Summary: Gi Hun is a gambler who is down on his luck. He end up participating in a game involving 456 competitors who play children's games with their lives on the line. After six rounds, Gi Hun is ultimately victorious, but has lost many friends along the way, including his childhood friend Sang Woo, a pickpocket Sae Byeok, and a kind old man Il Nam. He wins the prize money, but finds himself depressed after returning to his life. He discovers that Il Nam was the creator of the game and faked his own death. Il Name dies of natural causes after revealing to Gi Hun that he created the game because he was rich and bored. Gi Hun initially plans to leave the country to see his daughter, but changes his mind and decides to do something to stop the game.
The Good: As everyone who has seen this show has said, this is a magnificent premise. Gathering up poor people in desperate need for a solution to their problems to fight to the death while playing simple children's games is a creative idea. It's very unsettling to see life and death stakes placed on games that you've played as a kid, and the psychological horror aspect of the show was very well done. I was unsettled and plagued with dread and anxiety at numerous points during the show, which I'm sure was the intent. The show is very successful at bringing this idea to life. The acting is another key aspect of this show. As I'll discuss later, I don't think that the characters or relationships were very well defined, and I was also unimpressed with the lack of suspense in the show. However, the show still managed to entertain me in spite of these flaws, and much of that has to do with the excellent acting from almost all cast members. These simple characters were brought to life by the performances, and even though the characters were lacking depth, I found myself invested in them and hoping that they would survive almost entirely because of the acting. For example, characters like Sae Byeok and Ali weren't given very much development and I often felt disconnected from them. However, the acting elevated these characters and made me care about them in spite of the lackluster writing. I was sad when they died because the acting sold me on the characters and made them feel real to me. Additionally, the acting was key in making the various games enjoyable. Both the main cast and the random other players were all tremendous in these scenes. The acting is what made me feel the anxiety and horror of these games, and that made for some very compelling television. This show is really effective at showing us how horrible life is for the poor who are unable to make a steady income. I can't say that it masterfully explores these themes - "Parasite" explores similar ideas with far greater effectiveness - but it does a very good job of highlighting the struggles of the poor. Episodes 1, 2, and 9 in particular do an outstanding job of portraying the misery that you feel out in the real world when you don't have enough money to get by. This is an easy show to binge-watch. It's tailor-made for people who enjoy binging with a simple, fun story to follow along. It won't do anything special but it will make for a great experience if you love to binge. The Bad: This show is easy to watch but very hard to emotionally invest in. The concept is wonderful but it is let down by the poorly written characters and relationships. The characters in this show are shockingly simplistic, defined by only a single trait. Very few characters are given more depth than this one trait, and it makes them feel shallow and undefined. I don't feel like I got to know these characters because of how underdeveloped they are. For example, Ali's only bit of development is how trusting he is, and this core trait is all that defines him. We never learned anything more about who he is. When characters are limited like this, it prevents me from ever feeling like I truly know who they are. This also gets in the way of memorable relationships forming between characters. When the motivations, personalities, and morality of characters are poorly defined, it makes it tough to buy into their actions and decisions, and by extension, their relationships with each other. For example, take the relationship between Sang Woo and Ali. It is difficult to understand why Ali trusted him so much and why Sang Woo formed a bond with Ali knowing that he will have to kill him in the future. My detachment with the characters results in a detachment with the bonds they form with each other. The biggest issue with the poorly defined characters and relationships is how it impacts the key emotional moments in the show. When characters died and when conflict erupted, I didn't find myself feeling the moments as much as I should have. Some of these moments should have been devastating but they don't have the impact they needed. These include Sae Byeok's death (not impactful because she is hardly defined and I don't buy into her relationship with Gi Hun) and the conflict between Gi Hun and Sang Woo (not written well enough to justify how heated it got after the fifth game). As much as I enjoyed the games, they were lacking in suspense. The acting sold me on the horror, but I was never on the edge of my seat hoping for the main characters to be okay. Part of that is because I wasn't invested in the characters, but I also think that the execution of the drama left a lot to be desired. For a show that has almost all of the main characters die, it was absurdly predictable. At the start of each game I quickly determined who would live and who would die, and there were never any surprises that suggested I would be wrong. I also have to look quizzically at the amount of times Gi Hun barely made it in the last few seconds. Gi Hun finished last second in almost every game. The biggest problem with this is that we know Gi Hun is the main character and will likely survive, so there is no tension at all when it is teased that he will lose. What's more surprising is that the side characters - the ones who genuinely could die - are very rarely teased with the possibility of death in these games. That removes a lot of suspense from the games and transforms them from tense life-or-death experiences into a mindless setpiece that goes on for far too long. The worst case of tension-less games is the tug of war round. All of the main characters were on two different teams, and they didn't even face each other. So obviously, both of the important teams would win. There was no tension whatsoever, and yet the tug of war game is focused on for a whopping 25 minutes without a single drop of suspense. That's a very poor use of time. Some specific parts of the story did not work. The Jun Ho plot line ended up being entirely pointless and it added nothing to the story. Even when compared to the other shallow characters in the show, Jun Ho is woefully underdeveloped. I knew nothing about him for the entire show and he felt like a useless addition. I didn't care about his relationship with his brother because we were never shown it, and I knew too little about him to get any suspense out of his undercover position as a guard. This plot line was a chore to watch every time it came up, and it did not even go anywhere worthwhile. All that we got was a twist about the Front Man, which was about as meaningful and impactful as a wet fart. The Front Man's identity meant nothing in the long run, and the "drama" of him killing his own brother was flat and completely underdeveloped. Overall, this was a poorly written, boring storyline. The other big miss was the final twist that Il Nam was the creator of the game. This twist was completely unnecessary and added nothing to the show at all. All it accomplished was damaging the one relationship in the show that I found to be well written, also ruining the single most powerful moment of the whole show when Il Nam "died" at the end of "Gganbu". Furthermore, this ending twist revealed the reasoning behind the games, and it was deeply underwhelming. To learn that the games were made because rich people were bored is the most lazy, uninspired, and empty direction that the show could have gone in. The ending of the show left a bad taste in my mouth and it makes it difficult for me to recommend this show knowing that it doesn't end well. As a final note, the VIPs were terrible. Absolutely terrible. Awful acting, awful writing, and the flattest characters of the entire show. Best Episodes: E01 Red Light, Green Light: The first episode is an engaging pilot. It effectively shows us the plight of the main character, and builds to a chaotic climax as we see the brutality of the red light, green light game. E02 Hell: A powerful episode showing us the horrifying reality that these characters live in, while also addressing the all-important question: why are these people willingly competing in this game? E06 Gganbu: The marbles game was a spectacular piece of emotional storytelling. This is the one game that felt like it had real stakes, and seeing the onslaught of deaths at the episode's end was brutal. Worst Episodes: E04 Stick to the Team: The two main setpieces in this episode were hugely disappointing. Tug of War was the weakest game of the six, and the nighttime fight was shot very poorly. E05 A Fair World: The whole episode was marred by focusing so much on a story that was very difficult to invest in. Thankfully there were some good character scenes or this would have been a total failure. E08 Front Man: This episode had some huge moments, but I was never invested enough to really feel them. Much of this episode fell flat as a result. E09 One Lucky Day: The season finale started off wonderfully and was really strong for a while. But everything after that ill-fated Il Nam twist was a colossal letdown and it ruined what could have been an excellent episode. Character of the Season: Gi Hun. Conclusion: "Squid Game" is a weird phenomenon of a show. To me, this show is simply decent, a fun 9-episode watch that is riddled with significant storytelling problems. To me, this is not a show that's particularly worth talking about because it doesn't do anything exceptional. But this show has been executed in a way that appeals perfectly to the audience of binge-watchers, an audience that is increasing in size every day. As a result this show has seen a spectacular explosion in popularity. I can't say I'm surprised that this show was so successful. After all, a simple premise, simplistic but well-acted characters, and an engaging mystery filled with empty surprises is unfortunately enough to satisfy 90% of people who casually watch television. But much like with other recent shows like "The Mandalorian", I am concerned that these high-budget, short-length TV shows are going to become the new mainstream for television. The beauty of TV shows is that they are much longer than movies and they have to be budgeted carefully to be successful, resulting in a reliance on quality writing, acting, and emotion to keep the audience invested. If length decreases and budget increases, then there isn't much separating TV shows from movies, and then there's a scary possibility that future TV shows will all feel like elongated movies. And that takes me to how I feel about "Squid Game" overall and my biggest concerns about it. It's a decent experience and an enjoyable binge, but it steers television in a direction that sacrifices quality to appeal to the masses. I find this show to be merely average in terms of quality, and I am deeply concerned about what TV shows like these mean for the future of television.
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Aaron DhillonJust a university student who loves to watch TV. And analyze it way too much. Archives
March 2024
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