How did you fare on the playground? Be honest with yourself.
OK, good. Now that you have an answer, it doesn’t matter. Squid Game will chew you up and spit you out regardless.
It’s a jarring, violent story—but one so inventive and compelling that you’ll see yourself in the characters even as you’re repulsed by them.
Gi-hun introduces us to it all ever so innocently. He appears to be a degenerate gambler like any other, stealing from his elderly mother here, letting down his daughter there. But then a strange thing happens.
The man is given an offer: play on a grand scale. Play a game that, with debts like yours, it would be foolish to turn down . . .
To those of us with impulse control, this would appear too good to be true. And it is.
After Gi-hun accepts, a complex mystery is presented. This game has severe rules, in a severe setting. And Gi-hun is not alone. Not at all alone.
Each episode illustrates a bit more about the game’s players and creators, but devilishly leaves us wanting more. And the game itself? Disturbingly compelling. Our playground pastimes, adultified. Nine episodes of binge-worthy, nail-biting entertainment await you.
The winner will take home a prize that does something to our animal brains. All of them. Even us viewers safely watching outside the screen know this is crazy; we know this is unfair and violent and impractical, and yet we ponder it anyway. Watch it anyway.
It’s the kind of show you desperately want to talk about with someone else. Not necessarily because it’s good, but because it taps into something universal, illustrating and examining our human strategies to this game of life.
I watched every episode of Squid Game like an addict: always high, never satisfied. Am I happy about it?