Drama
House of David
‘House of David’ brings David’s dramatic story to life, recounting the rise of his house and the downfall of King Saul’s.
Child’s play.
That’s what folks sometimes say if they’re faced with a not-too-daunting task: a pop quiz on simple addition, or fixing a meal where everyone just wants dry cereal. Child’s play is generally something as inconsequential as a game of Candyland, as understandable as tug-of-war. Easy-peasy.
I’m not sure if the phrase child’s play is popular in South Korea. But if it is, Seong Gi-hun will never associate it with easy.
See, on an unknown island somewhere in the vast waters around the Korean Peninsula, desperate South Koreans are playing children’s games: Tug-of-war. Red Light, Green Light. They’re playing them as if their very lives depended on winning.
And, as Gi-hun knows all too well, they do. Tag, You’re Dead!
You could say that Gi-hun was lucky. In the first season of Squid Game, he was a contestant on a game show with a very exclusive audience. He signed up voluntarily, hoping to pay off some astronomical debts—thus keeping his 10-year-old daughter in Korea (and all of his organs) in the right place.
He didn’t realize that he was competing in a contest with extraordinarily high stakes. He didn’t know, at first, that if he lost a game, he’d be killed—shot or stabbed or crushed to death. (Or that, in death, he might lose all his organs anyway.)
But when the game’s horrific odds became all-too-clear, Gi-hun stayed. He played. And he … won. He took home 45.6 billion won, the equivalent of more than $31 million. He returned home, safe and sound, to live happily ever after.
But did he? Happily ever after seems elusive, and all that money came at a cost. Each won is weighted by the memory of what he and his fellow contestants were made to do to win it. Years later, Gi-hun is determined to put an end to the games—and, perhaps, to its Front Man as well. But to do so, Gi-hun must play again.
He won’t be alone. Jun-ho, a police officer who infiltrated Gi-hun’s games, is also determined to make it all stop. His impetus is just as powerful, just as personal. See, he knows that his own brother is the Front Man.
Perhaps the Front Man smirks somewhere. He knows the games won’t be stopped. They can’t be stopped—not when so many are desperate, greedy. Not when so many will risk their lives on the roll of a dice or the pull of a rope. When so many are willing to spend their last coins on a scratch ticket than on a loaf of bread, how could the games end? The demand is too great—not for those who watch, but for those who play.
Netflix’s Squid Game, now in its second season, isn’t just a TV show. It’s a global phenomenon. The first season was the streaming service’s biggest hit—ever. And, like Gi-hun himself, you could say that Squid Game was originally a bit of an underdog story.
It’s a South Korean product, first of all—an unlikely candidate to become Netflix’s No. 1 show in an astounding 90 countries (including the United States and Great Britain.) Netflix didn’t initially market the show heavily outside South Korea, which means that grew largely through word of mouth.
Also, the show is incredibly violent, which you’d think would cut into (so to speak) the potential audience. During its first season, Britain’s Daily Mail asked, “Is this the most twisted series on TV?” Writes Rebecca Onion for Slate:
This is not a show for viewers who dislike seeing people shot at close range (or stabbed, or killed by falling from a height, and so on). There are literally hundreds of such deaths in the show’s nine episodes, with a bonus dissection scene, if what you really crave is to see some intestines.
The blood and carnage has not diminished in Season Two. The games are just as bloody, just as lethal. And some of those “games” have migrated off the island. A twisted game of Rock-Paper-Scissors is in the offing for the season’s first episode, and that’s just for starters.
Squid Game isn’t just violent: It’s dark—as black and grim as some of its interiors are candy-colored pink and green. People lie and cheat and betray each other here, often indirectly killing folks even if they’re not the ones pulling the trigger. Out-of-game murder is condoned and even encouraged, too: The fewer people who get to the next round, no matter the reason, the more the winning pot grows. While we do see kindness and cooperation and even some sacrifice here, the games feed the worst instincts of its players (many of whom are, truth be told, not great people to begin with).
If the game was designed to test just how much goodness is left in humanity (as someone suggests in an episode), most of the contestants fail, and fail spectacularly.
And we haven’t even gotten to the language or nudity or suicides or the gambling or (as of Season Two) the transgender character or—well, surely you get the point.
It’s funny: Shows like these are often designed to get viewers thinking about our amoral, voyeuristic society—the horrors of people watching other people die for their pleasure. And yet, couldn’t you argue that that’s what Squid Game itself does? If the game wasn’t as bloody, as horrific, would anyone watch?
(Editor’s Note: Plugged In is rarely able to watch every episode of a given series for review. As such, there’s always a chance that you might see a problem that we didn’t. If you notice content that you feel should be included in our review, send us an email at [email protected], or contact us via Facebook or Instagram, and be sure to let us know the episode number, title and season so that we can check it out. )
Underemployed driver Seong Gi-hun needs cash in the worst way. So he steals some money from his mother’s bank account and bets it on the horses. Believe it or not, he wins. But before he can spend a single won from his winnings, it’s gone—pilfered by a clever pickpocket. Bad timing, too: Gi-hun runs into some shady characters to whom he’s in debt. The leader tells him that if Gi-hun doesn’t have his money in a month, they’ll start removing his organs. Even worse: Gi-hun doesn’t have the money to take his 10-year-old daughter out for a nice birthday dinner or give her a good present. But then, at the end of a very long day, he meets a stranger who offers an unusual opportunity.
Gi-hun mistakes the man for a Christian evangelist at first. “I don’t believe in Jesus,” Gi-hun says. “I come from a very long line of Buddhists, so find another guy to preach to.” But the man is offering something much different than eternal salvation. He wants Gi-hun to play a game with him. Every time Gi-hun wins, he’ll get 100,000 won (about $85). Every time he loses, the stranger gets to slap him.
Gi-hun is slapped dozens of times before he eventually gets 100,000 won, but the game opens up an invitation to another game—or rather series of games. When Gi-hun belatedly accepts, he’s ushered into a van in which gas is pumped in, knocking him and the other passengers out. When he arrives at an unknown location, he’s in a massive barracks with hundreds of other players—all of whom played the same game and most of whom are just as in debt as Gi-hun.
The first game on the six-game docket is Red Light, Green Light, moderated by a giant creepy robot. The contestants quickly learn that if anyone’s still moving once the robot says “red light,” they’ll be shot and killed. Literally hundreds of contestants die. We see bullets hit and blood fly, and scores of people are killed trying to claw their way out of the arena.
Violence makes an appearance elsewhere, too. Loan sharks punch and rough up Gi-hun and bloody his nose (threatening to shove a pick into his nostrils) and make him put a fingerprint on a contract in his own blood. (The chief assailant wipes some blood from Gi-hun’s face, licks it and suggests he’ll make soup with more of it if Gi-hun doesn’t pay up.) The slapping game with the stranger leaves Gi-hun’s face red and bruised. Two other contestants get into a fight in the barracks, with a man punching, kicking and pulling the hair of the victimized woman.
The woman (a pickpocket) has a history with an assailant, telling him that he “took more from me than I could possibly owe.” We learn that almost everyone in the barracks is dealing with a ridiculous amount of debt—often accumulated through gambling or other shady decisions. Gi-hun is clearly willing to steal in order to feed his own gambling habit.
Gi-hun smokes. (He initially tells his daughter that he quit, until she quite literally sniffs him out.) Someone drinks a glass of liquor as he watches hundreds of people die on a TV screen. Characters say the s-word at least 10 times. We also hear (via English dubbing) “a–,” “b–ch,” “b–tard,” “d–n” and “h—.” God’s name is paired with “d–n” four times, and we hear Jesus’ name abused once.
It’s been two years since Seong Gi-hun escaped the games with his life and a fortune. But he uses that fortune trying to track down the games’ “recruiter,” who ropes in South Korea’s most desperate citizens to play these life-or-death children’s games. But he’s not the only one on the hunt: Hwang Jun-ho—a police officer now working the traffic beat—spends his own free time on a fishing boat, searching for the elusive island on which the games take place. Both have been unsuccessful—until now.
But the recruiter has his own game to play. And those games come with a predictably lethal end.
Two men (already bruised and bloodied) are forced to play a mashup of rock-scissors-paper and Russian Roulette. One winds up dead, blood draining from the hole in his head. Another pair also play, with the game ending as you’d expect. In a dream sequence, Gi-hun sees someone carrying two decapitated heads—characters from the first season—who open their eyes and glare at Gi-hun. Someone cuts a tracking device from behind his ear. (Blood drips down his bare chest and arms, and it’s smeared on his fingers.) Blood spatters on someone’s shirt. A man is beaten with a briefcase. People are slapped. Flashbacks show Jun-ho and his brother shooting each other in the shoulder, with Jun-ho falling into the sea. We hear how a fisherman saved his life, and we watch as he pokes at the still-grotesque scar on his shoulder.
A man stands in a bathroom, naked. (His rear end faces the camera.) Seong Gi-hun owns a squalid motel that may have been designed with erotic trysts in mind. A woman tries to flirt (unsuccessfully) with a police officer.
Gi-hun smokes heavily. Several apparently homeless loiterers are offered their choice of scratch lottery tickets or rolls of bread: Almost all of them choose the tickets. Gi-hun’s investigators search people’s briefcases and bags as part of a “routine inspection.” (They’re lying, of course.) We hear the f-word eight times and the s-word more than 15. Dialogue is also peppered with such words as “a–,” “b–tard,” “g-dd–n,” “d–n” and “h—.” Jesus’ name is abused twice.
Paul Asay has been part of the Plugged In staff since 2007, watching and reviewing roughly 15 quintillion movies and television shows. He’s written for a number of other publications, too, including Time, The Washington Post and Christianity Today. The author of several books, Paul loves to find spirituality in unexpected places, including popular entertainment, and he loves all things superhero. His vices include James Bond films, Mountain Dew and terrible B-grade movies. He’s married, has two children and a neurotic dog, runs marathons on occasion and hopes to someday own his own tuxedo. Feel free to follow him on Twitter @AsayPaul.
‘House of David’ brings David’s dramatic story to life, recounting the rise of his house and the downfall of King Saul’s.
While no Game of Thrones, Amazon Prime’s lavish take on the popular fantasy series adds some problems to an already adult-oriented saga.
Dope Thief comes with all the drugs, language and violence that you probably expect in a such an aptly named show.
In Netflix’s Adolescence, 13-year-old Jamie Miller is accused of a violent murder. And the motive behind this alleged crime haunts the people around him.
Our weekly newsletter will keep you in the loop on the biggest things happening in entertainment and technology. Sign up today, and we’ll send you a chapter from the new Plugged In book, Becoming a Screen-Savvy Family, that focuses on how to implement a “screentime reset” in your family!
