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: O∆□

 "You are not that kind of person..."

Wow, that's quite the penultimate episode. Yes, we can see the pieces moving together for the finale, as Jun-ho, No-eul's erstwhile companion and, most dramatically, No-eul herself all get closer to their goal. Meanwhile, the VIPs continue to act as an evil chorus, hopefully leading to their much-deserved comeuppance.

But the game... oh boy! Last episode the remaining six players formed a pact against Ji-hun, the baby and its father... but it's not so simple. The game consists of having to push at least one person off each of three pillars, which sounds simple... but the six can't afford to push more than one other person off per pillar, or one of them must die. And that means problems. How to separate Ji-hun and the baby? How to push someone off without being taken with them? It's truly gripping drama.

Interestingly, Ji-hun's rather successful divide-and-conquer tactics all derive from his morality- shown here as a strength, not a weakness. He won't kill during the night, when he can. He recoils with disgust at the violence shown by the amoral players to the "lunchbox". And he'll do anything for the baby... perhaps somewhat counterbalancing the fact that, let us not forget, he's a terrible father.

And so the six perish. And then there were two men and a baby...

Ji-hun morals. Won't kill at start, protect baby good father, 

Squid Game: 222

 "Do you still have faith in people...?"

This episode so so clever, so full of mind games, drama, agony, from start to finish. It's utterly gripping, and one can almost forgive the cartoonishness and scenery chewing of the "VIPs", which is rather out of place. But everything else is so damn good that all is forgiven.

The game continues from last episodes, and it's an edge-of-one's-seat bloodbath, with players now openly killing each other for advantage in an example of rather poor behaviour from most concerned, with the exception of Ji-hun... and the admirable Jun-hee realises her situation is hopeless and sacrifices herself, nobly, for her baby...

And so we're left with nine men and a baby, with most of the men being nasty pieces of work, made to vote to continue by means of mind games, and plotting to kill Jun-ho and the baby... until Jun-ho is subjected to mind games in turn by the Front Man... who reveals himself to a shocked Ji-hun as Jun-ho's brother. Oh, and more mind games cause No-eul to return to the island.

But it all comes to a head as Captain Park realises he's discovered, all hell breaks loose, and Jun-ho makes a final desperate search for the island. This season may be a little uneven, but when it's good... it's very, very good. The drama, the tension, the mind games... it's almost as evil as a real reality show!

Squid Game: It's Not Your Fault

 "Everyone here is a player..."

Before I get on to the episode, I have a bone to pick with Netflix as a hard of hearing person who prefers to watch in Korean with English subtitles: the VIPs speak English, and there are no subtitles available unless you're watching it dubbed. Not cool, Netflix.

However, this gripe aside, this is a powerful and moving episode, as those in-between games often are. Plot threads are advanced- suspicions increase surrounding Captain Park; Jun-ho locates the island where he was shot; No-eul arranges her exit; Min-su gets his satisfying revenge against his tormentor in drug withdrawal. 

But the real meat of this episode is the character stuff between Jun-Hee, Mrs Jang and Ji-hun. Mrs Jang, fresh from killing her son, focuses on looking after Jun-lee and the baby, helping the new mother and begging everyone, fruitlessly, not to vote for the games to continue. Then there's her deep and fascinating conversation with Ji-hun, begging him to look after the baby (which the baby's father is notably disinclined to do). And then, shockingly, after she confides her guilt about her son, she dies by suicide. And Ji-hun decides to look after Jun-lee and the baby, giving him a sense of purpose and bringing him out of depression.

Meanwhile we have the VIPs, rather over-the-top in manner and utterly, gleefully amoral, as a kind of Greek chorus. It is they who suggest the baby be considered a player, having to take part in the game... which is particularly evil. Ji-hun is positively heroic... but another player, right at the end, most certainly is not.

This episode may not quite match the last one, but it's bloody good.

Squid Game: The Starry Night

 "Hang on in there just a bit longer...."

Wow. What an episode.

We begin with No-eul showing a ruthlessness that many of the players in the game of hide and seek do not- and the rest of the episode is dedicated entirely to said game. 

My only slight criticism here is that the point is that anyone could die (and does die!) in the games... except Ji-hun, whose plot armour is impervious. He spends the episode being simply unable, mostly decent chap (though terrible father) that he is, to kill anyone. But we know he has to survive, and so it's inevitable that he ends up killing in self-defence. And his deeply felt guilt... yeah, we get the point. Let's not push that too much further, shall we?

It's an interesting dilemma: how to most effectively use the only player with plot armour, and for whom there can be no real tension...?

Ji-hun aside, though... this episode is devastating.

Myung-gi, with his sense, and Nam-gyu, with his total lack of conscience, make a gruesomely efficient team, working out the best strategy- collaborate and jointly kill two people. But Nam-gyu- it bloody would be him- also works out that it's in their overall interests to keep on killing, reducing the opposition on both teams to their long term advantage. Wow. Fortune favours the sociopath, it seems. I'm sure he'll get his delicious comeuppance.

Speaking of comeuppances, Seon-nyeo, that cynical quack, gets hers. Good. As a direct contrast to this, we have the solidarity of Jun-hee (who of course goes into labour at the worst possible moment), the old Geum-ja and the heroic Hyun-ju, who gets a heroic, selfless death here. Yes, one may raise an eyebrow at the only trans character being killed... but it's a very heroic, noble death, saving the two other ladies with whom, pointedly, she bonded while they were all in the ladies' loo.

Geum-ja, though... oh! Her tragedy, inevitable though it begins to seem by the end, hits hard.

As does the episode. Wow.

Squid Game: Keys and Knives

 "Let the new game begin..."

And so we enter the final six episodes, a little later than intended... but here we go. I'm glad we got the "previously on", but this follows directly after the dramatic end of Season Two- Gi-hun is traumatised, stunned, unable to move (well, he's handcuffed) and everyone still alive is back in the game... with the prize money now increased because of all the deaths, and all the corpses hung in full view of the players in advance of the first game. Lovely.

Elsewhere, suspicions are beginning to be aroused about Captain Park, who is in close contact with Front Man. No-eul plans proceed apace, ruthlessly and contemptuously wrapping up the organ harvesting operation and giving a blood transfusion. We O negatives are clearly all right proper badasses...

Sub-plots unfold, but there's also much anticipation of the next game, to play out in the next episode. Hide and seek, where the hiders MUST kill a seeker within thirty minutes, and the hiders must survive that long, or escape. And naturally, the script plays the most evil possible mind games with the viewer in whom it chooses to be on which side.

Most interestingly, though, the traumatised Gi-hun is one of the seekers. Can he possibly kill? Regardless, I'm glad to be finally watching this final season. This is a damn good start.

Squid Game: Friend or Foe

 "We surrender...!"

Well, we weren'rt exactly expecting a happy ending, were we...?

I'm in two minds about this finale. 

One problem is that, while I've no issues with a finale leaving plot threads to be resolved in the following season or even ending on a cliffhanger, we get no sense of closure at all here. The boat captain is a traitor! Young-Il is a traitor! All those who joined in the rebellion against the guards and came close to destroying the whole operatioin are shot... except Ji-hun, who is taunted by Front Man. And then it ends with the promise of Season Three. This feels more like a mid-season "finale" before a short break than a proper finale. As a finale, it fails.

Then there's the fact that so much of the running time is just people shooting each other. a LOT. And it gets very repetitive and dull.

And yet... there's lots of good stuff. The earlier scenes, as the players work out how to survive a night of blatantly licenced free for all killing, are gripping. The announcement of those players who died in the gents' toilet, and the extra money added to the prize total, is a clever psychological moment. But I'm not sure I find it realistic that so many would have agreed to Gi-hun's plan to attack the guards, take their guns and storm the control room because, well, it's completely insane, isn't it...?

And yet... it certainly works very well thematically. The "games" are a blatant metaphor for red-in-tooth-and-claw, unrestrained, free market capitalism with its winners, its losers, its brutality, and its harsh unfairness in such an unequal world. So it feels grimly fitting that there should be the illusion of hope, but only an illusion. And that the enemy should be masked, faceless and limitless.

One thing is truly brilliant, though: the shot from above of the gunfight in that M. C. Escher set...

Squid Game: O X

 "Your money, your girl, your life, they're all mine..."

And with this, the most brutal episode yet, the stakes are even higher.

Next episode is the finale, so naturally Jun-ho and his undeerlings, with the help of a drone, seem to find the island, albeit explosively. But, among the players, there's so much drama and so much anguish.The game of Mingle, which lasts for several rounds, is the most evil yet and, for the first time, we see the death of a non-redshirt. We also see, with this being a game that rewards such things, unexpected moments of weakness and... yes, ruthlessness. We won't see In-ho in the same way again, likeable as he claims to be.

This game evokes cliques and tribes, as in school, and the dynamic is very much that- popularity, ruthlessness and, in the horrifying final round where there's intense competition for a limited number of rooms, ruthlessness. But perhaps the intended metaphor, as ever, is the free market.

Things are no less intense during the vote on whether to continue. After much drama and tension, it's revealed that there will be another vote in the morning... and, as soon as Ji-hun sees they've all been provided with metal forks, he sees the horrifying implication: they need to survive the night. And so arguments turn to violence, leading to atruly shocking final shot...

Squid Game: One More Game

"Only 110 people died? Is that all?"

We begin with the tense resolution of the second game, in which the characters we're following get toshow their character, and loads of redshirts get gunned down, all with so much tension. And we end with the beginning of the third game. But so much happens in=-between in what is yet another extraordinary episode of Squid Game.

Plot threads advance- the search for the island continues, while No-eul is assaulted and threatened by other guards. We get to know some of the characters better- Young-mi, the desperate pregnant girl, and Hyun-ju, the poor trans woman whose life has been destroyed by scum and their vile bigotry. Everyone playing the game has a backstory, a reason to be desperate, and a reason to keep playing. Some have only themselves to blame, but others have been through real tragedy.

Which is what makes the central scene of the episode sopowerful as the players vote again, and more decisevely, to continue, with much tension and must impassionned debate. One more game. For many, the prize money accumulated this far is simply not enough to save them from destruction. And so the brutal, deathly competition needs to continue, despite the horrible risks.

The subtext is powerful: the games stand, I suppose, for the free market. And yes, people vote, so they have a choice, on the surface. But is a choice made from desperation truly a free choice...?

Squid Game: Six Legs

 "I pressed the O button because of you..."

It's a fascinating dynamc as we await the second game, and the paradoxical implications are discussed. Everyone wants Ji-hun to help them through the games and he wants to do so... but if he does, no one is eliminated, and so things just continue. No wonder they end up changing the second game to one where this can't happen. But I get ahead of myself.

There are other sub-plots, of course. In shooting wounded players dead, Noi-eul is deliberately sabotaging the trade in body parts as happened last season. Jun-ho is still wanting to fing the island and the clock is ticking now the games have begun, but he still has his team. And we begin to know more and more about the various plsyers, from the rather nice trans character to several more crypto victims and, indeed, marines. There's a pregnant woman. And... there are a lot of redshirts.

The second game is complex, brutal and unforgiving, as indeed is the process of choosing the teams of five, a nice little character scene. But we see the first two teams panic, fail and get gunned down before the episode ends with it being the turn of some characters we actually care about...

Once again, though, this is a story of inequality, greed, prejudice and morality with a lot going on. Jun-ho has his ethics, but his ethics are meaningfully questioned throughout, not least by himself. Superb telly, as ever.

Mind you, this is episode four of seven, with Jun-ho and his team waiting in the wings, and we're only at the start of the second games. I suspect things will go rather differently this season...

Squid Game: 001

 "Can I just have what you're wearing instead? I like pink."

Wow. And with this the season lights on fire. This is devilishly clever telly in a number of ways.

To begin with, we have twoi narratives- Gi-hun adjust to the fact that he's on the islans again, while in the B plot Jun-ho and the others follow the tracker in his teeth in order to find him. But, in a smart bit of misdirection, it's suddenly revealred that the two sets of scenes don't take place at the same time... and that Gi-hun removed the tracker, that he'd gone to such lengths to get, in advance of the first game. Why?! I'm sure this will be revisited.

We see all the sights and dynamics once again. The Escher staircase; the striking costumes of the guards; another set of interesting characters. We have a mother and son both playing to clear the son's debts- I strongly suspect they'll ultimately be pitted against each other. Then we have a trans character, an old friens of Gi-hun's, an unscrupulous rapper called Thanos(!), and a crypto scammer (all crypto is a scam, people; don't do it) whose justifications for his behaviour suspiciously echo those of Front Man. People have a "choice"...

But the truly delicious bit is the effect of Gi-hun, with his experience, as a catalyst. He wants to help people, but people will be people. He and another lady risk their lives to save number 444... but No-eul shoots him nonetheless. And his warning people, duiring this year'sgame of Red Light, Green Light, that those whio do not remain still will be shot, is met only with mockery. And afterwards he is met with suspicion by many. We liuve in a greedy and conspiracy-addled world today, alas.

It's by one vote, of course: this is television drama. But, although the players will always be free to vote after every game whether to keepplaying or not, the result of the vote is inevitable.

Again, wow.

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.

Squid Game: Bread and Lottery

 "Let's play a game..."

At last Squid Game is back... and wow. That was quite the first episode, brilliantly shot and fullof perffectly paced tdension and intrigue. This time both Gi-hun and Jun-ho are searching for the island, the game and the invitation, at first fruitlessly and then with deep drama.

Jun-ho, now being a humble trafficcop and not particularly rich, struggles stoically in his quest to painstakingly locate the island. Gi-hun... well, let us pause firstly to observe what a rubbish dad he is: let ius not forget that. Yet, while his search for the mysterious man at the subway stations seems similarly fruitless, Gi-hun now has resources. And blimey, he's changed: determined, basass and, as we later see, with nerves of steel.

The episode is devilishly clever as it intertwines the two linked quests, although admittedly it's an awfully convenient coincidence that the speeding Ji-hun should be stopped by Jun-ho's colleauge.

When we find the man wigth the suit, though.... wow. First, we see his little trick, offering the desperate a choine of bread (sensible: a certain hope of food) and lottery scratchcard, mocking the irrational yet perhaps inspiring hope of the desperate. But when he catches Gi-hun's two underlings, later Ji-hun himself, and plays those riveting games of Russian roulette... this is gripping television, although of the two musical accompaniments I rather preferred Puccini.

The end confrontation is utterly perfect, with the man losing, yes, but in playing by the rules of the game regardless of the consequences he wins a victory of sorts.

The perfect start. More please.

Squid Game: One Lucky Day

 "I am NOT a horse!"

And so it ends, unexpectedly in several ways. Gi-hun wins, as we knew he would... and then has to go back to real life, and its tragedies. Money will not bring his dead mother back. But, given that he takes a year to try his daughter, and abandons her at the end to compete suicidally again, it's suddenly clear that Gi-hun, this apparently decent man, is just a crap dad and always was. Sod him.

The episode is full of surprises, not least that the final game- the eponymous squid game itself, of course- takes up relatively little of the episode, and is pretty much just a dirty scrap between Ji-hun and Sang-wu, with Sang-wu ultimately killing himself in defeat to ensure that, if Gi-hun has to win, he should at least win the prize.

Before long, though, Gi-hun is back in the real world, and his mother is dead: all that money is mreaningless. And then we get the big revelation- the old man we all loved so much is neither as nice nor as dead as we'd previously supposed. But I'm rather afraid I lose all sympathy for Gi-hun before this point. I know he's depressed, but he's not even tried to see his daughter for a year. Plus his hairdo is stupid.

This is an interesting choice, to make him suddenly unlikeable,and an interesting one. I'm not sure I like it, but it's an admirable and brave move to do something so abrasive and challenge not only our expectation od the happy ending but our liking for Gi-hun, who perhaps never was the good man we thought..

Squid Game: Front Man

 "YOU!"

A strangely short episode in the run-up before the final game gives us lots of tension from two angles- that of Jun-ho's attempt to avoid capture by Front Man and of the last night for the three finalists before the final game. It is, of course, utterly gripping.

Jun-ho, of course, is in a no-win situation, and ends up in an unequal Mexican stand-off worthy of Tarantino, at the edge of a cliff-and almost (almost!) certainly ends up dead. It's a fitting ending to his sub-plot, but what gives it meaning is the huuuuuge revelation that Front Man is the very brother he came to found.

Then we have the clever character stuff between a dying Sae-byeok, Sang-woo and Gi-hun. It's all cleverly arranged, after a mockingly posh dinner like one of those formals at uni, that all three of them should spend the night armed with a knife. There's a clear indication that one of them will die, and it has to be the dying Sae-byeok, especially after her nice chat with Gi-hun. But the reason for her deayh is unexpected: Sang-woo is turning out to be unexpectedly villainous. You really hate him by this point.

This is top telly. The tension is electric for the finale.

Squid Game: VIPs

 “Ah, the real sixty-nine, huh?"

This is another firt class episode, fortunately not so heartbreaking. The penultimate game is most entertaining, and there's an intriguing twist in the arrival of the interestingly masked "VIPs", who proceed to bet on the game and, in one case, choose the wrong member of staff to sexually harass.

There's also the nature of the game- a bridge where half the steps are tempered glass, and half glass that will break. The tactics and strategy are fascinating, from the order they go in to the realisation that pushing is possible. There's the shock that Mi-Nyeo wasn't killed- and the fact that she dies (aww, I liked here!) but rather pleasingly takes Deok-Su with her. Good. This is all perfectly paced, dramatic entertainment, yet with heard. The suicide of the cruelly widowed number 69 is devastating.

So the survivors are Sae-byeok, Sang-woo and Gi-hun. Three left... and the undercover cop has escaped. Two episodes to go...

Squid Game: A Fair World

 “Everyone is equal…”

The mid-way point, and we get a very interesting episode with an underlying theme of equality. The cliffhanger is resolved, and a team including several women and an old man proves easily able to vanquish a team of arrogant young men. Gi-Hun persuades Deok-su with clever psychology that a night of peace is in order. And the team slowly starts to bond more, although not without friction.

But the most fascinating sub-plot involves the undercover cop, who discovers a secret organ-smuggling ring which is using the dioctor- and giving him clues to get an unfair advantage.When they're caught, it is this last point that the big boss finds unforgivable: all players must be equal, and unfair advantages are most certainly allowed. After all, it's been that way for years: this is by no means the first year the games have been played, as we and the cop discover.

At last we begin to get the first drips of revelation as to the backstory behind the games, as well as foregrounding a few more players whom we get to know a little more- a bloodthirsty priest and a gobby atheist woman. Let's home they acquire some actual character traits too.

This is intriguing. We're getting some answers as to what's going on, or beginning to...

Squid Game: Stick to the Team

 "I don't trust people..."

This is a superb episode- all peril, tension and dog eat dog action. And yet, by putting the characters under such stress and danger, it shows us so much about them as people.

The players really are put through the wringer here. Right after the last game they are deliberately put on short rations in order to generate friction and lethal fighting after lights out, following which it's straight into the next game in the morning- a tug of war. And this intensity is entertaining in itself. Far more interesting, though, is what is does to the people we've come to know, and their relationship. So Gi-Hun's gang of four from the end of last episode is strengthened, with even the old man (who seems to be forgetting his name bringing something to the table. And our North Korean defector seems to be joining the gang.

Meanwhile, Deok-Su, having no morals whatsoever, tries to survive by seizing alpha male status, making enemies in the process and losing his moll the morning after they have sex in the toilet. His chances of surviving the last episode are, I very much suspect, zero by the iron laws of television drama.

We end with a tug of war cliffhanger, as though the episode hasn't been emtertaining enough. And hrough it all there's the ever-present sublimity of the design, from the costumes to the Escher-esque staircases. Squid Game is getting better and better.

Squid Game: Red Light, Green Light

 “Would you like to play a game with me...?"

Yes; I've finally jumped on to the bandwagon. All the other series I'm blogging will continue, but Mrs Llamastrangler and myself will be watching this on most Fridays until we've done all nine episodes. So at last I'm starting to know what the fuss is about and hopefully understand some of those ubiquitous memes.

Essentially, before we even get to the premise, characters and themes, this is very well-directed, written and acted telly. Our main character, Gi-hun, is a poverty- and denbt-stricken fortysomething deadbeat dad and failure in life, who lives with and off his elderly mother. He has all sorts of character fkaws but means well, and is played superbly in an alternately comial and tragic performance from Lee Jung-jae, in a performance that had to be pitched perfectly for the whole thing to work.

We'll get to the gore in a bit, but this sereies is really about poverty. The poverty that grinds you down, steals your dignity, destroys your soul, removes your freedom and wastes yoiur life. There's some subtle politcal subtext here, in allowing us to see the unpleasant sides of desperate poverty, with its loan sharks, violence, humiliation and magical thinking that leads nowhere. Gi-hun getting slapped in the face for losing the game may be darkly funny, but the loan sharks are no better. There may be no humanity within the game, but there's none outside either.

The aesthetics of the games island are brilliant, with its bright, childlike colours, masked baddies and big boss ("Front Man") with his V mask and glasses of scotch. And the game itself is creepy; essentially What's The Time, Mr Wolf? with a big, creepy, plastic little girl. At first it's just eerie, but one player can't say still... and then he's shot. And things slowly build towards a massacre in which over half the debt-ridden, desperate players are killed.

This is brilliant. It reminds me, and I'm sure many others, of Saw. But the real horror here is poverty. A society without an adequate safety net is not a free society.