The Genius (TV series)

The Genius (Korean: 더 지니어스) is a South Korean reality game show aired every Saturday night on a cable channel TVN (South Korea). Each season consists of 12 episodes with 13 contestants. One person will be eliminated in every episode, and the final player left standing will be named the champion of the season.

The Genius brings together 13 contestants from various areas to compete for the top spot in rounds involving various games. Every episode, a contestant is eliminated following a main match and a death match. The winner of the main match will gain a token of life as assurance to proceed to the next round. While the loser of the main match has to go through a death match with an opponent of his/her choice. However, they can not choose a person with a token of life.

Beside the token of life, the winner of the main match will also gain a quantity of red garnets. Each garnet is worth 1,000,000 won (approximately US$1,000). In the final episode, only the champion's total garnets are exchanged for real money. Garnets are transferable and may be gained within the game. However, all forms of theft and violence are disallowed. Because the show requires sharp thinking to win, every game is expected to be riddled with thrill and shock. Each contestant must figure out how the game works and how they can win as quickly as possible, and they may join forces with others, betray them or simply eliminate their competitors.

Contestants are encouraged to use every means to survive. The 13 geniuses continue to get to the end of the game in order to grab the great prize money, and in the process, build their own characters.^[1]

So far, three seasons have been aired, with following subtitle:

• The Genius: Rules of The Game (Season 1) - aired every Saturday at 11pm (KST) from 26 April 2013 until 12 July 2013.
• The Genius: Rule Breaker (Season 2)
• The Genius: Black Garnet (Season 3)^[2] - aired every Wednesday at 11pm (KST) from 1st Oct 2014 until 17th Dec 2014.

Season 1

Player

• Hong Jin-ho
• Kim Kyung-Ran
• Lee Sang-Min
• Kim Sung-Gyu
• Park Eun-Ji
• Cha Yu-Ram
• Kim Poong
• Kim Gura
• Choi Jung Mun
• Choi Chang-yeop
• Cha Min-Soo
• Kim Min-Seo
• Lee Jun-Seok

Episodes

Hong Jin-ho appeared in all three seasons. He gained the most money out of all the players as he was the final winner of season 1 with $79,000 received as prize, was eliminated in episode 7 of season 2 but received $2,000 from winning against the top 3 players as the guest in episode 11, and won when he appeared as a guest in episode 10 of season 3 with $10,000.

Season 2

Season 3

Player Profiles

Episodes

References