Netflix claims this South Korean survival drama is its most watched new series ever – the latest worldwide phenomenon in a string of major global hits, which include, Money Heist (Spain), Lupin (France), Elite (Spain), Dark (Germany), Fauda (Israel), Ragnarok (Norway), Barbarians (Germany), Bordertown (Finland), and Kingdom (South Korea), among others. Whether or not Squid Game is really Netflix’s most viewed series launch (the streamer is not exactly transparent with its audience metrics, and Nielsen streaming data is extremely limited), there’s no question that it’s one of the buzziest (and most controversial) shows in a long time.
Whether you see Squid Game as an insightful social commentary on capitalism and income inequality or simply as a brutally violent exercise with no other purpose than to be brutally violent, your reaction is valid and defensible. I’d like to say it’s the former, because that makes me feel better about finding the series so entertaining – but I keep going back and forth.
Here’s a not-so-brief synopsis. Spoilers ahead…
In an over-sized, candy-colored playground, 456 desperate people who are drowning in debt are pitted against one another for a chance to win a life-changing amount of money. They have to compete in a series of childhood games, sometimes competing individually, and sometimes as part of teams. The catch is that all the losers through the six-rounds of contests are immediately gunned down by a group of masked and costumed guards.
Those who run the game do not force anyone to participate. They invite people who they know have insurmountable debt and very few choices in life, with the caveat that once they accept, they cannot leave until the tournament is over (if they survive), or if a majority of players agree to end the game (and forfeit the prize money). Once they accept, they are picked up by vans, gassed into unconsciousness, and driven to a secret location, where they awaken in a dormitory setting wearing green, numbered track suits. A giant grid displays pictures of each participant along with their number. The guards, who are donned in pink jumpsuits, keep constant watch over the contestants. The games are run by someone called the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun) in a black mask and uniform.
As the games unfold we are gradually introduced to the main characters and discover their motivations for playing. Despite being from vastly different backgrounds, most have some basic things in common – they are broke and desperate for money or have insurmountable debt, they have either creditors, gangsters, or the police closing in on them, and there is virtually no hope of their situations getting better anytime soon.
You will cheer on some players while despising others, but all have an equal chance of being the next to be killed. The main characters are no more safe than the many background characters, whose stories we never hear. This is, of course, different from most TV shows, where you can be reasonably sure that the main characters will not be abruptly killed off. It adds to the anxiety and unpredictability of the series.
A number of interesting philosophical questions arise as the games continue and a smaller and smaller group gets closer to actually winning the cash prize and instantly becoming wealthy. Can you remain good in a system that is essentially corrupt? Are you a better person for feeling guilty about betraying someone than if it doesn’t bother you at all? Can one person change the system or will the system inevitably change every individual?
The acting is top notch. Here are the main players:
Lee Jung-jae (#456) is Seong Gi-hun, a divorced chauffeur and gambling addict, who is deeply indebted to some dangerous loan sharks. He lives with his sick mother (who has no health insurance), and is estranged from his ex-wife and young daughter. He is the first character we meet (before the games begin) and much of the series is seen through his eyes.
Park Hae-soo (#218) plays Seong Gi-hun’s childhood friend and classmate, Cho Sang-woo, a former top investment broker, who is wanted by the police for stealing money from his clients. He also has massive personal debts from bad investments. He is the smartest player and often comes up with winning strategies. He went to SMU business school, and Gi-hun has always looked up to him.
Yeong-su (#001) is Oh Il-nam, an elderly man with a brain tumor, who would rather play the game than just wait to die on the outside. He is more formidable than he seems.
Jung Ho-yeon (#067) is Kang Sae-byeok, a North Korean defector hoping to get enough money to bring her parents across the border and get her little brother out of an orphanage. She is also a pick-pocket who stole Gi-hun’s money after he won a bundle at the track.
Heo Sung-tae (#101) is Jang Deok-su, a gangster with huge gambling debts, who has stolen money from his mob boss and is on the run. He is mean and dangerous.
Anuparn Tripathi (#199) is a migrant worker from Pakistan who needs to provide for his young family after attacking and injuring his boss for refusing to pay his wages. He is one of the physically strongest of all the players.
Kim Joo-ryoung (#212) is a loud and manipulative con-woman whose reasons for entering the game are unclear (but she’s probably in debt and on the run from someone).
Wi Ha-joon is a police officer who infiltrates the game by impersonating a guard so he can find his missing brother.
More than half the competitors are eliminated during the first game – a surreal version of “Red Light, Green Light,” in which those who move even slightly after “Red Light” is announced by a giant little girl doll/robot (with a rotating head and eyes that scan the arena for any movement) are shot.
Each time a contestant is eliminated, his or her image in blinked out on the giant screen, and more money is added to the pot – which hangs from the ceiling as a constant reminder of how much money they can win (it eventually grows to 45.6 billion won, or roughly $38 million).
After the first game, where 255 of the 456 contestants are eliminated, the remaining players take a vote to end the game (which passes by a single vote). They are deposited back into their normal lives – which are so miserable that 187 of the 201 remaining players decide to return to the game.
The second game involves cutting out one of five shapes (circle, square, triangle, star, or umbrella) embedded in a piece of candy without breaking it – relatively easy if you picked the square, not so easy if you picked the umbrella. Players had to select a shape before they knew what the game entailed. Anyone who doesn’t have a completely intact shape or doesn’t finish by the 10-minute time limit is immediately shot. Seventy-nine more players are eliminated during this game.
One player attacks a guard and forces him to remove his mask – the guard is killed by the Front Man because his identity was revealed. The player commits suicide rather than having the guards shoot him. During a break, the gangster (#101) beats another player to death with no consequences. Players realize that if they kill other players between games, their odds of winning improve. This adds a whole new element to the proceedings, as groups and alliances are formed.
When Seong Gi-hun asks Kang Sae-byeok to join his team so they can protect one another between games, she responds, “I don’t trust people.” He answers, “You don’t trust people because you can, you trust people because you have to.” This is one of the ongoing themes – who should you trust and should you consider betraying them to save yourself? During the night, when the lights are turned off, various players attack one another. More than 20 additional players are eliminated.
One of the players (Yoo Sung-joo) is a doctor who has secretly been working with some corrupt guards to traffic the organs of dead players. In return, they give him advance information on what the next game will be. When the Front Man discovers what’s going on, he is not concerned with the selling of the organs, but rather the idea that any player would receive an unfair advantage. He explains that this is the one place in their lives where every player has equality regardless of who they are or where they come from. Everyone competes on equal footing. The doctor and corrupt guards are killed and their bodies displayed out in the open for all remaining players to see.
The players are required to form teams of 10 for the third game, which they discover after the teams are selected will be tug of war – with each losing team falling into a chasm to their deaths below. Stronger teams with all men seem to have a big advantage. The old man (#001) and the smart one (#218) come up with strategies to help their group, which includes three women, defeat physically stronger teams. Their main rival group, led by the gangster (#101), also wins.
For the fourth game, each player selects a partner who they assume will be their teammate. But instead, after the players have paired up, they are told that they will be competing against one another (and one person from each pair will be eliminated). They are each given a bag of 10 marbles and told they can make up their own game. The one who winds up with all the marbles will be the winner. Seong Gi-hun and Cho Sang-woo, friends who grew up playing the Squid Game together, have vastly different approaches. Seong is mostly ruled by his emotions, while Cho sees everything as a solvable intellectual exercise. Yet both arrive at the conclusion at the same time that the only way to win this game is to betray their friend and partner (rather than compete fairly and risk losing). This wracks Gi-hun with guilt, while Sang-woo seems fine with his own actions. After this game, there are only 16 players left.
For the fifth game, the players are required to walk across a bridge made up of glass panels. Half the panels are tempered glass, which can support the weight of two people. The other half are regular glass, which will shatter under the weight of a single person. Step on the wrong panel and you fall to your death below. Players were allowed to choose the order in which they would go before they knew what the game was. Those who chose to go later have a big advantage.
In the seventh episode, we discover the tournament is funded by a group of bored, ultra-wealthy deviants, who bet enormous sums of money on the outcomes of each game. All of them are seen wearing gold or diamond-encrusted animal masks, but they are clearly white westerners – Americans and Europeans.
In the ninth episode season finale, a brutal competition of Squid Game results in a champion. We also learn who created the game and why. If the game itself does not make it clear that one of the main points the series is trying to make is that the ultra-rich see the poor as less than human, the game’s creator, when confronted by the eventual winner, who questions how they can be so brutal and dismissive of the death they caused, answers, “You bet on horses, we bet on humans. You are our horses.” This is a fascinating juxtaposition – at the beginning of the series we see one of the key players betting on a horse race; now he and the other players are the horses.
The game creator goes on to say, “What does someone with no money have in common with someone with too much money to know what to do with? Life is no fun for either of them. If you have too much money it doesn’t matter what you buy…everything just gets boring.” He explains that he and his clients wanted to figure out something to do where they could have fun, so they could feel something. His adult life has become devoid of joy, so he hearkened back to the games he enjoyed playing with his friends as a young boy. He justifies the brutality by pointing out that no one was forced to play. These explanations actually weaken the impact of the series, because they feel like something just tacked on to the ending to explain to viewers that what they’ve just seen has some social relevance and that rich people have no idea what poor people go through – and see them as disposable and easily replaceable.
Some reviewers have compared Squid Game to Hunger Games and the Japanese action-thriller, Battle Royale, both of which focus on a dangerous competition where the only way to win is for all other contestants to die. But the fact that these players are not forced to play, puts this on a completely different plane. Participants have simply decided that their odds of survival here (187-1 after the first game) is far better than their chances out in the real world.
I often felt while watching that the income inequality stuff was just a thin veneer to justify the violence and carnage. Perhaps that’s because I’ve seen similar themes in numerous other TV shows and movies. A few people I know in their early 20s, however, are firmly in the “insightful social commentary” camp, so maybe it’s a generational thing.
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