Run BTS Rewatch Episode 52: The Only Way Out Is Through

방탄 ESCAPE, BTS ESCAPE

This episode builds on the former secret agent mission facility challenge and goes full Escape Room, which means there are less lasers and more puzzles. Depending on who it is, this may be a pleasant change for some Bangtans! Are escape rooms still a thing? I remember they were so popular once, and maybe they still are, but it feels like the pandemic really lowered our tolerance for being trapped in small rooms with people with only our wits to get us out.

One thing is for sure, though, after the dense beast that was Blue Village, I just know this episode is going to be a bitch to put into little bullet points.

Setup:

BTS are divided into two teams to do a moderate (3 person team) and challenging (4 person team) escape room. The first to escape and ding the bell is the winner and gets fabulous prizes, though really any kind of prize is fabulous to them. We have been in an era of no punishments for awhile, probably because the punishments got so labor intensive, but the prizes have become more currency-based and less food-based over time.

The captains of the teams are Jin and Jimin because they have done escape rooms before, and both bring entirely different vibes to being in charge that I think will be delightful. Each team can use the phone to get hints 5 times but it will add 10 seconds to their total time.

The Moments of Pure Love:

1. They’re in a place that either looks like a locker room or is a locker room, and Hoseok announces that it smells in a very non-joking tone

2. Namjoon says it’s hot and damp, so maybe it’s a real locker room

3. Jimin would like to escape this room, so they cut right to the chase

4. Jimin’s team gets the Korean dry sauna room

5. Jin’s team gets the “sleeping girl in a dream” room which sounds like Alice in Wonderland but is actually Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz

   1. Jimin guesses that this is the room from Jin’s reveal of the first and last letters

   2. Jin briefly thinks he is some kind of psychic

   3. Jimin points out that the rooms are listed on the wall behind him

6. Jungkook announces he hates saunas

7. Namseok agree that it will be hot in there and it’s already hot whenever they’re filming this

8. Their outfits are once again kind of insane in this episode, particularly if it’s hot outside, so here’s a rundown

   1. Taehyung: A blue and black striped sweater vest over a white button up shirt with black pants and shiny black shoes

   2. Yoongi: A burgundy turtleneck with a bomber jacket that says “Alone Together” in pink lettering on the back, black pants, pointy black loafers, and white socks

   3. Jin: A blue button up shirt and a cardigan, blank pants, and black boots

   4. Jungkook: A black and white striped button up shirt with a black leather jacket, black pants, and black boots

   5. Namjoon: White t-shirt, a jacket that looks sort of like a short kimono in style, light-wash blue jeans, and brown leather shoes

   6. Jimin: White t-shirt, a cardigan styled like a leather jacket but also long enough to hit him at the knees with a fringe at the bottom, cuffed blue jeans, Converses, and a beanie

   7. Hoseok: Black print t-shirt, red flannel-patterned but not actual flannel jacket, purple jeans the color of Grimace from McDonalds, black patent shoes with flower embellishments, and a beanie

9. Taehyung announces that he took off his jacket because it’s hot, which is incredible

10. Jimin believes the heat will motivate them to escape more quickly from his room, in somewhat evil tones

11. Jin does not buy this

12. Yoongi looks particularly small in the current line up, partially because the ceiling is really low in the room they’re in so everyone else looks like giants and partially because he’s standing next to Taehyung and Jin, who have proper posture, while Yoongi has Yoongi posture

13. They do their “pick a paper” method of getting a team

    1. Taehyung wants to know if there’s switching

    2. Hoseok says no switching

    3. Jungkook asks who wants to change

    4. Taehyung is like “me, I just said it”

    5. Taekook exchange their papers

    6. Hoseok could not possibly be more disappointed in them

14. The final teams are Jin, Yoongi, and Taehyung, and Jimin, Jungkook, Namjoon, and Hoseok

15. Jungkook realizes he traded into the sauna he hates and feels regret

16. Jimin hugs him and cackles

17. Taehyung could not be more pleased to not be in the sauna and to hug Yoongi to his side

18. The sauna team watches their introductory video in hushed reverence, and as soon as it’s over scatter in four different random directions, spinning in circles

19. Namjoon realizes that there are a bunch of lockers with puzzles on them that they have to solve and he gets to work on theorizing; he is immediately wrong

20. Jimin holds random pieces of wood and says “what about these?”

21. Hoseok examines a mat and finds symbols and words, mentions this out loud, and then asks who he’s talking to in a tone that reminds us he is the oldest person in the room

22. Jungkook is like, forget the mat, Namjoon’s got all these lockers!

23. Jimin sees that there are symbols from the mat on the lockers and Hoseok is very smug but still doesn’t know what to do

24. Jungkook is like, you gotta solve a locker! and Hoseok comes on over

25. All of them are working on different puzzles and making zero progress

26. Jungkook goes back to his only strategy, entering 10,000 combinations one at a time

27. The Dorothy room watches their own video emotionlessly, and Jin wanders around the room reading a diary that’s on the wall

28. Jin realizes quickly they need to figure out what Dorothy’s birthday is, and Yoongi gets on board

29. The energy level in this room is incredibly calm compared to the manic passion of every person on the other team

30. Jin cracks the code nearly instantly, coming up with August 14

31. Taehyung tries in it the keypad but it doesn’t work, causing a brief moment of consternation as they try different orders of the date

32. Jin hypothesizes that they need the year of her birth too and begins to investigate

33. Yoongi reads the instructions written beneath the keypad and realizes they need to hit the pound key after entry

34. This opens a mechanical cabinet that Taehyung is examining, scaring the life out of him and making him think he activated a deadly trap

35. There are now a bunch of mysterious green buttons they have to figure out

36. Yoongi realizes quickly that he would simply have to die if he was stuck in this place alone, then hits all the buttons just to see what happens; it’s nothing

37. Jin realizes that this is going south fast and uses his first phone a friend

38. It has something to do with painted nails on teddy bears in the diary picture which seems really hard to figure out, so this was probably wise

39. Pushing the buttons opens a door to the next room and they calmly make their way there

40. The sauna room is sinking into despair; Jimin wants to get a hint as he wanders fruitlessly

41. Hoseok is not ready to waste their precious resources yet

42. Jungkook wanders up to a camera and mouths “I don’t know” to us

43. Jimin talks them into getting a hint because it’s been 10 minutes and they haven’t solved anything

44. They tell him how to get the first locker code and Jimin is sooooooo mad he didn’t figure it out

45. When he explains it to Namjoon (they were supposed to look at the first letters of a menu that’s on the wall, which are the Korean words for numbers), Namjoon makes a face that conveys the entire agony of existence

46. The locker contains a box with a directional lock, and they’re once again stumped

47. Dorothy room reads more wall diaries in the next room, and finds some puzzle pieces with mountains on them for the first room

48. Yoongi begins yelling the diary clues to them in the other room that say what order the puzzle pieces go in, then wanders in to repeat them at a normal volume

49. They realize they’re missing a piece of the puzzle, which is finding Dorothy’s astrological sign, which as a Leo I know is Leo

50. Sadly Jin confidently misremembers Dorothy’s birthday as August 24, putting her in Virgo, and the other two know who the captain of this ship is and fully believe him even though Taegi are the ones who entered the birthday into the keypad

51. They can’t figure out how to remove the Virgo panel they think they need, and Taehyung stares at the camera blankly with his mouth open

52. Sauna room has reduced Hoseok to guessing blindly at locker codes, but he notices that there are numbers written on the middle lockers that tantalize him

53. Jimin is itching for another hint

54. Jungkook is kneeling on the mat pointing at things in space

55. Hoseok, after going to his mind palace via always moving his hands, finally figures out the locker code

    1. Minimoni are immediately all over him

    2. Jungkook, who has been on the mat so long he forgot he existed, does not move

    3. Hoseok explains that the numbers needed to be looked at upside down to form a pattern

    4. This is the exact same thing he had to do to solve a Blue Village locker puzzle, which goes to show that seeing numbers as mere shapes without meaning is the real strength of his mind

56. They receive another locked box and what’s described as a wooden pillow which probably makes sense in a sauna but looks like the most uncomfortable thing in the world

57. Namjoon is now on the train of getting hints, and they phone for another one

58. One of the directional locks needs to be solved using a maze of empty spaces in a snack cabinet (what Jungkook was pointing at earlier), and Jimin snaps it open

59. They get a series of keys from the box, and they can open up the kiln and climb inside; they are thrilled to get out of the sauna room

60. Dorothy room decides to get another hint rather than double check Jin’s certainty about the birthday, and Jin feels shame when he realizes

61. When they get the puzzle pieces in a green light turns on, and Taehyung once again flinches away from this new horror

62. Jin is like, hey, these pieces aren’t the same as the way I had them, and Yoongi is like, yeah Taehyung and I moved them around while you were on the phone, so they switch them back and the light goes off and Jin is like, oh you guys were right

63. Taehyung sees that a secret panel has opened in the second room, with some kind of crystal ball on a stick that looks like something an OB-GYN would use and turns things upside down

64. Yoongi holds it up to the map, gets no useful information, then laughs in bewilderment

65. Jin begins touching random things on the wall just in case

66. Yoongi finds a hole where he can insert his rod, heyo, and a wooden panel slides up from the cabinetry

67. Taegi’s shock and awe are both visually and auditorily way over the top, but Yoongi thinks cabinetry is super cool in general

68. Jin tries to get them back on task solving puzzles; this one is like a logic rebus puzzle where you have to read clues to know what to connect

69. They solve it fast and open the next door

70. Jin nearly dies as there’s a cameraman patiently waiting for them to show up to this room who jumpscares him so hard he does a mild amount of karate

71. Dorothy room rockets through the next puzzle but gets stuck on a pun puzzle where the numbers are characters in the words for objects and uses their third hint

72. Jin is once again chagrined at how he probably could have solved it with just another minute of thought, but they’re into the next door

73. Jin wonders if they’ve escaped and Taehyung, deeply immersed, reminds him that Dorothy is still sleeping so they can’t leave yet

74. Sauna team, in the kiln, realizes there are symbols around the walls that are the same as on the mat Hoseok found, so Jimin drags the mat into the room

75. They all point around them and say numbers, brains overheating as they think, until Jungkook is hit with a bolt of inspiration and realizes the walls of the room are laid out like a clock, with the numbers corresponding from 1-12

76. One of the lockers had the symbol that points to 10 and the symbol that points to 1 on it, so Namjoon enters 1001; he is immediately discouraged when he’s wrong

77. Jikook, with the mat, are realizing that the height of the symbols is important to the mat puzzle and start in on their analysis

78. Hoseok, suddenly all about hints, summons Jimin (apparently in charge of hint collection) to get on the phone and get one

79. Jimin is like, just call and ask? It’s not hard

80. Hoseok does so, but as soon as they start giving him the answer Hoseok panics that he won’t understand or retain it and yells for Jimin to come and listen

81. Jimin, somewhat excited and somewhat annoyed, realizes he was basically on his way to solving it without the hint and sprints in to figure out the mat

82. They are rewarded with more keys, which means they can open another locker and the ice room

83. The locker, however, doesn’t open using the numbers that are on the tags of their colored keys (1392), and Jimin is flummoxed

84. Jungkook, very quietly, is like “isn’t that a 6 not a 9” but no one listens to him and they move on to the ice room which has some colored clocks and a bunch of pipes on the wall

85. Dorothy room is in a huge room full of objects and more diary pages, one of which indicates that something’s behind the pictures of lavender on the wall but they can’t find anything

86. There’s also a bunch of wreaths with English phrases on one wall, mirrored display boxes on the opposite, a cabinet with toy soldier statues, an empty box, and a tall wooden table in the middle of the room with two stools next to it and puzzle pieces on top

87. Taehyung starts fitting the puzzle pieces in the empty box at random

88. Yoongi, after approximately 30 seconds, declares this room too hard

89. Jin, kind of endeared, says it’s actually pretty easy if they just take a little bit of time

90. Yoongi goes into the matrix and realizes that the mirrored display boxes line up with the wreaths and finds the letter W

91. Taehyung, who says there is no W on his puzzle pieces, is corrected by Jin that what he thought was an M is actually a W

92. The final puzzle doesn’t do anything, and they all stare at it in total silence for five seconds

93. Taehyung wanders away and examines one of the stools, which has a slit in the top; he puts his eyeball right over it and sees that there’s a light inside

94. Jin recalls that a diary page said “sit on the chair and see something” so he tells him to sit on the chair and look around; Taegi do not listen to him

95. Sauna room is staring at the colored clocks, when Namjoon gets an idea to solve it that absolutely doesn’t work

96. At the same moment Jungkook is back at the lockers testing his “6” theory as he talks to himself, which works perfectly

97. Jimin thinks the locker opened because of what Namjoon did, which is very sweet

98. Jungkook receives a picture of a water pip that corresponds with the piping in the ice room, and specifically with a missing section of pipe

99. Dorothy room is examining the toy soldiers and spots some symbols, sending Yoonjin into a flurry of matching, to no effect

100. Yoongi wanders away and realizes the light from inside the stool is gone, which makes them finally realize it’s a sensor that they need to sit on

101. Jin sits on the stool, and nothing happens; he stands exactly as Taehyung sits on the other stool, like a sketch comedy routine, so Yoongi has to take is place

102. Once they’re both sitting the mirror display boxes begin lighting up in sequence, showing English letters, and Taegi begin shouting them out as they appear

103. This is the way the puzzle pieces should really go, so Jin goes over and starts to do it, but they’re both yelling at him at the same time which is not helpful

104. Taegi stand up and sit down on the stools to reactive them like it’s choreography

105. When Jin puts in the last puzzle piece, a square rises out of the tall middle table like magic

106. Sauna room is debating the merits of using hints again, with Hoseok on the anti side

107. Hoseok goes into the ice room to stare at the pipe puzzle, brain whirring and clicking as he runs back and forth between it and the firewood locker they need to open, but it’s wrong and he’s happily annoyed

108. Jimin now does the same thing much more calmly and cutely, and he is able to succeed, which gains him much Hoseok praise

109. The firewood inside makes a puzzle, but they’re missing a piece which is likely inside the locker that Namjoon couldn’t open earlier with the 1001

110. They all want to use a hint for that locker, so Jimin gets on the horn

111. In Dorothy room, Taehyung realizes the raised part of the table can hold the toy soldiers from earlier and Yoonjin are into it, but they can’t get the position right

112. Taehyung goes to get a hint from the telephone

113. Jin calls after him to make sure he remembers what the hint is on the long walk back to the final room

114. Jin, annoyed, finally realizes that the lavender picture slides to reveal a hint behind it, and he laughs at himself

115. The hint helps them figure out where each soldier goes, and they’re in progress as Taehyung hurries back to tell them that they can slide the lavender picture

116. Taehyung is nonplussed when he sees they’ve already done it, so he goes back to argue that he should get a new hint since the last one was already solved; he succeeds

117. Yoongi uses intuition to solve the soldier puzzle, which activates the lights of buttons in the table console

118. Yoongi realizes the colors of the lights correspond with English letters in the wreath (W = white, etc)

119. They try doing them in order, but it has no effect, and Yoongi theorizes that they have to translate the English phrases to put them in a logical order

120. While Yoonjin sit and ponder, Taehyung silently slips out of the room to get another hint

121. Sauna team go through with their hint request, and Jimin puts in the call while Namjoon stares at him with intense eyes

122. Jimin deflates as the hint comes through, which is that if a clock’s hands are pointing to 10 and 1, that means it’s 10:05 not 10:01 so 1005 is the answer

123. He explains this to the rest of them, and Namjoon’s expression is the epitome of despair as he punches a locker

124. They now receive another wooden pillow and a towel with some numbers on it

125. Hoseok, exhausted, is like “let’s just try the numbers on another locker who gives a fuck” and it totally works

126. They receive a picture of colors to help them with the clocks in the ice room, and Jungkook scampers off with renewed energy to solve it

127. They head back into the locker room to see what’s changed, and Namjoon notices that the display on the thermometer changed to give them another locker clue

     1. Hoseok, hilariously, says “Namjoon got one thing done!!!!”

128. Inside are a bunch of wooden pillows with symbols on them, and they start to arrange them by symbol to count them

129. Dorothy room gets the last hint, which says that the order that the mirrored display cases light up point to the order of wreath letters they’re supposed to use, and this is why this episode is very hard to bullet point because what the fuck is that sentence

130. Sauna room’s energy and noise is back to maximum as they arrange these pillows, and there are two of each shape, which is not the answer

131. Jimin realizes that the pillows fit together to make the shape of numbers, and they start yelling them out to Jungkook

132. As they’re solving this they hear Dorothy room celebrating their escape, as they solved the colored buttons puzzle and woke Dorothy up from her sleep, getting one last mild jump scare in from the narrator’s voice speaking to them

133. They scream for Dorothy as they flee down the hallway, then ding the bell of victory; Yoongi dings it at least twenty times in a row in relief

134. Sauna room solves the last puzzle with Hoseok standing sadly behind them, looking disappointed in himself and the world

135. The last piece of firewood is inside, changing another thermometer once they fit it into the puzzle, which is the key for the escape keypad

136. Dorothy room tries to pretend they’ve been done for ages but everyone heard them so the bit doesn’t go anywhere

137. Both team lie to each other about how many hints they use, Taehyung saying zero because it was all super easy

138. The final score was 39 minutes and 56 seconds for Dorothy room with 5 hints, and 40 minutes and 53 seconds for Sauna room with 4 hints, so it really was much closer than the editing made it seem

     1. My suspicion is that Dorothy room was mostly silent contemplation, which did not make for good TV, so they got less coverage of their struggles

139. Dorothy room goes in for a hug, with Yoongi so very small between Taejin

140. Yoongi tells Jimin that there is a gap in their skills, and Jimin’s offended face as he says it was only a minute difference is a sight to behold

141. Taejin begin to do the Tweedledee and Tweedledum dance at Jimin where they go up and down next to each other rubbing shoulders; this is apparently some sort of Korean idiom I don’t get

142. Namjoon points out that Yoongi should be involved, so Taejin yank him into the center of their sandwich and go up and down rubbing against him instead

143. Hoseok, ready for this to end, starts the wrap-up instantly

144. Dorothy room opens their present, which is a game controller that connects to your phone

145. Taegi agree that Jin can have it both because he did most of the logical work and because they don’t want it

146. They wrap up their experience with the escape rooms as such:

     1. Taehyung: Jin basically did all the work and I’m very grateful

     2. Yoongi: I would die inside that room if I had to do it alone

     3. Hoseok: It was close at least!

     4. Namjoon: I had no idea what to do basically the entire time, and when I panic I panic to the maximum

     5. Jimin: Teamwork makes the dream work

     6. Jungkook: Jimin is really good at this stuff!

147. Hoseok, still ready for this all to be over, kicks us out of the episode without fanfare

The Finish Line:

I love escape rooms, so I found this episode really interesting both on my initial watch and this one. The dynamics of the two rooms could not have been more different, and the calm, almost sleepy energy of Jin, Yoongi, and Taehyung compared to the emotional highs and lows of the other was great. Hoseok’s bossy qualities came out strongly, and poor Namjoon was buffeted about by the winds of being slightly too smart for his own good and missing the obvious.

The editing really made it seem like it wouldn’t be close at all though, so it was quite interesting to see them almost align. I think if Sauna room hadn’t been so cautious about early hints they would have won pretty easily, which just goes to show that pride goeth before the fall and / or hoarding resources because you might need them later is a great way to make video games harder to play. Or something.

Next up is an episode that kicks off a record 4 part series, the in which the first entry sees a member of BTS almost get traded away for ice cream, so you know it’s gonna be chaotic. See you there!