Squid Game

My brother and I just finished season 2. Squid Game remains one of the most addicting yet frustrating series I’ve ever seen, with season 2 containing way less of the addictive aspects and way more of the frustrating ones.  This season has 7 episodes, but feels like it only completed half a story arc, with season 3 expected to complete this current storyline. Season 2 also felt very bloated, particularly the first two episodes which could have been condensed to half an hour. I did enjoy some of the new characters. Thanos was a crazy but strangely likable foil, and 001 is a terrific actor. There’s a lot of subtext going on behind his calm, controlled eyes. The old lady and the trans woman were interesting too. Squid Game holds my attention the best when it allows itself to be entertainment. The bloody, twisted traps and thrilling, occasionally horrifying action are the reasons why people watch this show. The dollhouse designs and childish games contrasted against gruesome violence is such a cool universe and it does make me want to keep watching the show. I also enjoy watching these characters form partnerships and even friendships as they try to stay alive together, and fear the constant backstabbing of others in the games who are motivated by financial gain into turning on each other.  But at the same time, this is an inherently self defeating show. Squid Game criticizes how audiences will watch poor people kill each other for their entertainment. The show lambasts the capitalist mindset that enables these atrocities, and then to prove this point, the show gets produced by Netflix, a multi-billion dollar corporate conglomerate, who airs the show worldwide, casts K-pop stars/idols to attract maximum eyeballs, and proceeds to milk every dime of profit out of the series. They created spin off reality shows, and now a second season where audiences continue to pay Netflix for the right to… watch poor people kill each other for our entertainment. It’s almost as if this show isn’t the populist anti-capitalist critique that it thinks it is… Financial gain. Huh did the series ever mention that? Seems like that might be one if its themes. I gather that because it’s mentioned every 30 seconds during every episode of the show. When they’re outside the games, every single thing they do calls attention to the costs. When they’re in the game, a giant golden piggy bank (subtle) has wads of cash dropped in while the players watch in awe. Every single episode characters are constantly calculating how much money they’re getting, or explaining how much debt they’re in and how much they need money to save their families. They are so invested in money that they will kill each other to get the reward. It’s both completely unbelievable as an explanation, and also entirely repetitive the way the script brings it up over and over and over again. This obnoxious handholding for the audience isn’t new for Netflix. They have instructed their writers to have characters say what they are doing out loud so that viewers on their phones will still hear. And this doesn’t just show up with characters talking about the financial aspects. It carries through to everything else we watch. One major annoyance for me was that after every game, the players hold a new vote on whether to continue the game. The voting numbers are displayed up top, but just to make sure the audience understands, characters then tell each other how many votes away they are, after every single vote, because the audience couldn’t possibly remember this ourselves. “We’re 5 away now! We’re 4 away now!” Etc.  Also after 2 seasons, Squid Game’s shallow social commentary betrays the fact that this world has had ample time to explain itself, and simply hasn’t. Why do these pink suited grunts carry out all these killings? In season 2 we are introduced (more or less) to a North Korean sniper who is one of these pink suited soldiers. But the show doesn’t offer any analysis behind why she does what she does except financial need. We never see anything about their training they just hold guns and shoot them. We’re given no idea if they are experts or novices. And are we supposed to believe that all of these soldiers are killing civilians just because they are paid to do so? They run organ trafficking side ventures simply because of financial gain, and I guess they’re just evil. I will keep watching season 3, because as entertainment Squid Game continues to be engaging. But I wish this show would stop trying to make its repetitive, half baked social commentary, since all it’s doing is insulting the audience’s intelligence.