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📝 ETR DECODER
📺 TITLE: Agents of Mystery
📱 NETWORK: Netflix
📅 RELEASE DATE: June 18, 2024
🎬 GENRE: Escape Room, Detective, Adventure
🗣️ LANGUAGE: Korean (English CC and Dub)
🕒 RUNNING TIME: 6 Episodes/ 45-Mins each (Split over 2 scenarios)
⚠️ ADVISORY: TV-14 (may not be suitable for ages under 14)
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📖 PREMISE
I always thought escape rooms would make for good reality TV. Short of playing the games - which we can’t always do - they would be fun to follow along. If detective and mystery shows are popular, then why not mystery games, as a further evolution of the art-form of the reality show idea. "Agents of Mystery" is kind of an experiment, with respect to the West, which although it is fairly escape room hungry, is almost completely oblivious to the Jubensha craze which is in full swing in the East. Escape rooms as shows have been tried to some degree over here, particularly on Youtube, but they've never fully caught on and became a TV thing. Well maybe that will change with this global export by Netflix, which has managed to do a pretty good job at creating a bonafide escape room show that might attract itself to Western audiences.
And more than a simple escape room show, it's really about creating a novel experience, adventure and camaraderie in the face of great tests of courage and intelligence. So it answers one of my most recurring fantasies since when I was a young lad - one which I think is universally also your fantasy, as escape room-ists - that is the never-ending desire to gather your friends and set off on some great adventure.
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In this case the characters are a team of B-list Korean celebrities who become pseudo X-Files style agents, working together to investigate the strange and paranormal, or just downright evil, cases. They work for some kind of agency - the name is not important, nor do I remember it - acting for the good of mankind, of course, and operating from their secretive underground base, where they are somehow able to teleport to any such identified place of interest. Because urgency is a crucial component of the challenge of doing an escape room, they have but a handful of precious hours to resolve their mystery before the teleportation portal closes, and they are lost in TV limbo land forever. They can bring little, but their wits, a few minimal technological gadgets, and the odd jumpsuits - a hybrid of military air force and house painter - that the agency has provided as their official uniform.
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Ok, now for some sociological commentary on why the attempts at creating an escape room show have failed to catch on in the West. I remember watching bits - because that's all I could really stomach - of NBC's "Celebrity Escape Room" charity special hosted by Jack Black being played by his A-list friends, and despite the gorgeous and ingenious sets, the overall experience was somewhat, well, nauseating (ok, it wasn't that bad, they were just a bit annoying at times, and it didn't really work). What was so wrong about it? Well for some reason when they do this with NA celebrities, their compulsion to be continuously entertaining ruins the show. They get in the way of the game, in fact it usually kind of falls by the wayside in the face of their own narcissistic self promotion and attention grabbing, made even more cringey by the fact that the escape room itself was heavily geared as a biography to their lives, so that they had something to make material out of, as if the game in itself was too boring to be the central focus of the show. By getting in the way of the game, they got in the way of the viewer, because they didn't understand that they were stopping the watcher from playing along with them, but instead were engrossed with communicating things like what a “spaz” Lisa Kudrow was in high school.
Korean television in contrast (and by this I mean "Agents of Mystery" and the one other Korean show I've watched, "Singles Inferno", a show that really grew on me) can be at times painfully banal and subdued - and I will readily admit this might be because the nuances are lost in translation - which I can only think is marred by a kind of communal self policing that promotes reserve and self restraint, that is opposite the NA entertainment ideal of compulsively selling yourself and fighting for total screen time domination, as a way into the heart of the audience. We want to see crazy people doing crazy things, or why are we watching television in the first place, after all. In "Singles Inferno", you never even see the players come close to kissing, in a NA production “twerking” is basically a compulsory form of introduction.
And this is why the Korea squad works so well in a escape room reality show, because although they may lack the obnoxiousness and at times flair of their NA counterparts, they also have a great earnestness, a sincerity of heart, they aren't overly self-conscious self promoters, and although the group can be self limiting they also have a great sense of coming together and of camaraderie that is refreshing when compared to the general narcissism of NA reality show players. They are for lack of a better word, very cute and endearing to watch. On top of this they are really good sports about not breaking the 4th and 5th wall, and keeping the game pure for the audience, whether they consciously understand this or whether it's a coaching of the director/producer, or not.
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✍️ REVIEW
Ok, enough with the meta analysis, is the show worth watching? Yes, I think it's pretty entertaining, although admittedly maybe I'm more attracted to the idea and possibilities of the show than this particular iteration itself. That being said, the show has a good little group of players who are fun to watch, with good chemistry, funny, good natured, and a great sense of communally pulling together. Edgy they are not, but they are still the kind of people you slowly get attached to. The scenarios themselves are well thought out narrative-wise, serious enough to raise your heart rate, and smart enough to keep you thinking, with a good balance between linearity and coherence balanced against open world-ness and multiple possibilities of approach. It's extremely well paced as well, giving the viewer time to play along with the characters, which is an all important part of the fun, and something again that in NA versions they often fail to be conscious of. I was surprised by how impressive the sets were, generally speaking, when compared to other top tier escape rooms that I've done. They are quite expansive and detailed, and honestly, in ways, approaches the ingenuity of the puzzle design of Terpecas best, though it leans a bit too much towards the classic abstract escape room puzzle. There's also some great mimetic puzzles, as well as some really genius ones. The live actors are pretty good too, which is often the X-factor which really distinguishes top tier escape rooms.
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🏹 TAKE A SHOT?
I really hope they continue the series, and that the format sticks and shows like this catch on, which is what I think they are hoping to do if this run proves successful viewer wise. Just as with escape rooms, the genre is just coming into its own, as we see it transform from escape rooms and puzzles, to much more dramatic and mimetic scenarios based around simulating an experience as opposed to simple puzzle solving. I think the next transition should be into horror, as it both amps up the drama, as well as to further challenge the players' courage and cohesion. Think "Saw", though obviously not as insane. Horror is a good bridge to further dramatic possibilities, and to push the art-form forward we need ever more intense and mind bending scenarios, as well as scenarios that create more authentically dramatic moments. The biggest knock against the show is that the Korean characters are not relatable nor interesting enough, but I think they actually set the proper tone for how players should approach these games. If they can keep this in mind, while adding the entertainment sensibilities and popular cultural backgrounds of NA players, then I think it would be a perfect fit for the western market. Maybe they turn it into a competition with teams. Imagine if they brought together some of the most creative escape room minds to make the rooms, then we would have escape room creator celebrities - from the mind of!…It's a well done production, so go have some fun and watch it, and be happy that this is one more step in escape rooms becoming mainstream.
(If you do decide to watch this show, give us a shoutout or tag us on social media so we know you heard it from "ESCAPETHEROOMers"!)
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