Sarcastic Series Review: Squid Game

Okay its official I’m one of those guys who likes Korean shows now. But can you blame me! While western production has been concentrating on issues that are very twitter focused, such as political correctness and how whoever their president right now is, is the anti-Christ, the rest of the world seems to look at that and go…yeah not for me.

While Korean shows on the other hand focus on more universal issues such as income inequality and late stage capitalism (America has these issues as well, but they’re in denial). Between the Oscar winning ‘Parasite’ and today’s topic of Squid game, South Korea seems to be mirroring something that most people already know, that maybe we have too many billionaires.

But I’m getting ahead of myself, let’s start at the beginning. Our story follows Seong Gi-hun a down on his luck gambling addict, still living with his mom and finding it hard to stay relevant in the life of his daughter, who now lives with his ex-wife and new husband.

Needless to say, it’s hard to feel too much sympathy for Seong Gi-hun seeing as how a lot of his issues stem from his gambling problem, but hey in his mind all his problems arise from a lack of money and this is the only way he knows how to at least try to make it big.

But a strange opportunity arises for him one day in the train station, when a sharply dressed man offers to pay him obscene amounts of money if he can beat him at children’s game of throwing paper on the ground (man boomers had to find creative ways to entertain themselves) but there’s a catch each time Seong Gi-hun loses the sharply dressed man gets to slap him across the face.

I mean no amount of money is worth putting up with that smug face

Now I found this whole sequence to be immensely entertaining, not because I like seeing someone getting slapped across the face repeatedly, but because this one scene foreshadows the events to come perfectly. Once the game is done and Seong Gi-hun gets his money, the man offers him a strange business card and tells him that if he’s interested there’s a more elaborate game he can play like this but for an even more elaborate sum of money.

There be spoilers ahead!

So right of the bat we know what’s coming up, it’s a ‘death game’ concept. Not something unheard of for people who’ve heard of battle royal, the Dangan Ronpa series or you know fortnite!

true evil!

But the best part about the squid game is that the participants choose to participate in the games. And this is important, because ultimately this speaks to something that we all know, but sometimes fail to acknowledge, that our lives are the results of the choices we make.

Seong Gi-hun decides to join the Squid game along with 455 others and this is where we are introduced to the rest of the main cast. There’s Seong Gi-hun’s childhood friend who fell to debt because of some questionable business decisions, Kang Sae-byeok a north Korean defector, Ali a Pakistani immigrant who can I just say had perhaps the saddest storyline of them all.

And there is also the old man who is given the number 1 to participate in the games who is way too old to be there and we’ll call Mr.1.

The first game the 456 participants take place in is called ‘red light, green light’ a common enough children’s game in which the players are allowed to move when the  light is green and stand still for the red light. But unlike the kid’s game, if you get caught while the light is red, you end up dead!

But you don’t need me to explain the show to you, you’ve already seen it let’s answer some questions instead.

Is it worth the hype?

I’d say yes, the show is well made to say the least, and it does flaunt a strangely appealing astatic, with the bright pink and green uniforms and façade of childish wonder in the game rooms with the sinister undercurrent of mass murder.

Also numbered suits! dapper yet totalitarian.

Is it deep?

Again I’d have to agree, while none of the concepts are unheard of, they do stick to the themes well. The main social issue of income inequality comes of well. And I think it tackles something else too:

We all know the old saying that money can’t buy you happiness, which is true. But what money can do is make a lot of things that make you unhappy go away. And that is something I  believe comes of well from the show. A lot of the participants believe that the money is worth dying for, because they cannot imagine living without it. but towards the end of the show we see that the money was most definitely not worth it.