Binge-Watching Netflix: Squid Game Season 01

Squid Game (Korean: 오징어 게임; RR: Ojing-eo Geim) is a South Korean survival drama streaming television series created by Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix. Its cast includes Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, Wi Ha-joon, HoYeon Jung, O Yeong-su, Heo Sung-tae, Anupam Tripathi, and Kim Joo-ryoung.

The series revolves around a contest where 456 players, all of whom are in deep financial debt, risk their lives to play a series of deadly children’s games for the chance to win a 45.6 billion prize. The title of the series draws from a similarly named Korean children’s game. Hwang had conceived of the idea based on his own economic struggles early in life, as well as the class disparity in South Korea and capitalism. Though he had initially written it in 2009, he was unable to find a production company to fund the idea until Netflix took an interest around 2019 as part of their drive to expand their foreign programming offerings. All nine episodes were written and directed by Hwang.

Squid Game was released worldwide on September 17, 2021, to critical acclaim and international attention. As of November 2021, it is Netflix’s most-watched series, becoming the top-viewed program in 94 countries and attracting more than 142 million member households and amassing 1.65 billion viewing hours during its first four weeks from launch, surpassing Bridgerton for the title of most watched show.

via Wikipedia

I don’t usually jump on the bandwagon for Netflix trends, or trends of any kind. I usually wait and see what happens next.

Well, Squid Game made me curious, especially when a YouTube Gamer, CallMeKevin, did a Sims 4 version of Squid Game. I had to check it out after that.

There are only 9 episodes in Season 01, so I watched it relatively quickly, binging it within a weekend. I do like survivalist movies (sometimes, I couldn’t stomach 127 Hours but quite liked The Martian). The relationships formed and broken throughout the games were realistic, and the character development was interesting too.

However, I’m still not entirely sure I like the main character or not. While I support him in how he won the games, I’m not a big fan of his life decisions. If there is a second season, I’ll be interested to see where it goes and how it ends, as the first season ended really well and could be considered a final ending of sorts (even if it doesn’t wrap up all the loose ends).

My Ranking: ★ ★ ★