1. The least interesting person in the entire series is the main character, and I don’t like that.
2. The hottest person in the entire series is a police officer, and I don’t like that either. I mean I like that(!!!) but I don’t like having to lust after a cop.
3. Quiet as it’s kept, watching people kill each other for sport is one of the oldest and most enduring pastimes of modern civilization. From watching gladiators tear each other apart to watching professional boxers pummel each other for 12 rounds, bloodlust isn’t going anyway. Movies like The Hunger Games and Surviving the Game take that pastime and give us a safe way to watch without anyone actually getting hurt, and Squid Game is another iteration. It’s extremely violent and there is a lot of blood, because a lot of regular folks looking for entertainment enjoy watching people torture each other at the behest of the rich and powerful.
4. Does tug of war really work that way?
5. If you go ahead and get it into your mind that $1 USD is approximately 1,000 Korean Won, pricing and money and the prize and the paper currency will make more sense and you don’t have to think about it all the time. Whenever they mention money, just take three zeroes off of it and that’s how many dollars it is. (It’s not a perfect conversion because $1 USD = 1,183 Korean Won, but it’s close enough.)
6. Why haven’t any of the winners used their prize money to hire someone to take on this case? Money talks, and if I win, I’m immediately finding a lawyer and investigator to help me convince the authorities that I’m not crazy.
7. The first time Sae-byeok (the North Korean defector) popped up on screen, I was like “My god that’s a beautiful face.” And then you find out in a much later episode how thin she is and I said, “Nobody that tall and thin and beautiful is walking around without a modelling contract.” And I was right. Jung HoYeon finished second on the 4th season of Korea’s Next Top Model in 2013. She’s been a successful model since and this is her first acting job. She was absolutely my favorite of the series, so I feel like an even brighter future is head of her.
8. Lots of people died by various means, but that makeover hair on 456 is absolutely the biggest crime of the series.
9. That lady with the perm and cigarettes cannot act. In every scene, she was a like a Disney Villain cosplaying as a soap opera actress and she made me so tired.
10. I don’t understand the universal praise for this series. The main character is weak and non-compelling. The reveal of the mastermind is unsatisfying. No resolution exists. The motivations of too many characters are unclear. The attempted exploration of class, morality, and depravity of the wealthy falls short. And it’s slow.
SPOILERS FOR PEOPLE WHO HAVE SEEN IT!
11. How did the winner of 2015 end up being the Front Man? Why would you need a job after winning that much money? (It’s possible I missed this reason, because I wasn’t all that interested to be honest).
12. I do not like What a Coincidence! moments in a series this long and detailed. The cop who just happens to be in the same police station as 456 sees a Squid Game Card and his missing brother just happens to also have a Squid Game Card and also his missing brother won and also his missing brother won and is now working for the company? What kind of shot in the dark odds are that! And the Christmas Drunk freezing on the street just happens to be saved 30 seconds before midnight and the old man dies? Did it never occur to 456 that he could go down and help himself? The bet was “nobody will stop to help this guy” — well you’re somebody, and you have more money than you know what to do with.
13. Of course all the spectators are Chinese & White American billionaires.
14. So does this only happen in South Korea or do they do it all over the globe? In one episode, someone mentions Korea putting on the best game or something to that effect, but the head honcho is Korean and the players in past years seem to be Korean as well. Seems like 456 people going missing around the same time every year for thirty years would raise a red flag of some sort.
15. When that old man is dying, he says that people with no money and people with too much money both have hard lives, and I just want to go on record saying what a crock of shit that is. I understand the writer trying to be all philosophical about things losing their value and importance when you can do it all the time, that nothing is exciting or surprising or fun, but that’s only true if you’re a bankrupt person inside already. If I won the lottery tomorrow, the first thing I would do is go to med school to be an OBGYN so I can eventually open free clinics in Black neighborhoods. The maternal mortality rate for women of color is so high and Black women are treated terribly by the healthcare system, and I want to provide options. If you have so much money that you’re bored with life then that’s just you as a person who doesn’t care about other people.
16. That man who kept praying all the time made perfect sense. That girl with the dead parents tried to paint him as a hypocrite for killing people and praying to God, but good Christians (and God himself!) all up and through the Bible kill people all the time.
17. Hundreds of people and none of them could band together to stop one bully from beating up a girl at the top of the game?
18. There are so many points in the last game where 456 could’ve easily just walked over to the circle and won the money. You were going to kill The Banker the night before, and then he killed your friend, so now you want to spare him and walk out together with nothing? Just go to the circle and let that man get shot!
19. The fact that nobody asked up front if more than one person could win the prize and split the money is absolutely ridiculous. When all those people died after the first round and they voted to go home, the first question before the vote should’ve been “can we split the money between all of us left?” And before you went back in, why wouldn’t you get clarity on that?
20. I definitely do not need a season two with that character, and his one facial expression of stupefied shock, trying to seek revenge or have The VIPs come to justice. If my girl Sae-byeok had won, she would’ve already found a way to blow that place up before going to the Maldives for her mojitos.
Score: 6/10
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