Squid Game: Hell

 “Out here is worse!”

This is an interesting way to do a second episode in many senses: we’ve seen the premise, and now it’s suddenly taken away as the surviving players (narrowly) decide to leave the game and return to their lives. Yet the episode is crucial in getting us to know the characters and where they’re coming from; to believe that they are so desperate, by the end, to return to the games; and to show yet again the grinding effects of poverty that form the underlying theme of the series.

So we have Ali, the polite and good  immigrant trying to make a decent life for his wife and child in a society that seeks to rip him off and keep him down at every turn. Yet his boss (nicely done industrial accident, incidentally) has not been able to afford to pay anyone for months

We have Sang-woo, high flyer turned embezzler who is wanted by the police, in more debt than anyone and has all but gambled away his mother’s home.

We have the desperate North Korean defector who wants to bring her family across, and is prepared to be as badass as she has to be in order to achieve that. 

We have the nice old man, dying and lonely, who can either find meaning with the games or end his days alone.

And finally, we have Gi-hun, whose mother is desperately ill with diabetes but cannot afford to be treated because South Korea, incredibly for a first world country, has no health system. And if that’s not bad enough, his estranged wife will soon be taking his daughter out of the country with her new husband and he will never see her again- because of poverty meaning he is unable to support her. To add insult to injury, his ex’s husband tries to throw money at him to go away.

We don’t need the games, or the death. The Dickensian poverty of modern South Korea- just like the UK- is horrific enough. This is gripping and well made telly, games or no games.