The Slipperiest Game, Pt 1: The Narrative Design Masterpiece That Didn't Need a Sequel

Transcript:

Um, and it has something to do with games. So, I figured maybe we could talk about it a bit. Yeah, we love talking about games. So,

let's talk about the slipperiest game, the Squid Game. So, how how do you how do you win the

Squid Game, Josh? Uh, incredible question. I having watched

the show and actually looked up how to play Squid Game, I still don't know how Squid Game works.

Uh, there's some sort of Captain Um, the only resolution I know

is that you can kill a guy. Uh, if you if you murder all of your opponents, you win by default.

Yeah. Yeah. Uh so Squid Game Squid Game was uh

a little popular. Yeah. Severely popular. The pandemic did

wonderful numbers for it. Yes. Show on Netflix that kind of took

over the world for a while. Like my kid

is 12. Yeah. I think the first season came out when he was nine

and he knew what Squid Game was without me telling him. I got bad news. That might have come out

when he was seven. It Yeah. The fact that he knew what

Squid Game was at all and like some of his classmates had seen it. Yeah.

Just blew my mind. Yeah. Like I'm I'm not a I'm not a prude by any stretch of

the imagination, but like there's an there's an amount of bloody death that

happens in that show that is not okay for anybody in single digits of age. No, no,

we were both wrong. It came out when he was eight. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Okay.

2021. But yeah, four years ago. So right at the tail end of the pandemic.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that definitely lent to its popularity. Yeah. In that it was like a good thing that

was original that nobody had seen before. Yeah. That came out when everybody was bored

as [ __ ] Yes. Yeah. It definitely like tied into the whole, hey, we need like for the

same reason that like Tiger King went wildly popular for like no good reason. It was it was a new spectacle that

happened to hit at a time when people had the time to really really binge something.

I forgot that Tiger King existed and now I'm trying to think of like anything else that had the same like drop off in

cultural impact that the I can't I can't think of anything that

fell off that hard where it was like everyone knew about it and then it just disappeared.

It peaked for like a minute. Yeah. And everybody was talking about Tiger King. I've never seen Tiger King. And having

seen some of the fallout of Tiger King, I don't think I'm going to um

uh it's I Okay, I can I I love like

a messy story and Tiger King is one of the messiest. Um, but

the problem I've had over time is that I like it's not just like an unreliable narrator, but like the whole framing is

unreliable. Um, and I don't know if that's like because of the producers or

because of like how less than forthright the Tiger King himself was or what have

you. Looking back, it's like sadder than it is funny, but it's still like it was

an interesting story. I I I think you're right. I don't think it holds up. Um, okay.

But gonna avoid it. Yeah. But the the Carol Baskin memes are hilarious. The lack of financial

recovery, his onear armed employee, the the hot truck expired meat, like all

that stuff was I don't get a lot of that, but I do remember the memes being very pervasive

for a while. Yeah. Um, Squid Game still very pervasive. I think

like the before we go into the the meat of what

it is that we're going to be talking about, let's let's quickly go over like the things that we loved about Squid

Game, right? Yeah. Especially the first season because I think both of us really enjoyed the first season of Squid Game. the the

first season was I want to say it was like fresh because it basically took

like reality TV that people were kind of already watching and took that to its like

I don't want to say logical but like extreme conclusion like oh you want to watch people suffer or struggle or do

whatever on TV what if they just straight up died. Um,

there was something about the show that I gravitated to immediately

and I've said this phrase before and you puked in your mouth a little bit.

Um, like whimsical horror.

Right. Right. like there there there's a a sense of like

malicious whimsy and that is such a weird balance.

Yeah. Something that I had never actually seen executed on that level before. Right.

Right. Like it's very bright colors. It's very simple shapes. The design of

the show appears very kid-friendly and then it is full of incredibly gory

violence. It honestly it reminds me a lot of like Happy Tree Friends. It was a combination

of like bright colors and children's entertainment level stuff and then like just horrific gore and violence except

it's real, right? Yeah. Well, and then like the other thing that I think I appreciated about

that aesthetic was that like going back to the simplicity really helped sell the impact

of those images, right? Like the masks with the shapes on them were immediately iconic.

Yeah. Right. Everybody if if you showed somebody a pink square on a black

background, they knew what you were talking about already. White square. Is it a white square? Yeah. wore pink. Pink was a big thing.

Yeah. Yeah. The the the guards wore like a fuchsia tracksuit hoodie combo thing

and then Yeah. Which again just like super bright happy color.

Yeah. Covered in blood. Yeah. And the like carrying an MP5 like just the visage of death. Um

Yeah. It actually Yeah. That kind of reminded me of one of my first like

international travel experiences. which was when I went to Mexico on a

cruise. So like everything on the cruise was again very whimsical and very like

clean and designed and like obviously built to cater to a specific

demographic, right? And then we came into one of the ports, you landed a third guy

Yeah. There's a guy wearing fatigues with like an AK. Yeah. And he's [ __ ] strapped and ready to go. And you're like, "Oh yeah,

no." And then Yeah. And then and then the cruise ship people are like, "Don't go more than five feet away from this guy or bad things will happen."

Yeah. Do do not interact with him. Try not to look at him. Just get through it to the ruins of a

small town that used to be a thriving community. Yeah. Because that's where we're visiting today, right? And it was just like such

a weird bit of whiplash on like the the

perfectly manicured cruise experience and then being in like a a country that

can't afford to feed all of its people. Um Yep. And that's that's very much the Squid

Game experience. Yeah. Yeah. like it it you know um I I want to compare it to uh the Saw

franchise where you have increasingly elaborate but still like

decrepit and grimy traps and you can feel the malice in them as you see each

one. And they hid all of that that ill intent in Squid Game behind primary

colors and pastels and you know school ground games, right? Um,

well, and there was a a picture from the first season of the main character

smiling directly at the camera. Yeah. Because he had no idea, right? That made rounds.

Yeah. And it it sold a very like happy experience right up until it got to all of the the vicious bloody death.

Yeah. Um, I loved the games that they picked. Yep.

For the first run. They're not necessarily games that I am familiar with. Like I I I did play Red Light,

Green Light. I never did anything with a like weird bit of sugar to try and get a shape out.

Yeah. I I think that's that's not so much a like a game as like a universal

Korean experience is like getting those candies and then you and your friends like you know I don't know about you but

like as a kid and even now sometimes you play like weird little eating games with

yourself as you're trying to like savor your treat or or you know treasure your food

or whatever it is because you know you got to extend the experience right so I think I think that's what that more was

is like every kid in Korea has gotten one of these treats and like [ __ ] around with it.

And then you have that one monster that like just takes a giant bite out of a whole Kit Kat. Yeah. Because And you know what it is?

It's the kid who has money and he knows he's going to get another one if he

wants. Yeah. So like that was not necessarily

an experience I' had. I don't know how to play Squid Game. Not a clue. It's They said Squid Game

and I was like that's not real. But I guess it is. Um you know obviously body's played tug of war.

Yeah. Yeah. Everybody's played tug of war, but like the the games still translated.

Yeah. And there was a lot of really interesting character interaction built

around the games and a lot of like moral hemming and hawing about those games

that I thought was really great. Like the Marvel's game in particular was just a devastating [ __ ] episode.

Yeah. Yeah. Because that was the closest to that point that they had gotten to

outright murder. Right. Right. Right. Like you had a person with whom

you had a relationship and you had to decide which one of you was going to die. Right.

You had to come up with the rules together. Yeah. And that just emotionally devastating.

Yeah. that episode. I It feels like the first season had a lot more um psychological damage to some

of the stuff. Yeah. Well, I think that they spent

one more time in the games, right? The the games themselves were the focus for a lot of it, which I don't

think was true for the second and third season. Sure. Um the

moralizing about the games was very different. Yeah. And we we'll get into a bit of that when

we get into stuff that we're not so keen on. Um, and the character relationships, like

what one of the the things that they kind of leveraged in the first season that I don't think they did as well in the second and third

was they really capitalized on relationships between characters. Yes. Yeah. I was about to say

to create those moments of tension. Yeah. and to create those like will he,

won't he type moments of like is this person actually going to do the evil thing,

right? And if he does, is he going to be penalized for that anymore? Right. If he does the good thing, is that going

to be a penalty of some sort? Yeah. Right. And in a lot of ways, having a moral compass in the first season was

something for which you were actively penalized. Yeah. If you try to do the right thing,

you will die. the people who were selfish got ahead. And I think that that

core sort of conflict there um was really what like

made the deaths I think that much more impactful because like they spent a lot

of time with these characters that you came like I I would say one of the strongest um points of the first season

compared to the other two is just how much you liked all of the ancillary characters. Um it wasn't just like one or two of

them. It was like basically every single one of them you liked. Um there was even

moments of like sympathy from the like less likable characters. Um but there

was no like over-the-top villain on either side. Like

they were ultimately relatable, right? Like they were people who were broke.

Yeah. And they were desperate. Yeah. and this weird metaphor for the capitalist

society in which we live shows up and offers them a way out of there. Yeah. Through utter desperation.

Yeah. And so, well, I was going to say and and to that point, it felt like all of the characters in the first season were just

average people put in an extraordinary circumstance. Like you could you look at those people

and you're like, "Oh, that could be my uncle. That could be my brother." You know? Um Yeah. You know those people. Yeah,

right. Like that I had a lot of difficulty watching the first episode of Squid Game. And I'm

actually just remembering this right now because I related so hard to Guihun

about [ __ ] up with his daughter. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. That cringe for me was worse than

anything that happened in the [ __ ] games. Yeah. That like speaking as as two

single dads like that those Oh god, those elements were a like knife in the

gut. Brutal. And that like that's why I came

back Yeah. to it as well, right? Like I actually had to stop the first episode and take like a lap around the house. And usually

when I do that, I'm done with the show. Yeah. But they had managed to tap into like an

emotional core for me. Yeah. With that that I was just like, "No, I have to know how this goes, right?" like

he he has to be okay with his daughter, right? Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah.

So, yeah. I No, I think they did a a masterful job. I honestly think that if they had just left it as a one season

show Mhm. we wouldn't be having this conversation. No. If they stopped after that one

season, it would probably go down as one of the greatest pieces of art in television history.

Um it was it was perfect. It was absolutely perfect. the from from excellent characters to a storyline that was like

reasonable and logical. Like nobody did anything stupid um to a a horrific

system that they're participating in that still feels genuine and true and

weirdly fair and like has so much social commentary

built into it. Yeah. That they don't have to get like preachy about it. No. No. Right. Like it's easy enough to

see that. And like I know that there were people who saw that who were like, "Shit, I want to be

in the Squid Games." Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They just got the complete wrong message from him. Yeah.

It's the same people that watch Joker and are like, "Huh, I could be that guy. Maybe maybe he had a point." Like,

no, he's not the hero of the story. He shouldn't be like, "I could I could win Squid Games." Because that means

what that really means is that you murdered 455 other people. Yes.

Through like Yeah. You participated in the murder of 450 people. And I think

that was one of the the big distinctions for me between season one and two, right? And let's Okay, so giant ass spoiler

warning. Spoiler spoiler spoiler. Season two and three. Months. Like you've had your chance.

So don't come cry. Go [ __ ] pause it. Go watch it if you haven't watched it yet. Come back. or

just don't and get spoiled for [ __ ] because sometimes people like that. I actually do. I will watch spoilers

before a thing. Um I didn't spoil this one for you. Yeah, and I appreciate that. Um I should

say it hasn't been months. It's been a month, but a month is plenty of time. Um I deliberately asked like please do not

spoil Squid Game. I want to there's there's a few things in life that I care about spoilers on, but I I

really liked Squid Game and wanted to see if they could catch that lighting in a bottle again. And spoiler alert, they

could not. Um I I think my lack of spoilers actually made it a worse experience for you.

I will say not your fault, but the ending did part of the ending did get

spoiled to me. Yeah. by YouTube, which is the [ __ ] worst. Um,

I just think that if you had gone into this with your hate already dialed up to like 11, you would have had a better

time with it. Yeah, maybe I would I would have been like looking for chances for to redeem itself rather than being like constantly

disappointed. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. So, season two, I Okay. I really liked the first

two episodes of season two. Um, I'm trying to remember the first two of

the second season. Uh, when they're trying to get Guun back into the games.

Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, like everything involving the investigation. Yeah. Everything

involving like trying to find the guy who plays that stupid subway game. Yeah. With the slapping.

All of that was [ __ ] great. And I also really appreciated that they gave any amount of depth to that guy.

Yes. Yes. Um, the sketchy quasi uh posi that's trying to hunt them down.

Um the in the eventual game of rock paper scissors with the recruiter.

Um oh so good. Yeah, just the great great episodes.

Okay. And to to kind of like underline some of the stuff that we're going to be talking about a little later. That

character dropped a [ __ ] thesis for what these games are about, right?

Like that character is so incredibly invested in fairness.

Yeah. That he is willing to sacrifice his own [ __ ] life for it. Yeah. Yeah.

The games have to be fair. There. It's fair. And there's a transaction that happens between him and

every person who joins the games where he's like, "Listen, we agreed to play. I

will give you money. I get my slap." Like that's just that's that's the nature of it. And you know, every time

he pays up and that's why he's able to lure people into the games is because Well, he takes his [ __ ] lumps too,

right? Like every time the slap comes, he isn't flinching. He just [ __ ] stands there with a smile on his face. Yeah. Yeah.

Also, the scene of him gleefully stomping on food in a park.

Oh my god. Yeah. After giving them all the choice and then it's like, "You all

[ __ ] up. I guess you don't get to eat that. I don't know who that actor is,

but he is [ __ ] delightful and I want him in more things. Yeah, that guy is an absolute menace in

the best way. So, so good. So, those first two episodes, I think, were really really

solid. Like getting back to the games, everything was really strong and then immediately once we're in the game,

everything [ __ ] falls apart. Yeah. Yeah. Um,

so first of all, the the setup that we got from

uh like when do you come back into the games? I understand that like

some of that um what do you call it? Like the little kid

wonder whatever stuff is. Oh, the whimsy. The whimsy. The whimsy is gone already for us as an audience, but it's like

they didn't even try to sell it to the people there. Um Well, and if they did, they did it

through like a strange amount of repetition. Yeah. Right. right? Like Red Light, Green Light, I I get where mechanically that

would fit into the overarching idea of the games, but the only reason that it

was there was for the giant red light, green light doll and for Kithun to prove

that he had been in the games before and knew what was going on. Yeah. Yeah. It should have been a different game.

It Yeah. I I think I think if there was no repetition of games, it would have been much stronger. Um, and actually

that first game introduces my one of my um big issues with the this

overall arc of these two seasons, which is the lack of focused storytelling. Um,

right. They have now introduced three like we got a total of three main

plots happening right now. There's like Guithhun in the games. There's North Korean defector who's infiltrated the g

the the staff and then there's cop boy trying to find everyone and your

connected properly, right? Yeah. They they don't weave themselves together. They are three distinct story lines that are constantly

pulling your attention away. Um, and like in the in the pre in the first

season because you never really like there was a little bit of stuff with the cop, like a little

Mhm. but he got to the island pretty fast. He was mostly sneaking around on the island because you left the island so much in

the second and third seasons. You never got to like sit there and be like immersed. Right.

Right. Like Well, go ahead. And I think that the the cops main plotline from the first

season was a lot more tight. Yeah. Right. Like it had a very specific goal

and end point, right? And it just it it had momentum through

the whole thing. and the way that they just kind of traversed around it through the defections and the the weird

politicking of the the captains and you know who done it and like should we

trust the the gangsters that Kithun hired or should we trust the captain that saved my life quote unquote

right like all of that [ __ ] got muddy fast yeah I mean like in the first season it

was like hey I got to find my brother and this is like my first lead and there's that like emotional tie of like hey it's my missing family like I really

got to see what's going on. His motivations are muddy in this next one. Like obviously he's a dogooder who's

obsessed with finding these games because that's the last place he saw his brother, but like he's found his

brother, so like what is it just a sense of justice? Like, oh well, people are dying so I I got to go,

right? Like that that's kind of weak. Uh, what I was kind of hoping for was that

he and Guuehune would join the games together. Right. Right. That would have been

great. Streamlines it. Yeah. Right. Like it gets the two of them in there and now the brother is a goal

within the games, right? And staying alive long enough to confront your brother, right,

becomes a goal within the games. And so like if you see that as your path to getting to him.

Yeah. Yeah. And then we get to see him be an absolute [ __ ] psychopath because his own blood is in this game and he is

still running it the way that he normally would. Yeah. Right. Like just completely emotionally

disconnected from it or even does the same thing that he did and like joins the games for like the weird emotional

beat of like, "Yeah, now we've reconnected. We're in the games together. Haha, they kicked me out. Just

kidding. Psych. I'm actually still with them." Right. Like Yeah. I was going to say

those plots so much. It makes it a lot harder to put the brother back in the games if the the

cops in there too, but um you know they obviously wanted and I don't know why

they did this but they wanted to do like that mirroring of the reveal in the first season of like oh actually this

guy has been in charge the whole time. Haha. And they just really whiffed it. Like

I didn't love that twist in the first one. Right. Right. It was fine. It it like if anything I

think that was probably the biggest detractor of the season Yeah. for me. Yeah.

Because that guy's death in the games had so much weight connected to it.

Yeah. That having him just miraculously be back and the guy who ran [ __ ]

undermined that. Yeah. In a really weird way. Right. you got to really root for like the truest underdog

in the whole building. And they made you like love this canankerous old man who was like weak and feeble but also

selfless and um vulnerable but still like had in inner strength and then they

completely undercut the emotional beat of marbles by being like ah just kidding.

See I think okay if we hadn't done that twist Yeah. Right. If we had just run it the nor the

the way we normally had, having the black masked brother be in the games

from the beginning. Yeah. Could have been an interesting mystery. Right.

Right. You have him in there. He says that they kicked him out of that position. Right. He got fired because of what he pulled

in the last games. Yeah. And his his punishment is he has to join the games. Yeah. And so you go through the whole

thing being like, is is that is that [ __ ] true? Yeah. Right. Did did he get kicked out?

Because then you have again like that that emotional reconnection with the brother and then when you find out that

he's a [ __ ] psychopath and he's been running [ __ ] from the beginning, that's a huge [ __ ] reveal. Yeah,

that's good. So, no, I I I didn't love that. So

So, there was a lot of time between games. Yeah, they spent a lot of really do anything. They needed a lot of time

between games because they had to keep jumping over to other stories. And unfortunately, you can't do that in the

middle of a game. So, every time you come back to the main characters, they're all just hanging out. And that's why they had to put these [ __ ] votes

in every time because you need to pad out their time in the hall. Um

well, that's why we got such um like villainous

side characters as well. I think having Thanos in the games

causing [ __ ] and like being a disturber was very much just there to pad things

out and create some additional drama. Yeah. That took the place of what could have

been otherwise emotional beats, right? Like there were villainous people in the first season,

but I felt like they were opportunistic. They weren't, you know, set up from

minute one to be the the super villain. Um, they saw an opportunity to enrich

themselves and they didn't mind that it came at the cost of others. And for like

Thanos and some of those guys, it was very much like, oh, hurting others is

the point of this game, especially his little boyfriend there. Um, what I found really funny about that was

that like Thanos died. Yeah. And that was fine. Yeah.

And then it was like they just took all of his lines and gave them to his buddy. Yeah.

So like Thanos was still there. He just didn't have purple hair anymore. Yeah. Exactly. because the guy just

morphed into the same addict [ __ ] that Thanos was. Like,

yeah, maybe that's I mean, maybe that's the point of the message they were trying to make about this like club promoter who

felt slighted by a rapper. It just becomes a thing he hated, but like it wasn't clearly like that they didn't do

a good job of communicating that. Um Yeah. Yeah. And like because you're

spending less time with the individual games because you're spending so much time off the island or dealing with like

weird [ __ ] with the staff. I cannot I don't think it's possible for me to properly like

say how much I [ __ ] don't care about the staff. Right. Right. I want them to be nameless and faceless

Yes. entities. Yeah. Because they are not people, they are the system.

Yes. That was the strength of the first season is that it wasn't, you know, man versus man, it was man versus machine.

Yeah. Man versus God essentially. You are you are just you versus the system.

Yeah. And having a name attached to it and having

character motivations attached to the staff and why do these people do what they do? You still haven't told me why

these people are [ __ ] murderers, right? Right. And it doesn't matter. Yeah.

That they're just they're they're evil people. They are there to shoot guns into people who lose games.

Yeah. That's all I need to know about them. Yeah. And and getting an insight into

like one or two of them that are slightly different makes the rest of it worse.

Yes. Because now I have to think about like how How do you find 300 people to

do this? Yeah, it's like they're in prison. And also, like this job is not fun. These from

what they showed us in one episode, these are like highly trained people who

like have I'm assuming like military and paramilitary backgrounds and

they're like consenting to this shitty job on an island for like what mediocre

compensation. Like not enough money to make organ selling a viable side hustle.

No. No. Like what what they could have done is frankly if they went the other

direction like went whole hog on these um on these these staff and basically

were like by the way this whole thing is just like the Stanford prison experiment we're at large like that might have been

a more interesting angle. Um but no they they are like oh by the way there's like one of these people

who's not like a faceless automaton and then like two supervisors. [ __ ] How good would it have been to

have the VIP room suddenly focus on the staff?

Yeah. Yeah. Right. Like they're they're doing all of this stuff with the games and like a game isn't happening right now. So they

start watching the staff because some of these situations have been engineered. Oh, interesting. Okay. I I was going a

different direction. Like what if it's like up in the VIP room and now you see the way the staff are abused by VIPs. Um

that would also be dope. Um like there are directions that you could take that. But again, don't give

them names, right? Don't give them faces, right? That is the triangle person.

Yeah. And so the triangle person does triangle person things. Yeah. That's keep it [ __ ] simple. You do

not want to muddy that. Um, I found the second and third seasons really preachy.

Yeah. Yeah. The first season didn't need to be. Huh. It It had a very clear message. It knew

what it was about. Um, okay. We We've talked a lot.

I was going to say it was a lot smarter about show don't tell. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. We We have gone

past time and we haven't even gotten to the meat of the thing that I want to talk about. No, let's keep going. We have a lot to

say about this. We have a lot to say about Squid Game. Okay. Hey, thanks for making it all the way

through this episode of No Plotton Only Lore. If you're looking for more, you can always find us at noplotonly.com

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