[REVIEW] Variety show "Family Outing Season 2"

The cast of variety show "Family Outing Season 2" [SBS]

Happy Sunday's "Family Outing Season 2" - SBS TV, Sunday 5:20 P.M.

There were probably not many people who expected the second season of "Family Outing" to be much different from the first season. Everything that could be shown in the show's format had already been shown during the one year and eight months of its first-season run. Moreover, the family members -- which is the only new element viewers can expect from season two -- are faces viewers have already seen on many other variety programs. Despite such low expectations, the first episode of season two failed to deliver anything at all above viewers' anticipation. The cast seemed out of place, as if they were guests from the first season who had gone on a trip together, but that was only natural since it was their first meeting. But instead of reviving the awkwardness in a natural way, the excessive set-up of trying cover it up right away with a forced friendliness under the name of being a 'family' was far from 'real.'


The process showing actor Yoon Sang-hyun adapt 'turbulently' to his first go at a variety show, the winning bid for the beginning of season two, was not very successful either. The first season was refreshing in that viewers were able to discover new sides to actors such as Lee Chun-hee and Park Ye-jin on their bare faces without make-up in the "real" variety program the show was during its original run. But the cast of season two was still calling Yoon Sang-hyun "Tae-bong" [his character in MBC drama "Queen of Housewives] when it should focus on how variety show newbie Yoon adapts to the program who is to reprise the role of Lee and Park from the previous season.


Other elements -- such as the show's trademark squirmy subtitles, its overly sensible use of background music and the romantic storyline already developing amongst idol group members despite their denial of dating rumors -- all weaken viewers' hopes for the future of season two. It was only the first meeting but watching the show felt like sitting through an uncomfortable blind date where one becomes upon hearing just the introduction.


Written by Kim Sun-young

Source: Asiae

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[REVIEW] Variety show "Family Outing"

Season 1 finale of variety show "Family Outing" [SBS]

"Family Outing" - Final episode, SBS TV (Sunday, 5:10 PM)


The family's last trip was no different from any other. The family members still played games, continued to play the game of love sticks in the hope they might avoid the dreaded early morning chores, huddled in a single room to go to sleep and made breakfast when they woke up. Except for the fact that they presented the production crew with red bean noodles, which would be their last breakfast together, it was the routine morning viewers had gotten used to seeing on the show.

Before the show's members started getting replaced and various issues of controversy emerged, "Family Outing" was a program with a distinct advantage. The members -- save for Yoo Jae-seok, Lee Hyori and Yoon Jong-shin -- who seemed to be a wrong fit for variety shows provided viewers with refreshing form of entertainment by taking on characters we had not seen them as before. As a co-ed reality-based variety show, the show also had a new power structure and intensity among the members' relationships.

But can only be a limit to the amount of fun the members with fixed personalities inside the show's fixed formula. As the members' characteristics started to overlap and their images exhausted, "Family Outing" -- which had become an outdoors version of "X-Men" segment in "Happy Sunday" -- ended up having to embark on its final trip after one year and eight months of airing. This is the quickest exit that a major reality-based variety program has made, and also a fairly quiet one since the show's departure had been expected for quite some time.

After the first season members hold the "Family Awards" as a special segment over the Lunar New Years' break, the second season of "Family Outing" will begin with a new batch of members. From what has been revealed about the new season so far, the show's setting and the formula appears to remain unchanged except for a change in the entire line-up of the cast. "Family Outing" has chosen to keep the show's fixed formula, which seemed to be its limitation, and make a small change within that formula. Can the family still be family without Korea's representative sibling duo Yoo Jae-seok and Lee Hyori?

Written by Yoonina (TV critic)

Source: Asiae