I just finished watching this series on Netflix. It starts out seeming a bit like the Hunger Games but with more commentary about current society/economics (albeit in Korea), but then goes in a number of interesting directions. Very very watchable and fun. I can see why it’s so popular.
One thing that I didn’t understand at all:
how was the cop’s missing brother also the front man, and also the winner of the games 5 or so years ago, but also had been living in a tiny apartment until just recently when he went missing? Does that make sense to anyone?
Regarding other twists/turns/characters:
I totally called 001 being not who he seemed, although frankly it was pretty darn obvious. I wonder if he had systems in place to keep from being killed in any of the earlier games? I thought both the main female players (north korean and dumped-by-gangster) were particularly interesting and well acted characters, although after the pairing off for marbles, I thought we would never see dumped-by-gangster again, and it would turn out she was also a mole or a plant or something.
Also, is the playground “squid game” a real thing? Because tapping your foot on a spot that is mere inches from the boundary just doesn’t seem that hard…
mrAru and I watched it, and found parts of it annoying while still being interesting.
Annoying, Dumped by Gangster woman - damn you screech a lot and are whiney. Everything you say makes me distrust you - all you do is trash others and say how great you are, and offer sex up. We were hoping she would get killed the entire time.
Missing Brother Front Man - I can see him staying in a small apartment as a cover, he might have not actually been Front Man all that time, he could have been Square Face Dude until that guy got killed off for doing something wrong, working his way up to being Front Man.
001 we didn’t think he was anything but a sick old guy wanting to leave a bunch of money to his family, and thought that he bought it for the marble game.
We really liked the North Korean, and wanted her to win, and hoped the married couple would win. We thought that more people would survive, not that it was a whittle them down to 1 survivor.
And damn the rich guys were all reprehensible!
Squid game I thought was played by more than 2 people, a bunch of kids and 1 ‘it’ person trying to get to the head. At least without going and watching episode 1 again, I could have sworn it was a bunch of kids in the beginning scene with the game.
Yeah, she was extremely annoying… but I was actually really impressed by the acting job, as it was clear the character (as opposed to the actor) was putting up a front, but you could absolutely sense her mounting fear and desparation. I won’t say I “warmed up to her” as the show progressed, but I certainly appreciated her more.
but what about his mega riches? Did he win $45M (I think dividing everything by 1000 gives an approximate exchange rate?) five years ago and… no one ever noticed? Did he blow it all on drugs and girls or something? Pretty hard to imagine, given the reactions the players we saw had, that someone would come out the winner of the game and immediately say “hey, are you guys hiring?”
In fact, I thought there was going to be one more gut-punch of a twist in which the winning contestant couldn’t claim their winnings unless they worked for the game for a few years… the motivation being that if they want to take all their money and turn around and try to get the whole evil syndicate investigated/brought down, as our hero is clearly doing, at that point they’re in so deep that they would just be condemning themself. So when cop asked his brother “why”, the answer was “because I’m finally just days away from actually getting the money I went through hell to win five years ago” or something. (I don’t think that theory really holds together…)
As it is, I just can’t really construct a timeline for front man’s recent life that makes any sense at all. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any reason for the recent winners not to either go public, or spend some of their money trying to take down the organization which they (presumably) hate.
I’d also like to know more about the motivation of the workers. How are they recruited? It has to be an extremely miserable job, both in terms of living conditions etc, and also spending all day watching people literally ripped to shreds. But we never saw any of them react even slightly to the insane violence. You’d think some of them would be barfing through their masks at least the first time they witnessed a game up close in person.