KBS2 ‘2 Days & 1 Night Season 4’ broadcast screencap

“It is hard to live as a genius”

On ‘2 Days & 1 Night’, Lee Joon was elevated overnight to ‘Short-form President’. Kim Jong-min, enraged by DinDin’s string of wins, exploded, saying, “Are you the only one who is so great?”

On the May 10 broadcast of KBS2 entertainment program ‘2 Days & 1 Night Season 4’ (hereafter ‘2 Days & 1 Night’), the first story of the ‘War of Stones’ between ‘Jagged Stone’ DinDin and the four ‘Just Stones’ members was revealed. The episode’s ratings were 6.5% nationwide according to Nielsen Korea, maintaining No. 1 in its time slot. The scene in which DinDin accurately guessed that Moon Se-yoon was holding an empty bucket hit a minute peak of 9.2%. Among 20-49 viewers, it also ranked first in its time slot in the Seoul metropolitan area with 1.9%.

The trip’s concept was a head-to-head ‘War of Stones’ between ‘Jagged Stone’ DinDin and the ‘Just Stones’ Kim Jong-min∙Moon Se-yoon∙Lee Joon∙Yoo Seon-ho. Having scored a complete victory over the four members during last week’s ‘Naju trip by boat’, DinDin once again faced a 1:4 match against the so-called ‘Mouse Capture Squad’ that united to take him down.

Before the full-fledged trip, the ‘2 Days & 1 Night’ team mentioned Lee Joon’s recent status as the ‘Short-form President’, earned overnight thanks to the ‘Catch Catch’ challenge dance he showcased on a baseball stadium cheer stand. Lee Joon said, “The comments were not the reactions I expected, so I was flustered. I thought the public would think it was cool. I danced well!”, revealing his bewildered feelings at the heated response that differed from his expectations.

With Lee Joon’s ‘Catch Catch’ dance heating up both the ballpark and the algorithm, the ‘War of Stones’ kicked off in earnest. In this match, victory would go to whoever reached the veiled final destination first. As the first hint mission for the destination was given, DinDin figured out the answer first and set off. The Mouse Capture Squad also got it right and quickly began the chase.

Arriving almost simultaneously at the first destination, Namyangju Hangang Park, the two teams began the ‘Read the Colors Fast’ mission, and once again DinDin cleared it first, securing the hint for the next destination. However, while time was spent working out the correct answer, the four members also completed the mission and swiftly narrowed the gap.

Reaching the next destination, the Gapyeong Service Area, at a similar time, the five members began the ‘Silent Just-One-Bite’ mission, in which they had to get citizens to share the service area food they had picked without speaking. In the Mouse Capture Squad, Yoo Seon-ho, Lee Joon, and Moon Se-yoon completed the mission quickly, but Kim Jong-min could not easily find a citizen eating tteokbokki, causing a delay. In the meantime, after finishing his mission, DinDin inferred that the next destination was Yanggu County in Gangwon Province and moved a step faster.

After Kim Jong-min finally cleared the mission amid twists and turns, the Mouse Capture Squad also headed straight for Yanggu. The four narrowly avoided a wrong turn toward Yeongwol, held back bodily needs for the sake of victory, and hurried to the Gukto Jeongjungang Observatory in Yanggu, arriving before DinDin to start searching for the hint pointing to the final destination.

But while the four struggled to infer the answer, DinDin, who arrived later, realized that the final destination was the ‘Korean Peninsula Belly Button Point’, the Hwi-mori Tower, and moved quickly. The Mouse Capture Squad also caught the answer and sprinted toward the final destination.

With both lunch and pride at stake, the ultimate winner of this match was DinDin, who reached the finish line two minutes earlier. Having single-handedly won another 1:4 showdown, DinDin said, “I can understand seniors Einstein, Edison, and Beethoven. It is hard to live as a genius,” keeping up his trademark ‘swagger’, while the four members, defeated by DinDin yet again, swallowed their anger without rebuttal.

After the meal, when the five members moved to Paroho, the production team announced, “The ‘War of Stones’ is not over yet,” heralding the opening of round two between DinDin and the Mouse Capture Squad. Their final showdown at base camp would be ‘Card Rock-Paper-Scissors’, a psychological battle where having more cards meant an advantage.

Before the full-on duel, the two teams played the four-round card-acquisition mission ‘You Are the Fake’. Although the mission required picking out the one member in the Mouse Capture Squad who was acting, DinDin used his sharp instincts to win rounds 1 and 3, securing multiple rock-paper-scissors cards.

By contrast, after suffering loss after loss, an exasperated Kim Jong-min finally shouted, “Are you the only one who is so great?”, splashing DinDin with the water in a bucket. Like a baseball bench-clearing, the other members joined in and doused DinDin with water, going into overdrive. DinDin fought back, splashing water on the members, and the battleground turned chaotic in an instant.

Whether DinDin, who has been racking up solo wins against the four members since the Naju trip, can also smile in the ‘Card Rock-Paper-Scissors’ showdown, and whether the four members united as the Mouse Capture Squad can get their revenge on DinDin, curiosity is rising for the next story.

The flagship real wild road variety ‘2 Days & 1 Night Season 4’ airs every Sunday at 6:10 p.m.