Squid Game

here’s the thing about squid game. at its heart it has a pretty decent concept which critiques capitalism and class inequality and while the story of making poor people play games for money for rich peoples entertainment is an old and fairly tired concept, the way squid game adapts it to make it so uniquely korean is interesting and fun. the problems i have with it is how squid game layers classic tropes and cliches and conventions over this concept. every character in the series is a pretty basic, one-dimensional stock character. there’s a good guy and a smart guy and a strong guy and a bully and a femme fatale and a mysterious bad guy and so many more of these. and then there’s predictable cliches like the big reveals about the identities of the host and the front man and these reveals end up contradicting the motivations that are made clear to us about these antagonists. the host’s desire to play the game goes against the front man’s lecture about equality being the central principle of the game, and while this could be seen as a mediation on morality, squid game doesn’t spend nearly enough time on the subject of morality to make that seem plausible. in fact, morality isn’t really discussed until the sixth episode (which is, admittedly, the best and a very good episode). once the characters start acting like real people rather than conventional stock characters, the show becomes a lot more interesting. sang-woo’s devolution into the twisted, remorseless character he becomes is what sets him apart as the best written character on the show, however prior to the sixth episode he is just as dull and lifeless as the rest of them. while squid game has an interesting concept that dwells on socially relevant political themes, it’s too heavily conventional and formulaic to truly achieve any of its true potential.