15 hours ago
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Squid Game' Review: Game Over
Contains spoilers for Season 2 of 'Squid Game.'
'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.
The last batch of episodes picks up halfway through a set of the games in which debt-ridden proletarians are killed, or kill one another, as they compete for an ever-increasing pot of cash, all for the entertainment of anonymous, hyper-rich spectators. The previous winner Gi-hun, whose attempts to halt the spectacle and unmask its ringleader have failed miserably, is battered but alive. Sixty players remain for the final three games.
The proximity to a resolution of Gi-hun's fate gives this season a tension (artificial as it may be) that the show's second installment, released in December, lacked. Otherwise, it is 'Squid Game' business as usual.
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