This series amounts to an 8 episode advertisement for a new global K-Pop band. The documentary makers retain some integrity for not shying away completely from the cruelty of the process the girls were put through, but ultimately they seem to have made several editorial decisions intended to soften those cruel edges.
The filmmakers can't be blamed for the awful management of the project at the heart of the show, but you do detect a deliberate decision to refrain from tarnishing the image of HYBE and Geffen Records too much (the music megacorps behind what can only be describe as an extended theatre of cruelty performance), lest Netflix not be invited back for another season.
The show follows an international group of very young women (14-21), as they're put through a two year training camp for what they think will be an internal selection process by the record label to create a new 'global' k-pop group, only to discover that they've signed up to a 'survivor show' at the end of it to decide the final members of the band. A 'survivor show' is the K-Pop version of the old TV pop talent shows from the west like 'Popstars' franchise - but conspicously more sinister.
Many of the girls come from clearly disenfranchised backgrounds (including one girl who is a refugee), however little is made of this by the producers, who give everyone's backstory a few glossy unsentimental minutes. Only one of the girls gets a huge amount of backstory - and even then it's all very superficial.
Nothing is explained in regards to income for the girls, we don't know if they're being paid during this years long process (some of the girls mention having no money as they pack their hopes and dreams into suitcases after being ejected from the program).
We also never linger over what these very young girls are giving up to be here, one girl mentions taking her place as a trainee has prevented her from graduating high school - but this is treated as nothing more than a funny anecdote, and no further enquiries are made.
Equally, a discussion between the girls about being away from home - in which one girl admits not being able to speak to her family for weeks - simply drifts by onscreen, unexplored.
Perhaps the most obvious of these attempts to shield HYBE and Geffen Records from public scrutiny regarding the cruelty of the process, comes at the expense of what would otherwise be a rather critical scene for a show like this.
Once the girls have made it to the 'public' survivor show part of the process, they take part in three elimination rounds which are judged partially (and it is only very partially) by members of the public.
The elimination scene for the first round is heartbreaking, the second elimination scene is harrowing, and the third elimination scene was presumably so brazenly vicious that it's given the 'off screen death' treatment, where we skip from the girls arriving to hear whether or not they've wasted the last two years of their girlhood from a disembodied voice on a television screen, to a montage of the survivors tearfully calling their loved ones to report their Kpop dreams are still alive - giving strong disaster survivor vibes.
Yet there is a slightly less obvious, but none the less very telling detail in the documentary that belies the filmmakers obedience to the HYBE/Geffen machine - the lack of follow up.
Unlike other Netflix shows following a bunch of kids as they try to achieve their dreams in time limited settings (Cheer competitions, Basketball finals, Football drafts) - after the final 6 have been picked, and the credits start to roll - we do not get the usual 'where are they now' pre-credit closure snippets of the one's who didn't make it on the show. Indeed, it seems, that like the rest of the whole show, the ending is an exercise in minimisation and distraction - nudging the audience not to think about the brutality of the process, rather to just enjoy the shiny happy teens who've emerged victorious from a process none of them fully understood they were consenting to when they skipped over the small print in their application forms.
The access the producers had for the documentary could have been used for that most noble of documentary pursuits - making tangible change in the world. It would have taken barely any effort to turn their footage into an expose that could have led to mass calls for reform in an industry that consistently exploits minors.
Instead, hemmed in buy cowardice and perhaps corporate interest too, the filmmakers leave their audience with an uneasy sense of being complicit in an extended episode of emotional and financial abuse - without our concent, much like the girls featured in the show.
