10 Best 'Run! BTS' Episodes

People know BTS for their incredible music and connection to fans. Another side to BTS’ work is one that airs on the South Korean streaming service V Live: it’s Run! BTS, a reality-esque show made of 30 minute episodes. These episodes see the BTS boys either in studios playing games in Korea, or travelling the world getting into all sorts of scenarios. Run!BTS is a huge part of ARMY culture, providing an up close and personal view of how the boys interact with each other, and what they act like in non-music related situations. While Run! BTS doesn’t air every single week, taking hiatuses every so often as a normal television show would, there are still a large amount of episodes. At this point in time, they’ve reached over 70 episodes. That’s a lot to catch up on for new ARMYs or others who haven’t gotten around to it yet.

Not to fear; I have a list of my top 10 Run! BTS episodes to investigate on your own. I don’t have a particular order for this list, and it’s just my opinions. I don’t think there is a definitive list of the best, so these are the ones I watch over and over. I’m going to put them from earliest to most recent.

Transfer Student: Min Yoonji

Every BTS fans knows Min Yoonji. One of the earliest, Episode 11 includes the boys doing a skit in a classroom setting. They have different roles; J-Hope is the sensitive poetry student, Namjoon is the dumb but kind student, Jungkook is a bad boy, and so on. However, the iconic part of this skit is Yoongi, AKA Suga, as the female transfer student. The funny thing about this is that Yoongi is seen as one of the quieter members in BTS, yet he got the funniest and most central role. The others have to win over Yoonji (the name of Yoongi’s character) all while she promptly rejects them.

It’s honestly so funny to see Yoongi bring out his no nonsense attitude to this role. Even the sweetest members of the class, Jimin and V, get promptly rejected. Yoongi totally lives it up, flipping his wig over his shoulder and making fun of the rest of the group. I think the highlight would be J-Hope reading his poem to Yoonji. He pours a bottle of water over his face to dramatically simulate tears. Yoonji takes the opportunity to take the water bottle and spray him with even more water, sending him away as he cries fake tears. There’s also that glorious moment when Jin just stands there and screams.

Seriously, Yoonji is an icon in BTS history, and you need to check out Episode 11, you won’t be disappointed.

BTS and Puppies!

Who doesn’t love puppies? Who doesn’t love BTS? What happens when you combine the two? You get Run! BTS Episode 23. This episode has a simple set-up. The boys gather at a dog training course, and meet seven cute pups. They each pair up with a puppy, and have to do fun and adorable obedience tasks with their furry pals. Whoever works best with their dog wins. There are awesome moments in this one. Jungkook and his puppy Miri do some cute tricks, including one hilarious scene of Jungkook jumping through the hoops that Miri should be doing on the agility course. Another favorite is V with the cutest corgi ever, Chopa. V has a great time getting Chopa to roll over, and he shows off the pup’s trick to the rest of the group. Also, at the end of the agility course, V gets on his knees and Chopa jumps into his arms! Chopa and V are a great combo.

On the other end, there’s Jin and Adam. Poor Jin. Adam is a little Shetland Sheepdog-looking dog with a big personality. Everything Jin tells him to do, he either stands still, or does the opposite and walks away. Most of Jin’s time is spent on the floor yelling, “ADAM! ADAAAAAAAAM!” This strained relationship is the real highlight of the episode.

ZOMBIES!!

This one has been memed, its been watched and re-watched. Every member has an iconic moment in one of the funniest episodes in Run! BTS history. This is Episode 24, right on the heels of the dog episode. BTS gets tricked into solving a puzzle in a zombie-infested haunted house game. They thought they were going on a night safari, and had no idea until their tour guide whipped around and screamed at them.

Cue the theatrics. BTS splits up into pairs (Jimin/J-Hope, V/Jungkook/RM, and Suga/Jin) and each pair has to solve puzzles to escape the haunted house. Afterwards, they have to play a game of freeze tag, and try to escape the zombies. Where do I start with this one? There’s the scream-tastic duo of Jimin and J-Hope struggling to walk into rooms every time they see a zombie. J-Hope is known as the easiest to scare. He screams, and he’s fallen down often when he's gotten startled. This episode is scaredy-cat J-Hope at his finest. He throws himself shrieking against walls, and leaves Jimin behind and flees. In my favorite moment, he freezes in fear, repeating, “wow wow wow wow” as he waves a piece of paper at a crawling zombie. Jimin delivers on the screams as well, and it’s some of the cutest stuff I’ve ever seen. On the other end of the spectrum, we have RM, V, and Jungkook. They barely react. V and Jungkook ignore the zombies and laugh at the whole situation. RM is a little freaked out, but he hilariously says “Excuse me” to the zombies as he passes to collect clues.

What seems to be a recurring theme in Run! BTS is that Suga and Jin are the unpredictably hilarious two of the group. Sticking them together is gold. They dress up as zombies, and start limping around trying to blend in. When the boys have to flee into the haunted house through a horde of zombies, Yoongi screams and puts up his fists like he’s about to fight. I think this is easily the most iconic moment to come out of this one.

Tomato, Tomato, Tomato

Episode 31 of Run! BTS is a great one for its cuteness. This episode sees the boys playing games like guessing what’s in a box, word play, etc. The crowning jewel of this episode is when they listen to a children’s song: "The Tomato Song." They hear it, lay down on bean bags for a nap, and get rudely awoken to try and sing the lyrics. The first one to get the song right wins. It sounds easy, but if the episode shows anything, it’s that even a group of singers can’t get this right. It’s adorable. They’re all wearing their pajamas and get confused or defeated when they get the song wrong. V in particular looks like he’s trying really hard to get it right. Jimin lets out a hilarious frustrated yell when he fails the last time, and splays out on the floor. It’s hilarious seeing just how many times it took them to get close. It felt like even non-Korean speakers had a feel for the words by the time it was all over.

My favorite is Jungkook, who sits sleep-drunk in the background for most of the episode. Even before they wake up, he rolls off his bean bag and ends up sleeping on the floor.The rest of them seem to slowly wake up, but he lays in the background swaddled in a huge comforter, not moving for a long time. It’s one of the most adorable things ever, and it makes you sad that he had to wake up at all. When he finally makes it to the microphone to sing, he slurs his words and gets nowhere. They all laugh at him on his first try, as the rest of them have already done it millions of times.

Christmas Pigs

After the silliness of the Tomato episode, the Christmas Pigs arrived the week after. The Christmas Pigs were hilarious. BTS runs around the Robot Taekwon V Museum in Seoul with little balloon pigs. They explore the museum, but there’s a catch. One of them has a pair of scissors, and he’s trying to cut the strings to the other six’s pigs. When their strings are cut, they lose. At first, it’s a game to figure out who to trust. After a balloon or two gets cut, it all comes together: J-Hope is the culprit.

At this point, everyone loses it and the episode devolves into a screaming mess. J-Hope is the loudest of the bunch, and you can clearly see it as he runs after his bandmates brandishing a pair of scissors. His screaming obviously means the others can hear them. With this, everyone starts screaming and sprinting blindly as well. Some try hiding, including V posing in a glass case pretending to be a piece of art. In the end, J-Hope doesn’t get to all of the balloons, but the viewers couldn’t care less. Watching BTS running around in fear, wearing Christmas hats is entertainment enough. The pigs themselves are also cute as they flail around behind the boys while they flee.

Say Cheese!

There was a run of strong Run! BTS episodes one after the other for a long time. This one is the episode right after the Christmas Pigs. This is an easy episode; BTS pairs up and they have to jump to get into a picture as it’s being taken. They have ten different faces or actions they have to do to succeed. It’s so funny. Jimin making surprised and cute faces in his oversized hoodie is almost too sweet to watch. There are a lot of great snapshots, including one of Jungkook and J-Hope having to be expressionless in one photo. J-Hope gets caught in the picture as he falls back down, and his hair splays up in a ridiculous way that’s impossible not to laugh at. In fact, each of the boys ends up laughing so hard they cry, especially V.

Yet again, it’s Suga and Jin that you need to watch for. No seriously. They barely appear in any of their pictures because they can’t time their jumps properly, so you barely ever see them. Their struggle to take a picture is iconic. A lot of their stills would make for good, funny wallpapers on your computer.

Spy Games

Spy games are always a staple on Run! BTS. There’s usually one or two of the boys trying to sabotage the others, or one that has a secret mission that the others can’t know about. In this episode, there were three spies. BTS took to a fake town setting, used to introduce children to different career paths, and had to find clues to uncover the three spies. They each had different jobs, from Jungkook as a police officer to J-Hope as a grocery clerk.

This game spans across Episodes 47-48, and it consists of all the boys pointing fingers at each other as to who the spies are. They sprint all over the place trying to hide from each other, and it does actually make for a great mystery. J-Hope gets hung up trying to solve one code on a set of lockers, V wanders around like he has no idea what’s going on, and poor Jin gets called out every time for being a spy. RM makes valiant, but ultimately futile attempts to keep everything logical so they can solve the mystery. I can’t say too much because I don’t want to spoil it. It’s actually a great mystery. I will say, though, that there’s a great cliffhanger in between the episodes…

Pirate Ride!

Run! BTS Episode 51 is an episode where we truly learned to appreciate the editors of the mini show more than ever. In this episode, the boys break into three teams yet again in order to compete in mini games. The catch? They have to play the games while on rides at an amusement park. Even better, to separate themselves better into teams, they wear hats to differentiate them, from cute dog hats to frog headbands.

The best ride in this episode is hands down the pirate ship. We all know those giant pirate ships that swing back and forth, almost bringing you vertical at the very top. Well, for members like J-Hope and Suga, this is not too fun. They’re on RM’s team and have to answer questions he yells at them from the other end of the pirate ship. They’re too busy screaming and closing their eyes to listen. Watching the two hold on for dear life, and lean against each other in terror is an experience. One of the funniest things about this is that Jungkook and V decide to sit next to them and put their hands up for the ride. They have a lot of fun with it, and the contrast between the duos will have you on the floor laughing.

And about those video editors? When the ride ends, J-Hope slumps in his seat as if he’s passed out. What do they do to him? They play the Windows shutting down tune while they use a grayed out image of himself coming out of his body. Run! BTS has incredible effects, whether it’s the fitting squeaky noises for Jimin or a faded image of an ostrich appearing on screen (yes, go watch the first few minutes of Episode 46) they always go the extra mile to make ARMYs laugh.

Silliness and Sentiment

BTS is at their best when they’re both hilarious and sincere. Episode 54-56 give us both. These episodes are a huge road trip excursion where they travel to a house to play games. The best of these is easily badminton when they’re tied to each other. They’re awful at the game, and whenever they miss the birdie, the editors again come through with slow-mo replays and a slow BTS song to play over it. The boys are equally as bad when they start kicking around a soccer ball.

There’s also the karaoke night, which sees crazy wigs, erratic dancing, and a caption calling Suga a “baby tiger”. Karaoke with BTS is always great, and another great karaoke episode to tune in to would be Episode 28.

My favorite is the last half of the last episode where BTS sit around a campfire and read poems to each other. Some are funny, but they’re all sweet and appreciative of each other. The best way to sum it up would be in Suga’s poem where he ends with “What a relief that we have seven members. What a relief that we have each other.” This has become a mantra in ARMY culture to show support of the group, and show how they really are brothers. A lot of them are in tears by the end of the episode. It’s touching, and something that might even bring you to tears yourself.

Grammys? Why Not Oscars?

We started with a roleplaying challenge, and we end with an acting challenge. Recent episodes 74-76 include a day of acting out a little skit about creating “house rules” while they live together. 74 and 75 see the boys filming, which has a lot of great content in itself. V shows his artistic side as the director, in charge of shots and what not. Jungkook has to be on his toes as they keep redoing scene after scene as he is in charge of the slate. J-Hope has to redo an angry scene where he hits the table with his fist, both hurting his hand, and laughing so hard after the scene is ruined that he cries. Filming is great, but to watch the finished product, I direct you to Episode 76.

It’s funny to see a pretend drama of the BTS boys living together. Jin, who studied acting, gets to shine with his acting skills. He’s silly and serious, and he’s always funny to watch. There’s a lot of funny things going on in this short film that forms the cuts to the boys flashing back to annoying things about each other, to chaotic arguing on the couch in the present. There are some great scenes of Jimin crawling on the floor, to Jungkook carrying absurd objects he’s bought for himself to his room, etc. My favorite would have to be J-Hope’s little segment telling everyone to clean up after themselves. His angry acting is hilarious. The scared reactions of the V, Jungkook, and RM as he rises up from behind the couch to scold them about the mess they’ve made is great as well. Overall, each of the boys is dramatic, and throws their all into their scenes, and it makes for a great watch.

I love every episode of Run! BTS, and you really can’t go wrong with any of them. If you like BTS, and you haven’t had a chance to sit down and watch this V Live series yet, these would be a good place to start. All of them are entertaining, to be honest. They’re lighthearted, 25-30 minute episodes to watch when you have some down time. These are some of the best videos that endear people to BTS, and help explain why they have such a legion of fans. They’re a lot more than just a pretty group of guys on stage; check them out if you’re interested in learning more about the down to earth side of these international superstars.