Saturday, June 28, 2025

So someone else didn't like Squid Games...

From a New York Times review of season 3, which has just dropped:

 “Squid Game” is back for what is said to be its final round, with a six-episode third season on Netflix. If only all beneficiaries of free-floating, pandemic-boosted nihilism would fade away as quickly.

The South Korean drama’s creator, writer and director, Hwang Dong-hyuk, had a couple of very profitable insights: that what was missing from “Survivor”-style competition shows was machine guns; and that greatly increasing the pool of contestants — the show’s dour hero, Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae), is No. 456 — would increase the amount of blood that could be shed while simultaneously giving most of the deaths an anesthetizing, video-game irrelevance.

He then gave his package an Instagram-friendly visual wrapping of bright colors, gargantuan toylike structures and massed minimalist costumes, and replaced plot with a series of elaborate variations on children’s games. No candy was ever designed and marketed with greater effectiveness.

But the series wasn’t strictly a consumer product, and it wasn’t a reality show. As a work of fiction, it needed to do something to surprise us to merit a second or third season (they are really 2A and 2B). Most television shows may be formulaic to one degree or another, but it is harder not to notice when the formulas you are repeating are ones that you just created. 

As you may guess, he goes on to dislike season 2B.

I've always disliked dark or dystopian stories if the premise just seems too over the top, and involves too many fictional people buying into it.   I even disliked The Truman Show quite intensely, because I could not get over the disbelief factor that the world would let a TV network run such a deceptive world for viewership!    Sure, you might say these are "what if", scenarios of current circumstances taken to an extreme as a form of somewhat satirical criticism.   I think that's OK if the satire is meant to be funny - but if it's meant to be a realistic drama with next to no laughs, I've got my credibility hurdles they need to get over before I can enjoy it. 

So yeah, I didn't even finish Squid Games season 1.   I'm glad to see it gone, in somewhat ignoble fashion according to quite a lot of viewers, it seems.

 

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