Draffut, on 01 June 2012 - 10:16 AM, said:
It depends. I remember like one or two episodes after he left they had the couple race where Gwang Soo had to do everything solo.
I felt the void then, too, but I think that can be chalked up to them not having fully worked out the three-of-three race format yet (though, with the addition of the guests later that episode, they did go in that formation for the food game), something that they fully settled into six episodes later (after the partly disappointing "corporate" episodes). There's also the "ghost town" effect of episodes like the True Gary show and the Lee Da Hae spy episode, though that's also attributable to there being no guests (or one guest) and it being a free-for-all rather than a more lively team vs. team competition.
Like I've said in the "New Member" threads--it's not that they can't have an eighth regular, just that doing so would probably entail the show tweaking its format. The show seems to prefer having two or more guests, at least for episodes that don't have an individual play component--even huge names like Ha Ji Won and Park Ji Sung had Gaeko and IU (come on, it's not a real spoiler) respectively as "beta guests." Any more guests and the alpha gets less attention; have no beta guests and the alpha has to carry the burden of sole guest. Even in Joong Ki and Lizzy's times, they preferred to have no more than two guests, with a third guest usually brought in only if one member (most often Joong Ki) was absent.
True "race" episodes don't have more than four members per team for practical reasons (each team comfortably fits in one car with ample room for cameras and ensuring decent shots for each passenger), and, again, are usually three-of-three, with two guests among the seven regulars. Considering that the "non-guest" team usually gets the short end of the stick, how much more problematic would it be if there were two non-guest teams effectively giving us the same "playing-amongst-ourselves" schtick episode after episode? The normal three-of-three hasn't worn thin on me yet--an alpha guest with one team to be the marquee act, the beta guest with another team to provide some backup variety freshness, and the all-member team for reliable, familiar antics. The only thing I've gotten tired of is that the teams are too often Jae Suk & Gary in the alpha team, Jong Kook and HaHa in the beta team, and Ji Hyo + Easy Brothers as the rejects.