Squid Game: Humans Are...

 "We are not horses... we are humans."

Well, that finale was good... until it wasn't! I can see what they were going for... but the finale needed more drama, not for the suspense to end early and the rest of the episode to consist of a postscript, however satisfying it is to see Gi-hun's daughter, and Jun-ho, become rich, showing that the Front Man has some ethics. 

It started well, though, with the suspense of the final game. The baby's father, in threatening to kill his own child, made sure that he deserved to die, as indeed he did. It was more of a surprise to see Gi-hun die, but on reflection it makes sense. He's a terrible father too, in parallel... and for him to win twice would stretch credibility. The whole scene played out brilliantly and with maximum suspense, and was positively vertiginous at times. Heights are really not my thing...

No-eul, after being on the verge of suicide, gets a nice little hint of hope. But it's not an entirely happy ending. The bad guys get away, and THAT final scene...

This is a flawed final episode. But it has its good points, and at least the characters are well-served.

Squid Game: Halloween Party

 "Put me back in the game..."

After an exciting first episiode, this one is quite blatantly about putting the pieces into place and getting Gi-hun back in the game as we knew would happen. It does the job, and is still good television, but it's somewhat functional and hardly up there with the last episode. And the way Choi and Jun-ho are recruitred, alongside a massive paramilitary force, feels a bit too awkwardly easy.

Still, there's good stuff here. It's heartbreaking how Jun-ho's mum feels her other son has deliberately cut her out, but Jun-ho can't tell her the truth. There's a little girl with cancer and a reminder, as per last season, and indeed Breaking Bad, that for a country not to have a public healthcare system is as evil as anything Front Man does, if not more so.

Intriguinly, too, we have another North Korean defector, No-eul, homeless and desperate, who is looking for her daughter and agrees to accept the usual card and meet in the usualplace... but the twist is that she's a guard, not a contestant. Nice twist. I assume we'll be following her throughout the season. The guards are as manipulated as the players.

But the heart of the episode, as Gi-hun (and I don't care about the phone call; he's still a terrible father) and Front Man verbally spar, Gi-hun calling out Front Man's right-wing crap about how the players have a free choice. Of course they don't; inequality exists, and people don't beome desperate and out of options because they enjoy it. And that's Squid Game to a tee: at its root, it's deeply political.

Still, I'm hoping for a return to the usual form next time.