Recap & Review

The Torture

Episode 7 of The 8 Show begins with 5F dreaming that they have all won, patched up and are about to happily leave. It cuts to the prisoners beating up the rest. We then see 5F’s back story as she enters the game all paranoid.

At present, 5F unties 6F who instantly frees 8F and 4F. They get together and beat up the rest of the prisoners before tying them. He also ties 5F and to show his gratitude, he forcefully kisses her. Next, he orders a gun and starts playing Russian Roulette to find out who pulled out his toenails.

He shoots 7F but before he can get to 1F, Jin-su has an idea. 1F can buy the CCTV footage to find the culprit. 8F spends 100 million to get the footage and is ecstatic to see 1F using chloroform on 6F. Meanwhile, 6F is horrified as 1F pulls out his toenails and then pees on his face.

He rushes to kill 1F but 8F tases him. He falls and breaks his back. She reasons that he is too hasty and she doesn’t want the game to end. She unties 5F but makes sure the rest are tied and left in their rooms. She buys the CCTV for all the rooms and is turned on by their pain.

But she soon realises that like her, the game runners are getting bored and she has an idea – sleep deprivation torture for the tied-up participants. She is so delighted by their pain that she starts painting. 5F is numb by the horror as she mechanically takes care of the participants. 4F goes with the flow including cleaning up dog poop when 8F buys a dog.  

Jin-su starts cracking as he imagines that The 8 Show is all in his head and the participants start dancing around him. Meanwhile, 1F tries to win 4F to his side. He apologises for pulling out her tooth but she understands as she too will do anything for money. He grabs onto that as he asks if she wants to move to the 8th floor. She doesn’t believe it is possible and we cut to 1F’s back story at the end of The 8 Show Episode 7.

1F shows up in a clown costume before heading to his floor. He sees his scoreboard and the small room and asks the intercom if he can switch rooms. Turns out he can, for 1 billion won.

The Episode Review

As the penultimate episode, The 8 Show Episode 7 really amps it up with the mind games, violence, torture and secrets. But Jin-su really isn’t bringing the main character energy with all of the plot twists revolving around the others. However, we can chalk this off as an ensemble story with the way most participants have equal contributions to the plot. We do wonder what 1F’s initial game plan was though.

He spends a billion to get 8F and then he is down to 0. How much does he think he can earn when the other participants are tired and want to end the game? He really didn’t think this through, huh? He could have gotten out with 1 billion thanks to 2F’s generosity but he’s ruined all that now, hasn’t he?

Doesn’t seem like 8F is in the mood to end the game any time soon. And how did he know that he had the lowest prize money on the night he joined? It would have made sense if he had asked to switch rooms after everyone learned about the different prize money for each floor.

But the torture feels a little just too extreme making us wonder if Netflix is taking it too far. Sure, we can call it a metaphor and all that jazz with the game runners enjoying these violent acts. However, the prolonged scenes of the assaults and the sleep deprivation torture don’t seem necessary.

We get it, 8F might be a psychopath, she doesn’t feel empathy. The participants are ready to go to extreme lengths when it comes to money. This has been established since Day 1. So how about we reduce the visual display of torture a tad bit? You don’t want to alienate a part of your audience, do you Netflix?