Squid Game

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brundlefly
Joined: Fri Jun 13, 2014 12:55 pm

Squid Game

#1 Post by brundlefly » Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:00 pm

It's everywhere right now and deserves to be: Hwang Dong-Hyuk's Squid Game is about as solid and satisfying a piece of entertainment as one could hope for on the darker end of the spectrum. Baldly manipulative, but it hits its beats like a champ so that the mix of certainty and surprise mostly lands square. (There's a major sore thumb late in the run, but that comes with ready-made excuses.) Unlike a lot of post-Lost, post-Hunger Games efforts, it gets what matters right: You care about the characters, even if every single one of them is annoying out of the gate. A very scarfable and self-contained nine episodes. On Netflix. (Second season and inevitable regrettable American remake to follow I'm sure.)

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domino harvey
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Re: TV of 2021

#2 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:00 pm

And there goes the last corner of the internet not talking about the show!

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brundlefly
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Re: TV of 2021

#3 Post by brundlefly » Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:06 pm

If nothing else, it's worth watching to find out where all those .gifs are from.

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swo17
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Re: TV of 2021

#4 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:52 pm

Unsurprisingly, this is the first I'm hearing of it

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soundchaser
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Re: TV of 2021

#5 Post by soundchaser » Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:24 pm

I'm disappointed to discover it's not an actual game show involving competitive squids. (Which could slide itself nicely into my British panel show comfort food regimen.)

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knives
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Re: TV of 2021

#6 Post by knives » Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:40 pm

It’s not the third Splatoon?

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domino harvey
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Re: TV of 2021

#7 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:55 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 2:52 pm
Unsurprisingly, this is the first I'm hearing of it
I'd say it's as pervasively discussed right now as Game of Thrones was at its peak, with the difference being how quickly and out of nowhere this hype train came into the station. Would love to have your online regimen to be able to evade it all, though!

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Never Cursed
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Re: The Squid Game

#8 Post by Never Cursed » Mon Oct 11, 2021 5:57 pm

I mean, it's the same thing with all the trendy Netflix/HBO Max shows of the month (Tiger King, Bridgerton, Mare of Easttown, White Lotus, etc), right?

Also for what it's worth, I think it's just "Squid Game," minus the definite article

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domino harvey
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Re: Squid Game

#9 Post by domino harvey » Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:02 pm

I never saw anyone remake Mare of Easttown in their Animal Crossing villages! But yeah, streaming is homogenizing shared cultural experiences into predictable box-checks these days

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swo17
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Re: Squid Game

#10 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:22 pm

My internet regimen is basically just this forum. And all my Facebook friends are squares

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dustybooks
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Re: Squid Game

#11 Post by dustybooks » Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:38 pm

I’m with swo in terms of my media intake but because I have a 24 year old employee I was unable to completely avoid this. I still don’t actually know what it is and I choose to believe soundchaser’s theory is correct.

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Drucker
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Re: Squid Game

#12 Post by Drucker » Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:51 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:22 pm
My internet regimen is basically just this forum. And all my Facebook friends are squares
Tell me you live in Utah without telling me you live in Utah

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swo17
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Re: Squid Game

#13 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 6:54 pm

Ha, I have seen that meme though

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zedz
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Re: Squid Game

#14 Post by zedz » Mon Oct 11, 2021 8:34 pm

It's a decent TV series, very South Korean in its political concerns and comic cruelty, and with great production design, but the ending is weak, presumably because of the need to set up a sequel. As anybody with eyes and ears will tell you, there are a bunch of characters introduced in the penultimate episode whose acting is uniformly atrocious, but I think this actually masks the weakness of those characters and what they represent in terms of conception and writing.

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brundlefly
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Re: Squid Game

#15 Post by brundlefly » Mon Oct 11, 2021 9:43 pm

I'd thought it was the title of a video game until I logged in and Netflix shoved it into my face.

Instead of "trendy" shows, I see them more in step with the history of watercooler television. Sure, episode runs (in the US) have gotten shorter; binge-dumps make seasons content to glutton and weirdly simultaneously seem to impose an expiration date though they're functionally less ephemeral than broadcast tv ever was. But there are a zillion Netflix shows and plenty of HBOMax shows that never spark a conversation. I find it reassuring when something breaks through and musters some semblance of monoculture... and in this case, it's a show in a foreign language that went up on the service a month ago and has built enough word-of-mouth popularity that Netflix started shoving it at someone like me.
zedz wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 8:34 pm
It's a decent TV series, very South Korean in its political concerns and comic cruelty, and with great production design, but the ending is weak, presumably because of the need to set up a sequel. As anybody with eyes and ears will tell you, there are a bunch of characters introduced in the penultimate episode whose acting is uniformly atrocious, but I think this actually masks the weakness of those characters and what they represent in terms of conception and writing.
Are you talking about
SpoilerShow
the VIPs who arrive in episode seven? Not only is the acting terrible -- are American actors who turn up in foreign television shows ever any good? -- but the storytelling completely falters with them. Their dialogue is redundant in a way the show rarely is until then; they're certainly not adding anything in the way of witty riffs or meta-commentary -- it's not that kind of show. Their chief crime above performance is that they're time-wasters, they're not integral to the story at all, and I'd hesitate to even call them "characters." They're insufferable -- but, of course, they're supposed to be. It's not a good excuse, because the show should have enough sense to cut that stuff short, but in the end you're supposed to hate the Americans and the other decadent rich people, and of course you do.

There are other eye-rolling moves down the stretch (Hey everyone, I'm a glazier! And the detective/brother thing never pays off, but as a device to get behind-the-scenes it was a smart play.) But on the whole I found the mechanics of the series impressive. It had a ton of characters and dynamics to establish and rotate through while world-building and game-playing and I feel it maximized the fun and pathos out of it. It's almost like they did seven seasons of Lost in nine episodes. (Not really, but you know what I mean. Going back to the island in episode two was a masterstroke.) So shrewd to pare the whole thing down to a children's game played between childhood friends. I'm not thrilled with the very ending for the same reason you mentioned, but as far as the reveal of the Big Bad and the post-game path of the main character, I was good with at least the emotional logic of it.

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zedz
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Re: Squid Game

#16 Post by zedz » Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:25 pm

Yes, I was talking about the very very end, which made no sense at a character level.

EDIT: Actually, it doesn't even make much sense at a plot level either.
SpoilerShow
He's going back to play the game again, we're led to assume, but why would he - rather than we, who know of at least one former winner who was still involved - assume he'd be let back in? Just by ringing the magic number rather than going through the game-playing screening ritual that was an essential part of recruitment the first time around. I doubt the recruiter he saw at the airport is going to put a good word in for him.
And don't scriptwriters know
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that deciding not to take an international flight once your bags are loaded and everything is actually kind of a big deal in a modern airport. He's more likely to get taken down as a suspected terrorist than get away to play another game.
And those were indeed the characters I was talking about: barely-walking cliches that would have been better left out of the show all together, or at least left off screen so they're not actively irritating.

That thing you said never pays off and seemed to be there just as a story-telling device (as you said, it's a reasonably ingenious one) I'm expecting will play out further in a presumable subsequent series.
Last edited by zedz on Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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swo17
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Re: Squid Game

#17 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:29 pm

I cheated and opened the spoiler box, but for the record I totally guessed what zedz meant when he referred to "uniformly atrocious" acting

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zedz
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Re: Squid Game

#18 Post by zedz » Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:33 pm

swo17 wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:29 pm
I cheated and opened the spoiler box, but for the record I totally guessed what zedz meant when he referred to "uniformly atrocious" acting
You might think you know what we're talking about, but the actual performances are far worse than you imagine!

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swo17
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Re: Squid Game

#19 Post by swo17 » Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:41 pm

How do they rate on a scale from Silence to Mahjong?

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brundlefly
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Re: Squid Game

#20 Post by brundlefly » Tue Oct 12, 2021 12:24 am

zedz wrote:
Mon Oct 11, 2021 11:25 pm
Yes, I was talking about the very very end, which made no sense at a character level.

EDIT: Actually, it doesn't even make much sense at a plot level either.
SpoilerShow
He's going back to play the game again, we're led to assume, but why would he - rather than we, who know of at least one former winner who was still involved - assume he'd be let back in? Just by ringing the magic number rather than going through the game-playing screening ritual that was an essential part of recruitment the first time around. I doubt the recruiter he saw at the airport is going to put a good word in for him.
Yeah, for me the very very end was just white noise momentum to go into another season, where they'd either excuse those end notes or explain them away to reset. Not that it was a cliffhanger, but cliffhangerish stuff you could shrug off to move on. I like the show a lot as a self-contained mini-series... and I guess if I like it that much, there's no way I'm going to resent Hwang for trying to do more of it. I just fear
SpoilerShow
(a) it'll get distracted by lousy sprawling conspiracy theory nonsense instead of the well-defined parameters of this first season -- games should remember and follow their rules -- and that (b) it's unable to avoid the drudgery of the inevitable arc, that while trying to bring down the system, Our Hero instead slowly devolves into the Big Bad. [Numbers omitted in case swo's cheating again.]

We're in agreement about the VIPs. Their only practical contribution (b/c the cop could've gotten the information a zillion other ways) was the longer, slower explanation of the titular game... which wasn't played for the laughs it could have been -- stupid Americans, can't even understand one of our children's games -- and then arguably didn't matter anyway.

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Re: Squid Game

#21 Post by cdnchris » Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:23 pm

So, wow, the acting...

I'm only on episode 7 but it's safe to say the acting is really "all over the place." At first it was a mix of quieter performances with absolute hysterics yet I was able to handle this because it kinda suited the show. There's some tense moments that work because of it. I was thinking "okay, this isn't great but whatever."

But then episode 7
SpoilerShow
when the English speaking VIPs show up... holy shit. It's a whole other level of bad. And what's worse is the fact these characters don't need to speak at all. They could really just be there and be "menacing" in a quiet way. Their dialogue is basically "what did you bet?" and "oh shit" and "why'd you pick that guy?"

Or it's expository, explaining stuff we can clearly see. "It looks like a bridge."

No shit, Sherlock.

I was just stunned at all of it, their deliveries are terrible and they're about as stiff as can be. I have to assume the creators were limited in choices of English speaking actors.

If they just didn't speak and sat there, it would work better.
I think the show is pretty entertaining, though, and I'm enjoying it. Again, there are some white knuckle moments and it looks good. I kinda missed the Fandom online so I probably came in with modest expectations. If there's one disappointment (outside of that horrendous acting) it's that when it looks like it's going to get especially nasty an out of some sort gets introduced. But as pulp entertainment it hits the right notes.

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hearthesilence
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Re: Squid Game

#22 Post by hearthesilence » Wed Oct 13, 2021 4:57 pm

I checked out the first episode, but I'm not sure if I'm going to check out any more. The most violent moments were too off-putting - it's written like it's supposed to be horrific but that feels pretty disingenuous given the stylish choices made to film it.

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Re: Squid Game

#23 Post by BirdLives » Thu Oct 14, 2021 9:05 pm

Many critics have noted some Kubrick influence in the nooks and crannies of this -- and arguably in the main currents as well.

These comments are spoiler-ish, so I'll use the spoiler formatting, but I'm not giving anything really significant away, like who the "bad guys" are and whatnot.
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-- Use of "The Blue Danube" waltz in the background of a few scenes, generally as the mass of "game players" march around the facility. (from "2001" of course)
-- The portrayal of the "VIPs" as rich degenerates using poorer folks for their entertainment, including their wearing masks. ("Eyes Wide Shut")
-- One scene of near-forced oral sex. (Similar to a scene in "The Shining")
Have to say for me personally these little Kubrick tropes only emphasized what a conventional action drama this thing turned out to be. I'm mystified it's so popular around the world.

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Walter Kurtz
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Re: Squid Game

#24 Post by Walter Kurtz » Fri Oct 15, 2021 5:36 pm

MATHEMATICS

Squid Game = The Belko Experiment (2016) + Caged (1950) + Devo (Satisfaction, 1978)

Except----

The Belko Experiment mercifully ENDED after 89 minutes.
Caged had Eleanor Parker and a better baddie.
Devo had better jumpsuits.

Did I mention that Caged had Eleanor Parker?

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Re: Squid Game

#25 Post by cdnchris » Tue Oct 19, 2021 11:22 am

Though the acting is still awful, this Guardian article gets interviews with the actors and somewhat confirms some of my suspicions around why the English speaking performances are what they are, it seeming to come down to things getting lost in translation from writing to editing to the exaggerated nature sticking out more with English-speaking audiences.
One actor claims he delivered one awkwardly written line as-is during the first take, only to "fix" it in other takes. The editors, who may not speak English, ended up using the first take.

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