"Squid Game" is Back

Minor spoilers ahead

Did we need another season of "Squid Game"?  Obviously not, but the new one is doing everything right.  Also, there were a few loose ends left from the first season that it's nice to see getting tied up, and I'm not going to begrudge creator Hwang Dong-hyuk for pursuing a pay bump.  If you liked the first season of "Squid Game," you'll probably like the second.  However, be warned that the seven episodes that Netflix released in December are only the first half of a longer season that was split in half for various reasons, and this batch ends on a cliffhanger.  

So, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is still searching for the people behind the mysterious games where hundreds of people battle to the death for the chance at a cash prize.  I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that he's not quite successful, accidentally putting himself back into the games while a team of his employees are trying to find him and the secret island where the games are held by the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun).  There's a rule change this year, and contestants are allowed to vote for the games to end by simple majority after every round, and keep whatever money has been accumulated.  Gi-hun spends a considerable amount of time trying to convince the other players to vote to quit.

The players this year are an interesting bunch.  Gi-hun quickly teams up with an old friend, Park Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), a former Marine Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul), and a transwoman Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon).  Others include a mother-son duo, a pregnant girl and her ex, a crypto Youtuber, and a rapper named Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun).  In an interesting wrinkle, we also follow one of the guards, 011 (Park Gyu-young), whose motives are yet unclear.  There are a few new games this year, but with the shock value of all the deaths significantly reduced, the show spends more time on the psychology of the players between the games.  It quickly becomes clear that even with the promise of receiving some money for their efforts, and even with Gi-hun explaining what will happen to them, many of the players are incentivized to keep playing.  Some of this is because of the characters' personalities, but others are influenced by group dynamics, peer pressure, and the choices of others.    

It's hard to judge this season because it's clearly unfinished, with several of the subplots progressing pretty slowly.  The creators have made a promising start, but it's hard to say how well they're going to hit some of their intended targets.  There's a welcome refocusing of the satire and social commentary to look at the mechanisms for why people act against their own best interests, but none of this has paid off yet narratively.  The show is also moving at a slower pace this season, and most of the sympathetic characters are still alive, so it's nowhere near hitting the melodramatic peaks of the first season.  

However, I feel like this season of "Squid Game" is in many ways better than the first.  We have several different characters working at cross purposes with a variety of different agendas.  The formula set up by the first season is subverted and interrogated in various ways.  There's not as much exploration about what goes on behind the scenes of the games as I would like, but the new information we do get is intriguing.  For instance, most of the first episode of this season is spent with The Recruiter (Gong Yoo), who turns out to have a fascinating mindset.  Also, those cringey foreign VIPs in the animal masks do not make an appearance this year. 

Where the show has lost a step is with the games themselves.  So far no clever strategies or techniques have been employed during the gameplay.  No sudden twists or sacrifices have occurred.  None of the kills have been especially creative.  Gi-hun isn't there to win the game but to stop it and save as many people as possible, so the stakes are very different.   I'm not surprised that many of the gore junkies have gotten impatient, even with all the carnage in the format-breaking finale.

I, however, am not watching this show for the gore, and I'm looking forward to season three.  

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