聲夢傳奇2 第6-8集 回顧 Stars Academy 2 TVB - Episode 6-8 Review
Hey Everyone,
This is our second review on Stars Academy 2, and we will be reviewing episodes 6-8! If you haven't read our episode 1-5 review yet, check it out here. In these 3 episodes, the competitors had their first team battle. The Red team was led by Eric Kwok and consisted of Gin Lee, Vincy Chan, and Phil Lam's students. The Blue team was led by Hanjin Tan and consisted of JW, Eman Lam, and Alan Po's students. In each round, both Red and Blue teams send one of their students to perform against another, and the 25 judges choose if they like the Red or Blue team's performance. The mentors of the winning team after each round gets to pick if their student goes first or second in the subsequent round. The team with the most points after everyone has performed will win, and the losing team needs to eliminate a student. If the losing team loses by more than 50 total points, they must eliminate 2 students from their team. The winning team of each round gets to pick if their student goes first or second in the next round. Let's take a further look into each episode.
Disclaimer: This post contains purely our opinions after watching the show. The information presented is done according to the best of our knowledge. We would like to apologize in advance for any errors or missing information.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
Song list based on order of appearance (winners are bolded):
Vivian《月牙灣》vs. Pamela《靈魂相認》
Jasmine《3AM》vs. Angel《讓一切隨風》
Duncan《信自己》vs. XiX《超能力》
Maggie《我不好愛》vs. Jason《如果可以》
Sabrina《人質》vs. Timothy《垃圾》
Nicole《偶遇》vs. Sean《lce Ice Baby》
Christopher《Toxic》vs. XiX 《lf l Ain't Got You》
Janees《Lady Marmalade》vs. Zayden《青春常駐》
From these spreadsheets, you can see what team the 25 judges voted for in each round. Both teams won 4 rounds in total, with a tie of 75 points each after Nicole vs. Sean's round. However, the Red team got the most points of 109 in the end, and the Blue team lost with 91 points. In episode 8, Red team won for 3 rounds straight. Sean scored the highest of 21 points of the night. It was interesting to see that the student who won usually would win by quite a few points; the closest call was 16 points vs. 9, so it seemed like majority of judges would agree with each other for the winner of each round. Because Red Team won by less than 50 points, only 1 student had to be eliminated, and the Blue Team mentors decided to eliminate Christopher (more thoughts on that below).
Highlights of each episode:
Episode 6: Angel《讓一切隨風》
Angel's was the only performance that really impressed us on episode 6, and she won expected winner of this round, Jasmine. We did not have much expectation for Angel to sing too well initially after seeing her first couple performances. Even though she emphasized that she is not confident singing slow songs and that dancing and singing is her strong suit, we would disagree because she's got a unique and rich voice that really suits this classic song. The "Stairway to Heaven" intro was a great statement to show this is her own version of the song, and we enjoy her own interpretation and expression of lines. The singing was dynamic with buildup of emotion to a climax in the final chorus. We like how Angel's voice really comes on top of the powerful music and not get buried by it. We think continuing to try rock songs may be beneficial to help her find a clear position in this competition.
Sean's performance was much better than the last, and he's showing more of that rapper attitude. It's not common that a rap song does very well in these competitions, and he can definitely be a part of a male group with Hugo in the future. The cinematography and arrangement of the song elevated the whole presentation. The dancers were also great supports to boost the atmosphere on stage. However, the rap is a bit short, just under 2 minutes, while he dances for the last portion of the song.
We wanted to mention that both Janees and Zayden had high level performances too. We are getting a feeling that judges have a higher standard for Janees compared to other students. We think that if another competitor sang 《Lady Marmalade》to this level, the judges would be wowed, but unfortunately, they already expect Janees to deliver performances at the level of professional singers, so they just find things to pick on. It's true that Janees' dancing was not strong, but she did try something new with a very passable performance, though she has a lot of room for improvement for fast songs. As a result, Zayden, who stuck with something stable and similar to his last song won. Since Eric Kwok asked Andrew Tuason to help, if Hanjin asked Christine Samson (another judge from Stars Junior) to help give some tips to Janees, it would have helped her a lot. Chrisitne is a singing coach and was lead vocalist in band, D'Topnotes and The Samson Sisters with a lot of experience in these types of song. Obviously, Miss Chan Chan would have been another reasonable choice to ask, but she might become biased since she is also a judge.
Thoughts on the elimination
Unfortunately, Christopher was eliminated this round. We thought his performance of 《Toxic》was not the worst of the night, and we appreciated the acoustic rendition of the first half of the song. Being able to earn 8 points against Caitlin and Kiele isn't a bad result either, and you could tell the Red Team mentors and judges were all shocked by this. Hearing the deliberation of the mentors was kind of confusing because they seemed to have their own favourites. We would have expected Nicole to be eliminated because she had the lowest score of the night and is still lacking in vocal technique and support with a weak performance, whereas Chris seems to have a better singing foundation, but Eman and Hanjin were dead set on keeping her. It appears they kept Nicole because of her appearance and youth, and maybe they are hopeful of creating the effect Chantel had in season 1, though we don't think it can be easily replicated. This brings us to the question at what point is it fair to look at a contestant's possible success in the future compared to the reality of the present? Of course, there is no right answer, and the mentors had some heavy debate, making JW even burst to tears at the end.
It was also interesting how easily they brushed off the possibility of eliminating Duncan just because Alan said "No Duncan", and that was the end of the conversation despite him scoring 5 points which was also lower than Chris's score. We hope Duncan can prove to everyone what else he can bring to the table coming up. We were a bit shocked when Eman felt Timothy should be eliminated because he might not do well in future rounds, but it's unfair to kick him out after winning. After all, he helped the team score a fair amount of points by winning against Sabrina with a well-praised performance, so it was good JW fought back and was able to save him because if he does poorly in the next rounds, he can be eliminated then fairly. There is also a clip released on Stars Academy's channel that shows Hanjin giving a lesson and pointing out some of Chris's problems on a trip they take after his elimination. As we are watching this, we are thinking why Hanjin didn't give him these lessons while he was still in he competition? It's not the end for Chris, and hopefully he will continue to earn opportunities like Aska at TVB.
What we want to see in coming rounds:
We hope to see Stars 1 and 2 students collaborating on some performances. Here is a list of pairings we made based on who we think would match and create chemistry with one another. Even though we know that not all of them will happen, it's fun to imagine what kinds of songs they can sing together! For example, Yumi and XiX can do a fast dancing song, while Windy and Janees can sing a Cass Phang song, and Steven and Jason can sing a Mandarin song as examples. It would be really neat if Kaitlyn and Maggie could also sing an Anita Mui song like《夕陽之歌》. If the pairings with Gigi, Chantel, Yumi, and Windy were to happen, we think the hit rate of those videos would be huge.
I agree with a ton of your comments, especially the performances that stood out. I didn't care for Angel much before this but she did a really good with this rock ballad and should do more of this style. Her dance songs are not that impressive to go solely that route. Timothy was standout in episode 7 with his vocals and it was probably the first male performance that really stood out to me. Sean's performance was super entertaining and did a good job with a rap song which was pretty much considered as a joke. The duet was also really good with the harmonies. I think the only one that I don't agree with is Janees. She's a talented vocalist but find a lot of her performances really boring. Her Lady Marmalade was not good with her attempt at dancing. I don't really need her to know how to dance when singing a fast song but her movements can at least be more fluid. I'm surprised the judges didn't say more about it which leads me to another point I agree with you on! The comments are all pretty short and generally nicer than what was seen on last season, but that was one of the things I liked about the first season since it wasn't all just fluff. They did have an extended judges comments from one of the episodes on one of their youtube channels, but don't know why they don't put this in the show when they're already stretching the show out by so many episodes.
ReplyDeleteThe reason I was originally searching online for some commentary on this show was because I wanted to talk about the elimination! I wasn't mad at the result, and I liked how they showed how they got to choose Christopher, but I was really annoyed with how they got to this decision. I think they should have chosen from the contestants that lost their match and go from there. That's why it was so annoying that Eman was trying to throw Timothy into elimination when he won his match and had a breakthrough performance. I also didn't like how she was saying that he would not be able to perform better than this? How would she even know? And one of the point of the show is to have these coaches work with them to pull it out of them. It seems like there's stuff he needs to work on to try and get it out of him sooner, but he's proven to be capable of doing so, unlike Nicole who Hanjin said that she can't sing to save her life. I do think they're trying to duplicate Chantel's sweetness but there's a big difference in abilities right now. I think Eman was just not a fan of coaching Christopher who didn't like the previous song he sang, and then didn't seem too confident when he did choose his own song too. She seemed to just choose the one with less talent but is willing to listen to her.
Hi AC,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comment and your interesting points!
We did see that video with the extended judges' comments, but we wished they released it on the official Stars Academy channel instead of See Saw 先 channel because some people may miss it there. We agree with you on Eman choosing the obedient student because based on the conversations between Eman and Chris, there seemed to be a bit of tension, so maybe something happened between them leading up to the decision.
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