Street Woman Fighter (Season 1) Finale [2/2] (Patreon)

Bruh there's just something about HolyBang-

Having rewatched a lot of moments (my reactions to this were filmed mostly in August) and having gone back and looked at the SWF Reddit and comments underneath clips, I have many thoughts to be honest. 

Firstly, PROWDMON absolutely should have made it to the finals, and it sucks that their message and artistry wasn't appreciated in the way I feel like it should have been.  But I also feel like LACHICA was also played with too? Like, having rewatched a lot of their routines and performances, it feels like they hit the wall of the judges and the general public not vibing with their message as well. A lot of people seemed to be hard on YGX because of their popularity when it came to comments on the show, and while I do think that they were mostly outclassed in battling (with the exception of Yell) and a lot of their choreo sequences were predictable, they're absolutely talented dancers that deserve respect. 

Viewers seemed quite disappointed with the fight judges, it seems, though I know that they seemed the most frustrated about them in SMF later on. A while I definitely wouldn't have personally made a lot of the decisions that they made, I think that the viewers were kinda unfair to them just because two of them are idols and one is a behind the scenes person. I couldn't quite get a read on what Sanghoon was looking for in his evaluations (because they didn't show enough of his commentary imo), but it was clear to me very early on that BoA was looking at each battle as more of individual performances first and evaluating musicality second if at all. It seems like the more one was able to keep her attention while still displaying their technique and discipline (she's very big on them having a composed or fun demeanor, I notice), the more likely she was to go with them. Taeyong seemed to value energy and seeing new/unique (to him) movements, but was still also evaluating from "stage" point of view. I didn't get the vibe that either of them watched battles very often before this. In that sense, they were probably not the most qualified to judge the battles. 

HOWEVER-

They were ABSOLUTELY qualified to evaluate choreography and give their takes on the dancer's techniques. People were commenting like BoA isn't one of the strongest dancers in K-Pop history and like Taeyong isn't one of the most recognizable/unique dancers in the industry. Obviously as Idols they came to their decisions in a different way than proper Choreographers or Street Dancers would have, but for the missions of this show, they were absolutely in a place to give valuable feedback to the crews. I did disagree with them here and there, and I do actually hope that they stick to only one idol Fight judge (if any) in any future seasons like they've done with SWF2, but the choices they made were never crazy unfair or egregious imo (one kinda toed the line for though tbh, bonus points if you remember/guess which one). 

SMF though...oof. A few of the fight judge decisions on that one were rough, ngl.

Anyways, we'll be going immediately to Street Woman Fighter 2 starting next week!