Latest / Daebak K-Rambles Podcast: K-drama Reviews / Squid Game (S2) | Full K-drama Review / Ep. 82

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Squid Game (S2) | Full K-drama Review / Ep. 82 · Daebak K-Rambles Podcast: K-drama Reviews

• 0:19
  I'm Jessica and this is Teba K Rambles where a couple of
• 0:21
  friends review Korean dramas and we are back for I think the
• 0:26
  season 6 kick off. I think this is the first
• 0:29
  episode of Season 6. I'm sorry, I'm kind of
• 0:32
  discombobulated and I don't really know because I think you
• 0:36
  and I, me and my guest really wanted to talk about this show.
• 0:39
  And so this is technically the hiatus off time offseason, but
• 0:44
  we're here and we're going to talk about Squid Game Season 2.
• 0:48
  I am joined by Miguel. How are you, Miguel?
• 0:53
  How's it going? I'm well, thank you.
• 0:54
  How are you? I am good.
• 0:56
  We had a really nice lunch earlier.
• 0:58
  We had Korean barbecue and it was delicious.
• 1:02
  And for those who don't know, Miguel is one of my oldest K
• 1:05
  drama friends. And you can listen to Miguel on
• 1:09
  a number of episodes, including Squid Game season one.
• 1:14
  That was the very first episode you were on in 2021.
• 1:19
  It's been like four years. It's shocking.
• 1:22
  You've been on 2521, Snowdrop, First Love the Glory, Alice in
• 1:27
  Borderland most recently. And so we're back and we're
• 1:31
  going to talk about Season 2 of Squid Game.
• 1:36
  But before we do, if this is your first time listening, go
• 1:38
  ahead and subscribe on your favorite podcast app.
• 1:40
  We're on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast and many more.
• 1:43
  And if you like us, please give us a five star review on Apple
• 1:46
  Podcast and Spotify. That goes such a long way for
• 1:48
  us. And then come and check us out
• 1:50
  on social media. What's left of it.
• 1:52
  To stay up to date on our latest episodes and reviews, you can
• 1:56
  find me on Instagram, Facebook, and as of today, TikTok.
• 2:01
  Who knows what's going to happen in a few days or a month at
• 2:05
  Debak Pod DAEBAKPOD. And lastly, if you're a fan, the
• 2:10
  best way to be a fan is to become a patron for as little as
• 2:13
  $2.00 a month. It's a great way for you to get
• 2:15
  involved and show your support. You can check out the page on
• 2:18
  patreon.com/debakod. Shout out to our patrons Janet,
• 2:24
  Curtis, Vale, CD, Alana, Grace, Cindy, Lorna, Sami, Caitlin,
• 2:28
  Julia #1, Michelle, Tenmei, Marta, Adelphia, Maria, Sarah,
• 2:32
  and Julia #2 I so appreciate you guys and all of the free patron
• 2:37
  members as well. So we were here four years ago
• 2:43
  talking about Squid Game ago and.
• 2:45
  Here we are again. And here we are.
• 2:46
  We're going to, we're going to get started.
• 2:50
  I think I had you read the synopsis last time.
• 2:53
  I'm just going to go ahead and read it this time.
• 2:55
  Sounds good. Asian Wiki Synopsis of Season 2
• 2:59
  of Squid Game. After winning the Squid Game and
• 3:02
  receiving its massive cash prize, Song Yun plan to live a
• 3:05
  new life in the United States. However, Song Yun, still haunted
• 3:09
  by the deaths of all the players he competed with, decided to
• 3:12
  skip his flight and returned to Seoul.
• 3:15
  He spends the next three years looking for the people
• 3:17
  responsible for the Squid Game. He has enlisted the help of a
• 3:20
  loan shark, Sunshine Capital, to find the people who work for the
• 3:23
  Squid Game. Meanwhile, Detective Hong Duno
• 3:26
  has opted to transfer from the Major Crimes Division and work
• 3:29
  for a small neighbourhood's police substation.
• 3:32
  In his free time, he works with Captain Park and travels on his
• 3:35
  boat to find the island where he saw a game take place that
• 3:39
  involved the deaths of the players.
• 3:41
  His brother Hong Ino was on that island.
• 3:44
  Soon, Song Yun is able to join a new round of the Squid Game, but
• 3:49
  his goal this time is to stop the game once and for all.
• 3:53
  Good luck with that, I mean. And now season 2 aired December
• 3:58
  26th, 2024. We are several weeks removed
• 4:01
  from that. We are recording this in January
• 4:03
  2025. Season 2 is 7 episodes long.
• 4:08
  For a refresher. Season 1 aired September 17th,
• 4:13
  2021. Yeah.
• 4:15
  Three years we're here. Three years later, basically
• 4:18
  it's the new season. It shows.
• 4:20
  Season 1 was 9 episodes long and this one is 7.
• 4:24
  Like I just said. Same director and writer Hong
• 4:26
  Dong Yok, he's back and we have a lot of returning cast members.
• 4:31
  We have Eaton Day as well as we had Dune.
• 4:35
  Like I said, these are the characters that I mentioned in
• 4:37
  the synopsis. That's Player 456 and the
• 4:41
  undercover cop. We have a lot of side characters
• 4:43
  returning to. We have Kung Yu as the subway
• 4:48
  predator slash recruiters slash Superman, whatever you want to
• 4:51
  call him. Kung Yu is back.
• 4:52
  EB Yong Ngun is back, as well as the front man, the guy in the
• 4:56
  black mask. And then we have a ton of new
• 4:59
  players this season. Imchiwan is player 333, Kanganu
• 5:05
  as player 388, Izhenuk as player 246, Paksungun as 1/21/20.
• 5:12
  You've seen this guy, this actor in the glory.
• 5:18
  Yeah. Young, Dungun player, Double O
• 5:21
  7, Kanye SIM as player 149, and the list really goes on and on,
• 5:27
  including TOP Top as Thanos player 2:30 Pacquiao Young also
• 5:38
  plays character Noel, who is actually, I'm not going to say
• 5:41
  who she is because that's actually a little bit of a
• 5:43
  spoiler, But tons of people in this show, a lot of familiar
• 5:47
  faces. And I think we're at the point
• 5:52
  where I can ask you what you thought about Squid Game before
• 5:57
  I kind of tell you about all the tea that's happened.
• 6:02
  OK. Yeah, as a whole or like this
• 6:05
  new season? This new season and then if you
• 6:08
  want like in relation, how does it stack up against Season 1,
• 6:12
  you know, so on and so on. OK, OK.
• 6:15
  But general those non spoilers, this is the non spoiler section.
• 6:19
  When I tell you I really enjoyed the second season, I hope that
• 6:25
  I'm not alone in that, but we'll see.
• 6:29
  I haven't given anything away, like I have not let Miguel know
• 6:33
  what I think we're going. Into this blind, we're just
• 6:35
  like, oh, did you see that? And we're like, Yep.
• 6:36
  And that's it. So so I loved it In a lot of
• 6:41
  ways, I actually like the second season a little bit better than
• 6:43
  the first. And because it's like something
• 6:46
  that I love about Squid Game and it's definitely present in the
• 6:48
  second season. They really take their time with
• 6:52
  the pacing, but it never drags. Like we don't, we're not just
• 6:57
  thrown straight in just like in the first season.
• 6:59
  Like they're building these people up 'cause it's not like
• 7:02
  Battle Royale or even Alice in Wonderland where, oh, you're
• 7:06
  getting to know them throughout, like.
• 7:07
  No, you mean to delay their land?
• 7:09
  Sorry, yes, well, that too. But they lay a good foundation
• 7:15
  for who these people are and why we should care that way.
• 7:18
  To us, these like contestants are not just numbers, like
• 7:21
  they're actual people. They have their motivations and
• 7:24
  everything that we see them. We can kind of pick a side,
• 7:27
  like, OK, like this person may have done that, but you know,
• 7:30
  she has gastrographin to pay for or something 'cause it's always
• 7:34
  something really like chaotic. I love the production value of
• 7:37
  the second season. I love that everything looks
• 7:41
  brighter now, like the color grading isn't as dramatic and
• 7:44
  Netflixy as it was in the first. Like now it looks bright and
• 7:48
  horrifying. I, the character, Oh my God, the
• 7:52
  characters. The characters had me at my
• 7:54
  limit. I was over it.
• 7:56
  I was over it so fast. Because the show aged very well
• 8:01
  with or the writing age very well with the time.
• 8:05
  Because now you know, Gen. Z is old enough to play in this
• 8:08
  game and we really see that like right off RIP something I won't
• 8:13
  forgive. I just I got to throw this out
• 8:15
  there because it's already well known from the I'm not letting
• 8:18
  the red wig go. I'm not letting it go.
• 8:20
  I was so I was punching the air. I was throwing stuff off my desk
• 8:26
  like I'm not letting the red wig go.
• 8:29
  You called it the Ronald McDonald look.
• 8:31
  In I was so I was so mad. It was enough to get the show
• 8:36
  cancelled. Like if they never came back, I
• 8:38
  was like, you know what, it's fine.
• 8:39
  This was great up until this moment, but I'm not letting that
• 8:42
  go. In any event, I loved it.
• 8:44
  I I love the pacing. I love we'll get into it,
• 8:48
  obviously, but I love the direction that it took.
• 8:50
  It felt like there were two shows going on at once, which
• 8:54
  normally is not a great thing, but in this case it really
• 8:56
  ticked all the boxes for me. The new characters are a
• 8:59
  delight. Every single one of them is just
• 9:02
  awful, but great. I really loved it.
• 9:05
  Like I really loved it. I actually started watching it.
• 9:08
  We had set this up a while back, but I went one night to watch it
• 9:11
  and I didn't go to bed till like 2:00 in the morning and I had to
• 9:14
  basically take a nap and get up and watch the rest of it because
• 9:17
  it was the first thing I did. I loved it.
• 9:20
  I am so glad to hear that you loved it.
• 9:21
  I also really enjoyed Season 2. I'm just going to get that off
• 9:25
  my chest right now before we go into a little more of like the
• 9:28
  scandals and the controversies about the show is that I walked
• 9:33
  in knowing all of the beef, knowing all of the back story of
• 9:38
  these actors of the Netflix of it all, which we have to talk
• 9:42
  about have like a whole Netflix, right?
• 9:43
  I have to have. And this show really did, I
• 9:48
  think, well, I said in Season 1, our review, what is the price of
• 9:54
  a human life? And how this show doesn't seek
• 9:57
  to necessarily answer this overtly.
• 9:59
  It's doing this through the course of the plot and what what
• 10:02
  happens. You know, moral and ethical
• 10:05
  quandaries, they subsist in Season 2, we get more of the
• 10:08
  same. You said there was uneven pacing
• 10:11
  in Season 1. And now in Season 2, you're
• 10:15
  like, OK with the pacing. You're feeling like it's earned.
• 10:17
  Well no, I was good with the pacing for both.
• 10:19
  Oh, OK. I was good with the pacing
• 10:21
  across the board. I thought that it built up well,
• 10:24
  yeah. This show, season 2 has the same
• 10:28
  panache, same sharp cinematography as season 1 and
• 10:32
  you said as much as well that it's like a great looking.
• 10:35
  Show great looking. They really increase the
• 10:38
  quality, yeah. Still about classism or class
• 10:41
  disparity in every sense of the term.
• 10:44
  In this season. It was actually funny, like the
• 10:47
  comedy elements. Yes, it was so funny.
• 10:50
  Felt a bit new compared to season 1, which is a little more
• 10:53
  bleak I guess compared to season 2.
• 10:56
  So for what it is, which is AI, think of it as a sequel, right?
• 11:01
  It's a true sequel. Season 1 was not predicted,
• 11:05
  projected to do the numbers that it did.
• 11:09
  So just like when a movie does really well all of a sudden
• 11:14
  season 2 greenlit. Ronald McDonald.
• 11:16
  I don't consider this as like a season 2 of a story that's
• 11:21
  already been written or thought of in that way, that there was
• 11:26
  always going to be a season 2. Season 1 left on an open-ended
• 11:31
  sort of cliffhanger type thing. But that doesn't necessarily
• 11:34
  mean that the Creator had Season 2 fully planned out and in mind.
• 11:39
  Would you have been happy with it if it had just ended there?
• 11:42
  Oh, yeah. I wouldn't have minded it at
• 11:43
  all. Yeah.
• 11:44
  But that's because I'm different than most people in that I can
• 11:48
  just infer, make it up what happened next and have some sort
• 11:54
  of imagination. And other people, many people
• 11:58
  don't have that, like, they need to know exactly what happened
• 12:02
  next. And I'm like, you can figure
• 12:03
  like he goes back like it's very.
• 12:06
  Yeah. Like it's easy to fill in the.
• 12:08
  Blanks, Right? Exactly, Exactly.
• 12:10
  But there's a lot of people that don't want to take the creative
• 12:14
  leaps to fill in what an open ending is.
• 12:17
  And that's what that open ending was, was an affront to a lot of
• 12:21
  people. Yeah, yeah, no, I expected there
• 12:25
  to be a season too, honestly, just because of not even because
• 12:29
  of the numbers, because by that point, like it exploded in
• 12:32
  popularity. But that's The funny thing about
• 12:34
  Netflix. It doesn't really matter.
• 12:36
  Like everything, even that Anne of Green Gables show was like,
• 12:40
  or the the rollerblading show. These shows were so like, Oh my
• 12:44
  God. And then two weeks later,
• 12:45
  everybody forgot everything about it.
• 12:47
  No, because I'm still upset that they cancelled Anne of Green
• 12:50
  Gables. So is everyone in Japan?
• 12:52
  Apparently I am pissed. Pissed.
• 12:54
  You Oh God, I don't want to segue into like Anna Green
• 12:58
  Gables and like that drama like what they did.
• 13:00
  But how could they cancel that show?
• 13:02
  Anyway, This show is a reunion for a few of the cast members.
• 13:07
  And I wanted to put this up front that Kankanul, which is
• 13:11
  player 388, he's the one that went to the military or went in
• 13:14
  the Marines and was like showing off his arm tat half the time.
• 13:19
  So that young guy and Imshiwan, who plays player 333, he's the
• 13:25
  Crypto guy. OK, so those two.
• 13:28
  MG. Coins had worked together in
• 13:32
  another drama called me saying An Incomplete Life, which is
• 13:36
  basically a 10 year old drama. They don't have that many scenes
• 13:39
  together in Squid Game 2, but this industry is very small I
• 13:43
  would say. Yeah.
• 13:45
  So everyone's going to have work together.
• 13:46
  They work together. Ebungan frontman and TOP Thanos
• 13:53
  both were in Iris. Do you remember Iris?
• 13:56
  Of course I remember Iris, every Korean deli, every Korean
• 14:00
  supermarket, and that you remember the Dark Ages and that
• 14:03
  little bootleg area where all the discs.
• 14:05
  Were yes. Posters just iris, Iris 2, Iris
• 14:08
  3 Iris reawakening like I. Remember because they did a
• 14:12
  movie and everything of like it was.
• 14:14
  A whole moment it. Was it was so Iris and then
• 14:18
  Pacquiao Young. Who is I don't want to say who
• 14:22
  she is because we're in the non spoiler section.
• 14:24
  But anyway, Paki young actress and Idanuk, who is player 246.
• 14:28
  He's the dad with the terminal child.
• 14:31
  They were both in Sweet Home, which is another Netflix
• 14:34
  original show that actually see. We reviewed season 1 on the
• 14:39
  podcast and Rico was on that episode with me.
• 14:41
  So if you want to go back and listen to Sweet Home, you can.
• 14:46
  That is basically all of like the good news that I wanted to
• 14:51
  share about the show. I'm like on the edge of my seat.
• 14:54
  OK, this like, is this like a Gone with the Wind level
• 14:57
  controversy? No, it it really is not.
• 15:00
  But I'll, I'll, I'll preface this.
• 15:03
  So let's get into Netflix, let's get into the scandals, and then
• 15:07
  we'll get into the complaints about the show itself, like the
• 15:11
  plot having to do with the actual production of what we saw
• 15:16
  on screen, which has really nothing to do with the behind
• 15:18
  the scenes like scandals of each actor and all this stuff.
• 15:22
  OK, let's hit on Netflix first. So in season 1 and in our review
• 15:28
  of season 1, we said that this was Netflix's biggest ever
• 15:32
  series at launch. It was number one on the
• 15:34
  platform for weeks. It's been watched by 2/3 of all
• 15:38
  Netflix users. 142,000,000 subscribers watched at least 2
• 15:42
  minutes and Netflix gained millions of new subscribers and
• 15:47
  it increased the value of Netflix the company by a billion
• 15:52
  dollars basically. Wow, a billion dollars.
• 15:55
  That's how much value Squid Game added to.
• 15:58
  Netflix billion. With ABB.
• 16:01
  So that being said, we were going to get a season 2 with or
• 16:06
  without the creator of Netflix of of of the show.
• 16:10
  OK, that's just how it is. Because of how Netflix
• 16:16
  structures its deals with creators all these years later
• 16:19
  were 3-4 years removed from the original series airing date.
• 16:24
  It's become part of the zeitgeist.
• 16:25
  It's already entered the zeitgeist.
• 16:27
  People are wearing Halloween costumes of Squid Game, right?
• 16:30
  The Vans sales bike. The Vans sales bike.
• 16:33
  Which you talk about vans anywhere?
• 16:35
  Yeah, yeah. So Netflix, it's well
• 16:38
  documented, well known now that Netflix does not pay its
• 16:41
  creators. Oh shit.
• 16:43
  They pay a flat fee for the content.
• 16:46
  And in the structure of the deal, the creator, whoever comes
• 16:51
  to the Netflix and says I have this show, I have this script,
• 16:54
  they have to sign away their intellectual property rights and
• 16:57
  they do not get any royalties. What for their show?
• 17:01
  Yeah, you're hearing this is all true.
• 17:03
  I wow. Yes, so the director slash
• 17:07
  creator of Squid Game, the one this man had been writing and
• 17:11
  and dreaming about this show for almost a decade, had to sell his
• 17:14
  laptop to make ends meet. Do you remember all this like?
• 17:17
  This. I remember this story, he was
• 17:18
  basically the JK Rowling of K drama for a second.
• 17:21
  Like he was borderline homeless. He sold all his stuff.
• 17:24
  It was rough. It's a real rags to riches
• 17:26
  story. Except is it a rags to riches
• 17:27
  story when he's not getting paid?
• 17:30
  Like Netflix saw a billion dollar increase in its company
• 17:35
  value. He did not see a penny of that.
• 17:38
  Not really nothing. Yes, nothing.
• 17:42
  He signed all of his intellectual property rights
• 17:45
  away. That's like.
• 17:46
  That's why Netflix would have made a season 2 with or without
• 17:49
  him. So let me make sure I have this
• 17:53
  'cause now I'm pissed. No, I'm pissed.
• 17:55
  I felt like we used to talk about Netflix.
• 17:57
  I guess on some level I can understand the royalty part just
• 18:00
  because, you know, capitalist hellscape.
• 18:04
  But did he get paid? Anything for?
• 18:06
  A flat like he just got like a check.
• 18:08
  Like, yeah, he just, they just cut him a check and said thanks.
• 18:11
  And then here's your budget for the show.
• 18:13
  So you're telling me like the T-shirts, going to the Korean
• 18:16
  market and seeing all those Squid Game?
• 18:18
  All going. Into that's like pokey nothing.
• 18:21
  Nothing, I'm telling you. Wow, he doesn't get a sense, you
• 18:24
  know what I'm saying? It is really insane.
• 18:28
  We need to start like a petition for this man.
• 18:30
  The creator has gone on record. There was like ABBC interview
• 18:34
  that they did with him recently, like in the promo leading up to
• 18:37
  season 2's launch and they were asking him, oh, we heard you
• 18:41
  lost 9 teeth during season 1 during the production of season
• 18:45
  1. And he said yeah, I lost 9 teeth
• 18:47
  from the stress. Oh my.
• 18:50
  God of and look, I would've been devastated losing 1 tooth.
• 18:54
  I would be devastated chipping it too.
• 18:56
  What's going on? He's telling us he has lost 9
• 19:00
  teeth because he is an auteur and he's stressed about the the
• 19:06
  production of this almighty show that there's no guarantee that
• 19:10
  it was going to make bank at all for Netflix or anybody.
• 19:13
  He says he came back and did season 2 because of money.
• 19:17
  Yeah, he was like, I really didn't get compensated fairly
• 19:20
  for season 1. Look at all of that.
• 19:22
  It has done. It's a cultural phenomenon.
• 19:25
  It's a cultural phenomenon. People who have never seen AK
• 19:28
  drama before have watched Squid Game.
• 19:30
  Point of fact, I was in New York the year that Squid Game came
• 19:34
  out like Halloween because it was there were St. performers
• 19:37
  like in New York, no word of a lie.
• 19:39
  Like break dancing in the like pink like outfits to like a trap
• 19:44
  remix of the theme song was like with like a beat and everything.
• 19:47
  So like cultural phenomenon. It was a vibe.
• 19:51
  That's that's horrible. Yeah, he lost teeth.
• 19:55
  So he came back just to get paid because I'm sure that the deal
• 19:59
  that he cut this time was for way more money.
• 20:03
  That flat fee or whatever was for way more because they were
• 20:06
  like, OK, if we do a season 2 and it sucks, it might make us
• 20:09
  lose money, right? Right.
• 20:12
  So he came back literally to get what was his.
• 20:17
  Oh my God, it's like a parallel to the show.
• 20:19
  Yeah, parallel to the show, I also want to go on a rant about
• 20:23
  three years for seven episodes. Yeah, that's kind of that's kind
• 20:30
  of deeply inferior. I'm.
• 20:33
  Freaking pissed like it is heinous work.
• 20:36
  Netflix I know is counting their days because they have fed us
• 20:40
  worst smelling shit as customers for decades now.
• 20:44
  They've put ads on the platform which was the whole point of
• 20:47
  streaming content on their platform in the 1st place ad
• 20:50
  free. They've now have A tier with ads
• 20:53
  and then the price hikes every year for next. $16.00 now it's.
• 20:57
  Ridiculous. Then, setting all that aside,
• 21:01
  that was just to augment the larger point of why the hell
• 21:05
  does it take two to three years to produce 789 episodes of one
• 21:10
  single season of television? Network television was pumping
• 21:13
  out 22 episodes in a season in presumably one year.
• 21:18
  No waiting years between seasons at that.
• 21:20
  Say what you want about the working conditions on a network
• 21:24
  television show, but damn, at least everyone got paid
• 21:27
  residuals for the rest of their natural lives so that the
• 21:30
  licensing and reuse of this precious content fed them when
• 21:34
  they were hungry. 2 by 50 years down the line and.
• 21:37
  None of that's going on now. The model for Netflix is cost
• 21:40
  plus. That's what they call it.
• 21:42
  It's pitiful. With Cost Plus, Netflix offers
• 21:45
  to pay for an entire season of a show upfront, which is what it
• 21:49
  did for other shows like the original Netflix show House of
• 21:52
  Cards. Oh yeah, I forgot about that.
• 21:55
  Right then, plus a premium premium in air quotes that
• 21:59
  Netflix calculates and it's what they think the back end would
• 22:05
  have been on the show. You know, this, this makes a lot
• 22:08
  of sense. This makes a lot of sense.
• 22:10
  That's why every time you log into Netflix, like do you ever
• 22:13
  log in and you look at things recommended to you and you're
• 22:16
  like, this shit is made-up. This isn't a real show.
• 22:18
  Where did this come from? There's like three seasons of a
• 22:20
  show that just popped up out of nowhere and it's a Netflix
• 22:22
  original. This.
• 22:24
  They're just throwing everything at the wall at this point.
• 22:27
  So here's the bottom line. Netflix took advantage of the
• 22:30
  fact that it was new and shiny and didn't fit the network TV
• 22:33
  slash cable model. So the unions and gills didn't
• 22:38
  negotiate for this shit. They said if streaming takes
• 22:41
  off, then we'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
• 22:44
  And streaming took off faster than you can say Bob's your
• 22:46
  uncle and there is no bridge to cross.
• 22:49
  Now it's an entire fucking Great Wall of China to negotiate over
• 22:53
  because Netflix is like, well, why would we come back to the
• 22:56
  negotiating table when we have all the leeway?
• 23:00
  We hold all the cards. While the WGA and SAG after
• 23:04
  strikes last year were partly about negotiating residuals with
• 23:08
  the streamers to resolve this problem.
• 23:11
  This is what's frustrating in regards to K Drama is that
• 23:14
  you'll be sorry to hear Netflix does not refuses to sit down
• 23:19
  with any equivalent guilds in Korea.
• 23:23
  Really, they don't even know who to call over there at Netflix
• 23:26
  Korea. They run it like a scam.
• 23:29
  Yeah, I have a quote here from a Collider article that says Korea
• 23:34
  Broadcasting Actors Union was having it out with the streaming
• 23:37
  giant. Or rather whatever comes before
• 23:40
  the out because Netflix won't even pick up the phone.
• 23:43
  Union president Song Chang Gun is frustrated that the streamer
• 23:47
  doesn't pay royalties or residuals to South Korean
• 23:49
  talent. And since they technically don't
• 23:52
  employ South Korean talent to begin with because they
• 23:56
  outsource its productions to local companies, they feel
• 24:00
  they're not even obligated to talk with the unions because
• 24:04
  they're like, we're not hiring you.
• 24:05
  XYZ production company is hiring you.
• 24:08
  So take it up with them. But like, they're not the ones
• 24:11
  getting the distribution rights. They're not the ones that are
• 24:13
  reaping the benefits and getting all the money.
• 24:15
  So it is Netflix that you, you know what I'm saying?
• 24:18
  I have to. I feel like this kind of the,
• 24:21
  you know what, this kind of, it doesn't justify it, but it kind
• 24:24
  of do you remember the whole thing with NHK, like in Japan,
• 24:28
  like we're only now starting to get Japanese dramas.
• 24:31
  Yeah. They keep their stuff really,
• 24:33
  really, really tight for reasons like this.
• 24:36
  It's only now. A couple years ago they struck a
• 24:39
  deal with Netflix. And I'm.
• 24:41
  Releasing Yeah, me too, but they're bringing a bunch of old,
• 24:44
  old, old. But that's how they start.
• 24:46
  Yeah, that's how they started with K Dramas too, is that they
• 24:48
  were licensing for a period of time these older shows, well
• 24:54
  known shows and stuff to be on their platform.
• 24:57
  And that entices people to sign up even for Netflix so that they
• 25:01
  can watch this in their region. And then they're like, OK, we're
• 25:05
  going to take all of this info and we're going to create our
• 25:07
  own Netflix Japanese drama now. Yeah.
• 25:11
  It's no wonder they drag their feet to like get to the global
• 25:14
  market. They probably saw what was up.
• 25:16
  That's this is really devastating news.
• 25:19
  I'm not even going to like, I'm just like really upset.
• 25:22
  Here I am thinking we're breaking strides.
• 25:24
  Like I actually like lifted up, Netflix says.
• 25:26
  Like damn, like we're finally giving international acts and.
• 25:30
  They're not doing this out of the goodness of their hearts.
• 25:32
  No, but I didn't, you know, I didn't expect the other side of
• 25:36
  this is working a mantle. His teeth fall out and then
• 25:38
  giving him a piety check on top like this is horrible.
• 25:41
  I'm telling you, and this was info that we really didn't have
• 25:45
  in. I think we recorded that in
• 25:47
  October of 2021 about our Squid Game Season 1 review.
• 25:53
  After three years, more shit has really come out about Netflix
• 25:58
  and it's beyond frustrating to see how they operate.
• 26:05
  And really the reason why we have such a big Netflix Squid
• 26:10
  Game is because it did numbers on the platform and then Netflix
• 26:14
  started investing, marketing into Squid Game and you started
• 26:18
  seeing it everywhere, right? But think of all the Netflix
• 26:22
  shows that you don't freaking. If you're not following Netflix
• 26:25
  accounts on social media, you're not going to get any marketing
• 26:27
  for it. They do not market any of their
• 26:30
  originals. I never thought of that.
• 26:32
  You're up. You're right.
• 26:34
  Yeah, they don't, unless it's like a big.
• 26:36
  No marketing. Budget like.
• 26:37
  It's not like a movie where you like, need to go in a press
• 26:40
  tour. You need to talk to these
• 26:41
  outlets. You need to do meet and greets
• 26:43
  and all this stuff in a red carpet.
• 26:45
  That does not happen for Netflix shows or movies.
• 26:49
  Counter Days, Netflix. Except for the big ones that do
• 26:52
  numbers like Squid Game, Bridgeton, and Stranger Things.
• 26:55
  Were there movies that were Oscar contenders?
• 26:57
  Like wasn't The Irishman one of them?
• 26:59
  And. Yeah, but again, that's a
• 27:00
  Scorsese movie. So of course they're going to
• 27:01
  market the Scorsese movie. Like that's got to be in the
• 27:04
  deal that Scorsese inks. It's like you have to market my
• 27:07
  movie and they'll do it. It's a Scorsese like.
• 27:11
  Yeah, like that's yeah, they're not going to do like they're not
• 27:14
  going to take out bus ads and like no billboards for Anne with
• 27:17
  an E like. No.
• 27:19
  SO anyway, that's my Netflix rant.
• 27:22
  I'm going to get off my soapbox now and talk to you about the
• 27:24
  scandals. OK, cool.
• 27:27
  OK, so you know about TOP Top from Big Bang.
• 27:32
  First of all, I love Big Bang. I have to say that I am actually
• 27:36
  still Avipi really appreciate the music of Big Bang and I
• 27:42
  don't care that it's dated and it's a second generation group
• 27:47
  and all this other crap. Like it made me, and I do mean
• 27:50
  that punny because the Maid album really solidified my place
• 27:55
  on Spotify because I got Spotify around 2012 and that's around
• 27:59
  the time that the Maid album came out and I played the shit
• 28:02
  out of that album. It was a vibe.
• 28:05
  It was a whole like these new bands, I'm just, I'm not going
• 28:07
  to mention them because I don't need an army of fans come after
• 28:10
  me. But I'm looking at this.
• 28:11
  I'm like wow, I wish this was Big Bang.
• 28:14
  I wish this was Big Bang. Why aren't they playing Big Bang
• 28:16
  in Target? Do you remember what his scandal
• 28:18
  was? I remember vaguely, was it drug
• 28:21
  related? Yeah.
• 28:22
  So he was arrested in 2016 for marijuana usage.
• 28:25
  He pled guilty and I think that he was.
• 28:28
  I think he served jail time if I can't I can't remember
• 28:31
  correctly. Anyway, it doesn't really
• 28:33
  matter. The pot usage has branded him a
• 28:37
  drug addict and he has been blacklisted from the music
• 28:43
  industry and he basically declared himself retired in like
• 28:47
  2017. He was like fucking over it.
• 28:50
  He don't want to deal with nobody.
• 28:52
  He doesn't participate in any Big Bang activities anymore.
• 28:56
  It's really sad actually, that he has become sort of this
• 28:58
  reckless who only comes out to promote the fact that he was
• 29:02
  going to go to the moon. Do you remember this?
• 29:04
  I remember that for marijuana too, but then again their laws
• 29:07
  are so tight you can't even smoke.
• 29:10
  Even if you like, let's say you go to California and you smoke
• 29:14
  weed there, they can still prosecute you for it like when
• 29:17
  you get back. Yeah, exactly.
• 29:20
  It's just weed like. TOP has a really fractured
• 29:24
  relationship with the Korean public in particular because I
• 29:28
  think the global fans don't really care that much that he
• 29:33
  smoked weed. Nobody gives a shit, people
• 29:35
  smoke more weed than they do cigarettes so like nobody cares
• 29:38
  anymore. When TOP was announced to be
• 29:42
  part of his cast in Squid Game Two, there were a lot of, let's
• 29:47
  say, mean comments online from the netizens and people were
• 29:52
  speculating what kind of character he was going to play
• 29:55
  and how could the director possibly cast TOP and all this
• 29:59
  stuff. Come to find out, he's playing
• 30:04
  like a facsimile of himself. I'm obsessed with this.
• 30:09
  It is such perfect casting and once the show was released,
• 30:15
  there were so many Korean outlets who were putting out
• 30:18
  scathing articles about him, about his performance in the
• 30:22
  show and how it was cringy and all this stuff and just like
• 30:26
  berating him. So that is scandal number one is
• 30:29
  just TOP and his persona not jiving any Korean.
• 30:35
  It's. It's it's horrible.
• 30:37
  I gotta say like without spoiling anything like this
• 30:40
  newfound information makes me love his character that much
• 30:43
  more. It was pretty brave.
• 30:45
  Of. Him so much more I would say to
• 30:47
  even. He really, you know what?
• 30:48
  He really took it out and threw it on the table and said, you
• 30:50
  know what, Like I'm blacklisted from anything anyway, Let's just
• 30:53
  kick it up to 100 and just piss everyone off.
• 30:55
  I'm so here for it. Yeah, this is great.
• 30:57
  I love this. The other scandal is they had a.
• 31:02
  What do they call a cisgender? Man play a transgender woman,
• 31:07
  and that's Paksungun's character.
• 31:10
  So people are mad about that. I have to reiterate that Korea
• 31:14
  is a very conservative society, OK?
• 31:18
  LGBTQ plus rights are really never front and center on the
• 31:22
  agenda, and people really don't give a shit.
• 31:26
  So like, that's their that's their culture.
• 31:28
  You have to think about it that way, that the fact that you even
• 31:31
  have a trans character in the show is doing a lot.
• 31:36
  It's saying a lot, especially on behalf of the Creator.
• 31:40
  I'm actually really shocked. And when I saw that there was a
• 31:43
  trans character, I was like, oh, like I've never seen a trans
• 31:48
  character in because they always do kind of like that
• 31:51
  vaudevillian like. And the Japanese dramas do this
• 31:54
  too. It's like the character that's
• 31:55
  vaguely androgynous but they never get into like hey like I'm
• 32:00
  trans and this and that like the actual details of being trans or
• 32:05
  and then to for it not even to be played as a joke.
• 32:09
  I was. My mind was blown when I saw
• 32:11
  this character. Yeah, yeah.
• 32:13
  It's not my first time seeing a trans character because they
• 32:15
  also I think there was a trans woman in ITE Wan class as well,
• 32:20
  which is also a pretty big show with Paxogen.
• 32:23
  I don't know if you've heard of that joke but anyway.
• 32:25
  So it but again, few and far between.
• 32:28
  Is there any sort of representation like that on AK
• 32:33
  drama, let alone a global phenomenon like Squid Game?
• 32:38
  OK #2 POC sungun same actor. This is recent.
• 32:42
  He shared to his Instagram story with his 1.2 million followers,
• 32:46
  an adult parody film of Squid Game 2.
• 32:51
  And he immediately like took it down.
• 32:53
  And people don't know if he'd meant to do it on purpose or if
• 32:56
  he was trying to share it to like like a a burner Instagram
• 33:00
  account or with friends in a direct message or something like
• 33:04
  that. It's very weird.
• 33:05
  We don't have a lot of answers, but I think he already
• 33:08
  apologized or tearfully apologized.
• 33:10
  You know how the whole bit is like people?
• 33:13
  I'm ready to listen and to learn like or whatever it is they say.
• 33:17
  So this was the other a scandal with this actor and really I
• 33:23
  don't really give a shit, like personally.
• 33:26
  I gotta, yeah, I gotta be honest.
• 33:28
  Just like TOP's drugs like drug like, right?
• 33:32
  Quotes. Like scandal.
• 33:32
  Like, wow, I don't, you know, I think this show is going to
• 33:38
  provide. I thought it was going to be a
• 33:39
  good, OK, cool. Like we're putting a trans
• 33:42
  character front and center. It could be a good chance to
• 33:45
  kind of like. Open up a conversation, right?
• 33:48
  Make you feel a certain way about this character because you
• 33:51
  haven't looked at this struggle through the lens of a real life
• 33:55
  character who's like tangible on screen, has a struggle, has a
• 33:58
  mission through the course of these games, and it like didn't
• 34:03
  matter. Like I can kind of.
• 34:05
  Get they were focused on the casting on like, why'd you cast
• 34:08
  a guy? They kind of got up.
• 34:10
  I don't know, maybe lighten up. I don't know, cuz that's this.
• 34:15
  Well, then again, that second one, sharing a porn parody is
• 34:17
  kind of like, that's kind of like, I think it's a little.
• 34:20
  Funny. Personally, it is pretty funny.
• 34:22
  It's just like the Chris Evans, like, OK, like scandal.
• 34:26
  I'm not going to go into that. So anyway, no, the the point
• 34:30
  that I want to try and make before I go into the rest of the
• 34:33
  scandals is these people are not angels, OK?
• 34:38
  Not even there is a perception of Korean entertainers and Holly
• 34:43
  way of stars. Whatever the hell you want to
• 34:45
  call idols, whatever you want to call them that they don't do any
• 34:49
  drinking, they don't get drunk, they don't have sex like they
• 34:53
  don't like do any of they don't watch porn, they don't any of
• 34:56
  anything. And that's simply not true, OK?
• 35:00
  These people are fully grown adults most of the time.
• 35:04
  With lots of money. With lots of money, what the
• 35:06
  hell do you think goes on behind closed doors?
• 35:09
  So I think everyone needs to just like touch grass on a lot
• 35:13
  of this and just keep it in perspective.
• 35:15
  I know that we're Westerners. I know that we have a different
• 35:17
  view and what constitutes a scandal.
• 35:19
  But honestly, like for people who are shocked that these
• 35:25
  people smoke weed and like do all this stuff, take a deep
• 35:29
  breath and think about it. And I don't know what else to
• 35:33
  tell you so. I I couldn't agree more.
• 35:35
  I couldn't agree more. Like I, I don't understand how
• 35:38
  so many people have fallen for this.
• 35:43
  Like the idol culture. I don't get it.
• 35:45
  It's like, OK, fine, like they dressed them up a certain way
• 35:48
  and did all this stuff, but come on.
• 35:50
  Like there's been so many scandals for so long that are
• 35:53
  like worse than this. So.
• 35:54
  Talking about worse than this, we'll get into E Jung Jay, who
• 35:58
  is player 456. That's our lead in the show.
• 36:03
  He was guilty of multiple DU is with assault charges from the
• 36:07
  late 90s and early 2000s. This is obviously about 2024
• 36:12
  years old. This these scandals and people
• 36:14
  love to bring up this scandal for him.
• 36:18
  Frontman Ebyungen sued in 2009 by his ex-girlfriend for being a
• 36:23
  chronic gambler and tricking her into a sexual relationship with
• 36:26
  him on the false pretenses of eventually getting married.
• 36:31
  Yikes. More recently, you know he's
• 36:34
  been married to actress Emin Jung since 2013.
• 36:37
  Mine too. He was cheating on her with a
• 36:40
  model and there was a secret recording video recording of him
• 36:44
  making inappropriate comments about her like the model
• 36:48
  basically 2 girls when she was one of them and the other one
• 36:51
  was an idol or something like that.
• 36:54
  They were friends and they extorted him for money,
• 36:58
  blackmailed him with this video and then he turned around and
• 37:01
  sued them and one and the two girls are now in jail.
• 37:05
  So or they went to jail. Oh.
• 37:07
  Yeah, blackmail's huge over there.
• 37:08
  Huge. Or a huge crime, rather, Yeah.
• 37:10
  I mean both in both senses. Huge crime and huge.
• 37:15
  So that's ebungun. People love to bring this up and
• 37:18
  love to talk about ebungun. Two things can be true at the
• 37:21
  same time. You can have an asshole be
• 37:24
  famous and deserve the fame like because they're actually they
• 37:28
  actually have talent. Yeah, like Leonardo DiCaprio.
• 37:31
  Yeah, classic, classic Chevy Chase, another classic asshole.
• 37:37
  So there's so many cases of this and you can cancel them.
• 37:42
  You can avoid their projects, what have you.
• 37:44
  But like two things that Kevin Spacey.
• 37:46
  Oh my God, that's a great example of like, sorry to say,
• 37:49
  Kevin Spacey. Horrible person.
• 37:52
  Probably should have stayed cancelled.
• 37:54
  But yeah, he's a great actor, just can't deny that.
• 37:57
  Right, he should be in prison, but he great actor.
• 37:59
  Great actor. Exactly two things can be true
• 38:01
  at the same time. The season 1001 The old man Oh.
• 38:05
  Yeah. Oh no.
• 38:06
  Convicted of sexual misconduct and assault.
• 38:10
  That one tracks. That guy creeped me out.
• 38:11
  Like from day one. He.
• 38:12
  Was a creeper. We all knew it so, but that was
• 38:15
  after Squid Game. That was after he gained fame
• 38:19
  and after he went to the the Emmys and stuff.
• 38:22
  Then they were like, oh, he's not.
• 38:26
  My girl's like, shaking his head and like.
• 38:28
  You know all this all I'm getting from this, all I'm
• 38:30
  getting from just let TOP smoke some weed.
• 38:33
  Not literally like TOP is a good least of it.
• 38:35
  You know, I'm going to create I'm going to create an
• 38:38
  Instagram, one of those like those little story things.
• 38:40
  It's like TOP who he is and what we can do to help because we
• 38:44
  need to like this is a crisis. I need to.
• 38:48
  I'm not even done. I have two more.
• 38:50
  Oh no, Player 246 Jinnuk. OK, He's the guy that has the
• 38:55
  child that's terminal. Oh, OK.
• 38:57
  Back in 2016, he was accused of sexually assaulting his 33 year
• 39:01
  old friend. The courts, however, claimed it
• 39:05
  was consensual because she offered him a shower and a clean
• 39:07
  shirt after the encounter. So they were like something
• 39:10
  doesn't track. The math is a math thing here.
• 39:13
  That's nice. He was cleared of charges
• 39:16
  because she ended up saying her claims were false and then he
• 39:19
  countersued her. There's that scandal.
• 39:22
  You're like rolling your eyes. It was just like, Oh my.
• 39:24
  God can't deal with this. It's it's we're all this.
• 39:28
  It's it's the same everywhere and somehow worse.
• 39:31
  Here's the last one and I think this is might be.
• 39:33
  The worst. Also, real quick, I just want to
• 39:35
  say, like, as you're telling me all these scandals, I'm looking
• 39:38
  at a document with the profiles of all of these contestants.
• 39:41
  Yeah. And it's their faces in front of
• 39:43
  the pink background for their ID card.
• 39:45
  And this is like The Guess Who of scandals.
• 39:48
  Like, I feel like I'm playing Guess who.
• 39:50
  It's like, let me knock this one.
• 39:54
  It's the last one, and I don't think people talk about this one
• 39:57
  enough. Is player 100?
• 40:00
  This is song Young Chang. He's the old guy who wanted to
• 40:03
  keep playing the game. And he had the most debt out of
• 40:07
  anyone in the in the contestants.
• 40:09
  OK, get ready. Back in 2000, 2020, five years
• 40:14
  ago, he was convicted. Convicted of underage sexual
• 40:21
  wrongdoing, as in with a minor? OK.
• 40:26
  He reportedly paid a 16 year old $150.00 to have sex with him in
• 40:30
  his car twice. He was 42, married with a
• 40:36
  daughter. How old was the victim?
• 40:39
  16 years old, he got 10 months and two years probation.
• 40:45
  He barely served a month, then was released, and then he
• 40:49
  absconded to the United States. We need to free TOP.
• 40:53
  That's it. Free TOP.
• 40:54
  I don't. I wonder I have to.
• 40:56
  Wonder the fact that he was blacklisted and then he ends up
• 41:00
  in Squid Game season 2 anyway like is wild.
• 41:05
  But did they? This has to be intentional,
• 41:07
  right? Like this casting has to be.
• 41:10
  Intentional. I I don't know, I think the TOP
• 41:12
  1 was definitely yeah, for sure divine casting, but the rest,
• 41:18
  yeah. So you know what?
• 41:19
  I don't care what happens to any of these people after this.
• 41:22
  I gotta tie. We can all die.
• 41:25
  OK, going back to the show and like what are the complaints
• 41:28
  about the show itself? I heard complaints about the
• 41:31
  tonal inconsistency of season 2, how it undermines the narrative
• 41:37
  because you're flip flopping between people are laughing and
• 41:41
  hay and cheering each other on and then all of a sudden like
• 41:43
  they want to kill each other and it's doom and gloom.
• 41:46
  I thought that was great. I actually have an entire like
• 41:49
  section in my notes about the humor.
• 41:51
  Like, it's great, it's funny. I don't.
• 41:54
  Other complaints that I've seen are that the showrunner has
• 41:57
  prioritized entertainment over substance.
• 42:01
  In what way? Like it feels like such a
• 42:04
  natural segue from Season 1. Like I'm actually in shock at
• 42:08
  this because it's very cohesive I think.
• 42:10
  People have said the characters, the new additions to the cast
• 42:14
  are forgettable and that to prepare your face.
• 42:18
  I wish you guys could see Miguel's face.
• 42:21
  Who are these people? People have said the
• 42:25
  performances lack nuance. No, not any more than the first
• 42:32
  season at the very I'll I'll give them some of that, I guess,
• 42:36
  but I don't think. So they also said the deaths
• 42:38
  don't feel meaningful or particularly tragic.
• 42:42
  That's true, but we can't talk about why yet.
• 42:46
  So. And then I have some other
• 42:48
  complaints because they had a mixed critical reception.
• 42:52
  A lot of critics didn't like it. They disliked it.
• 42:55
  Diminishing returns, season set up for a finale, very
• 42:59
  unsatisfying ending. And I can see where they're
• 43:03
  coming from as far as the season felt incomplete, Right?
• 43:07
  Listen to me, Season 3 is going to be season 2 Part 2.
• 43:13
  That's what I thought it was. I didn't even know they were
• 43:15
  going to brand it as Season 3 until you had told me.
• 43:18
  I'm like, so when does Season 2B come out?
• 43:20
  Yeah, no, it's season 3. I was like, yeah.
• 43:24
  OK. And I didn't want to tell you
• 43:26
  like offhand, I totally agree because I just wanted to leave
• 43:30
  it for this review. But yeah.
• 43:32
  It felt really incomplete, yeah. Yeah, it did feel really
• 43:36
  incomplete, so I get why people are saying that.
• 43:39
  Other people saying this season was boring or mid.
• 43:44
  I watched almost all of it in one night, it was so good.
• 43:49
  Oh shit I forgot one scandal. OK, so this doesn't have to do
• 43:53
  with the specific actor or actress, this has to do with the
• 43:57
  show. All right.
• 43:58
  So Squid Game season 2 has prompted serious backlash in
• 44:02
  Vietnam. Can you guess why?
• 44:05
  I OK, I don't. Oh wait, because of the war they
• 44:09
  mentioned the. War.
• 44:10
  Exactly So. The issue in question relates to
• 44:12
  the references to the Vietnam War, many viewers accusing the
• 44:16
  show of glorifying the participation of South Korean
• 44:19
  soldiers in the conflict and whitewashing the atrocities.
• 44:24
  OK, well, have they seen any American movie made for the past
• 44:26
  60 years? Yeah.
• 44:28
  So they're the Vietnamese state media outlet Lao Dong is
• 44:34
  reviewing. They said that Vietnam Cinema
• 44:37
  Department is reviewing whether Season 2 conflicts with the
• 44:40
  nation's film laws. And they could, like, remove it,
• 44:44
  I guess, from that platform, the Netflix in Vietnam.
• 44:47
  OK. Like, I mean, every country
• 44:51
  thinks that they're the hero in their own story, so I don't
• 44:54
  know, OK. Yeah.
• 44:56
  I mean it's definitely better than paying a 16 year old so.
• 45:00
  Oh. Like, if this is Barry, I, I can
• 45:04
  see why you forgot that. And like, not to be insensitive,
• 45:06
  it's just kind of like, OK, well, all right.
• 45:09
  Yeah, so. We got through a lot to get
• 45:11
  here, so forgive me if I'm a bit underwhelmed.
• 45:13
  I would say that all of these complaints, right, like barring
• 45:17
  the boycott that's happening on behalf of Vietnam, all of these
• 45:21
  complaints just go to show that people don't like sequels,
• 45:25
  people don't like multi season shows.
• 45:28
  And I think the problem is it's impossible to make season 2 more
• 45:32
  jaw-dropping than season 1 because the novelty, the shock
• 45:37
  has worn off. Nobody knew what to expect on
• 45:40
  season 1 and it's suffering from sequel fatigue.
• 45:44
  Like how do you make this bigger, better, badder?
• 45:46
  Oh, more games. Different games, different
• 45:49
  characters. It's suffering from the same
• 45:52
  thing that every other sequel suffers from.
• 45:54
  Yeah, but I mean, even with I can't bring myself to dislike
• 45:59
  it. Like everything felt like such a
• 46:01
  natural progression of the first season.
• 46:04
  Like everything, the games, everything.
• 46:05
  Yeah, so. So I.
• 46:08
  Just want to say. That I liked it.
• 46:10
  I liked it a lot. It was really pretty much as
• 46:13
  much as I like Season 1. Sorry about it.
• 46:17
  Sorry to everybody who disliked it, but this is not.
• 46:22
  We're not too too haters here, I guess.
• 46:25
  No, yeah, if you're, I'm not piling onto any of that.
• 46:28
  So yeah, if you don't like it, you're not in for a good friend.
• 46:33
  Well, hopefully we can change your mind and give you a way to
• 46:35
  appreciate. It yeah, perhaps Speaking of the
• 46:39
  future of Squid Game. So there has been something some
• 46:43
  news floating around like that's been getting millions of views
• 46:46
  on TikTok of people sharing the Squid Game cinematic universe.
• 46:50
  The SGCU OK it's images circulating of what looks like a
• 46:56
  Kevin Feige MCU like presentation at Comic Con with a
• 47:01
  phase one timeline including Squid Game Season 3, Squid Game
• 47:05
  USA, Squid Game 1987, Squid Game 28th and Squid Game World.
• 47:11
  Is this a meme or is this real? It's fake.
• 47:13
  It's all fake. It's fabricated lies.
• 47:16
  Don't believe it? OK, good.
• 47:19
  Now if it happens that there is Netflix takes a cue from this or
• 47:24
  they had something leaked, then fine.
• 47:27
  You can feel free to comment in a year after this podcast has
• 47:31
  gone live to say you're wrong, fine.
• 47:34
  As of today it's all fake. OK, thank.
• 47:37
  God, like I don't. We did that already with Marvel.
• 47:40
  We don't need to do it again like we're we're so good on.
• 47:42
  That so an update on the 45.6 billion won.
• 47:46
  It is now worth in today a time of recording $30.9 million USD.
• 47:53
  That's the pot OK on the show. I just want to remind everybody
• 47:58
  that Squid Game is a real game, like played by kids and was
• 48:02
  popular in the 70s and 80s in Korea.
• 48:04
  And well, three of the characters in the show could be
• 48:09
  seen as being based on real life stories, true stories for
• 48:13
  echoing these stories. Okay, got it.
• 48:16
  I will give you those stories and then we will rate the show
• 48:18
  out of five Soldier Bottles. And then we're getting into the
• 48:20
  spoiler section. I'm ready for it.
• 48:22
  Ready. Okay, the trans character, Going
• 48:25
  back to the trans character, there was a transgender soldier
• 48:30
  in South Korea, Byung Visu, who was a staff Sergeant and was a
• 48:35
  tank driver before being discharged from the army in
• 48:39
  January in 2020 after she underwent gender reassignment
• 48:43
  surgery in Thailand. It's all like coming together in
• 48:47
  November 2019. So she fought for the right to
• 48:50
  continue serving in the Army. And it's really sad what
• 48:54
  happened to her because she was denied and discharged and then
• 48:58
  they denied her request for reinstatement in July 2020.
• 49:01
  And unfortunately she committed suicide in 2021.
• 49:05
  It. Was only four years ago.
• 49:07
  Yeah, I like, I was half expecting this to be from like
• 49:10
  the 90s. No, this is recent.
• 49:13
  This is recent. Byung Wisu was only 22 years
• 49:17
  old. Damn.
• 49:18
  Yeah, the crypto scam. Doquan is a South Korean former
• 49:23
  businessman and software engineer, Co founder and CEO of
• 49:26
  Terraform Labs, the parent company of crash stable coin
• 49:31
  Terra USD and cryptocurrency Luna.
• 49:34
  This is all gibberish to me, by the way.
• 49:36
  Terra USD and Luna collapsed in May 2022, wiping out almost 45
• 49:43
  billion with AB billion dollar market capitalization in one
• 49:48
  week and causing hundreds of billions in losses in the larger
• 49:52
  crypto market. This guy was on the run.
• 49:55
  They were like trying to find him and I think they caught him
• 49:58
  in Dubai and now he's facing charges in the US and South
• 50:01
  Korea in like multiple countries.
• 50:03
  He's on on trial for fraud. I.
• 50:05
  Don't blame him, I'd run farther for less.
• 50:08
  So like, honestly. 45 billion. Can you imagine?
• 50:13
  $45 billion. I'm like, I mean, I'm putting
• 50:18
  money into like a made-up currency.
• 50:21
  Oh yeah, no, that's never going to go wrong.
• 50:23
  So sorry to all the crypto people out there, but like.
• 50:26
  Don't worry, it'll pay off. You'll get your next Bitcoin,
• 50:30
  Julia. OK, the shaman.
• 50:38
  I couldn't want this lady. I'm sorry.
• 50:40
  For nearly two years leading up to the recent martial law
• 50:44
  declaration and his impeachment, President Yun Sokil reportedly
• 50:48
  visited a fortune teller, a shaman in Kunsan, South of
• 50:52
  Seoul. He visited over 20 times.
• 50:54
  He asked for the fate of different military officials and
• 50:57
  God knows what else. So that is in the zeitgeist for
• 51:02
  the Korean audience. That's something that the
• 51:04
  Western audience, the international audience, might
• 51:08
  not know. That is so funny and I'm going
• 51:10
  to rewatch it again with all this in mind.
• 51:12
  So Can you imagine your president is like consistently
• 51:15
  going to see a shaman and you're like, what can the is the shaman
• 51:19
  running the country like it's, you know, God, it sucks.
• 51:23
  You know what? That you know, the martial law
• 51:25
  thing actually makes sense now. I didn't know that.
• 51:28
  Yeah, So what would you rate Squid Game Season 2 out of five
• 51:32
  soju bottles? 4 1/2.
• 51:35
  Yeah, I'd give you like 4 four and a half four.
• 51:38
  It's just because of it. It's just because it's a
• 51:40
  truncated season. That's literally the only
• 51:43
  reason. Like if it would have been a
• 51:44
  full season and it would have kept up the momentum we're going
• 51:47
  to talk about, I think I would have just given it A5.
• 51:49
  I don't want to fault the creator for the injustice that
• 51:53
  was done to him and the craziness of Netflix.
• 51:58
  And that's why my score is still like 4/4 and 1/2.
• 52:00
  That's fair. I mean, he has diplomatic
• 52:02
  immunity in my heart. Yeah.
• 52:04
  He lost teeth making this thing literally.
• 52:05
  He's like, yeah, he's fine. Poor guy.
• 52:09
  So we are going to get into spoilers for Squid Game 2
• 52:14
  finally, right after this. Excuse me, I can't.
• 52:20
  You know I am. Oh.
• 52:24
  Sorry, what? All right, we're on the other
• 52:31
  side of spoilers, so anything goes.
• 52:33
  We are going to spoil Squid Game season 2 and talk about
• 52:38
  characters and what the hell happens in this show.
• 52:41
  So where do you even want to start?
• 52:43
  I think episode 1 is a little bit funny because we get the
• 52:48
  return of the recruiter. Kong you.
• 52:51
  I love him, I have to tell. You This was like an amazing,
• 52:54
  amazing episode I thought. It was so good.
• 52:59
  Because it fleshed out this character, the subway game
• 53:02
  recruiter who's playing Takchi with people and slapping them
• 53:06
  upside the head every time they lose.
• 53:09
  It expanded on the lore of this guy, and everybody in their mom
• 53:13
  knows who Kong Yu is. It's an amazing, amazing
• 53:18
  episode. What did you think of this one?
• 53:20
  I love the episode. I loved it specifically.
• 53:23
  Well, specifically for the recruiter.
• 53:26
  I'm glad that we got some back story, but even in the first
• 53:28
  season, he's like a top three character in my book, even
• 53:31
  though he's not because he's so well casted.
• 53:35
  He is creepy. He is so creepy and so stoic, so
• 53:41
  to see his back story or for him to give his back?
• 53:44
  Sorry, I'm not normally a fan of the very exposition.
• 53:46
  It is an exposition dump. My if in case you're wondering
• 53:50
  who I am, my father died and it's like, OK, but but in this
• 53:53
  case, it was interesting because it's like anything we know about
• 53:55
  him is interesting. I love that the first episode.
• 54:01
  I don't know if you know this, but I'm a huge police drama fan
• 54:07
  and this felt like like huge, like the killing.
• 54:09
  I've seen the killing, I think about 30 times, front to back,
• 54:13
  the American one. Not no Yeah of.
• 54:14
  Course, the German one. Yeah, True Detective, all that.
• 54:18
  Like I live for detective dramas.
• 54:20
  I wanted to be a detective as a kid.
• 54:21
  Neither here nor there. But I love police dramas.
• 54:25
  This first episode feels like a police drama.
• 54:27
  It has so many elements. The chasing, the canvassing, the
• 54:31
  humor. Can I just.
• 54:32
  I need to get into the humor because it was one of the first
• 54:35
  things I had written down here. Let's see humor.
• 54:40
  I really appreciate the one off bits of humor in the show.
• 54:42
  Like the biggest standout is the atrocious recorder music.
• 54:48
  When they're like, this is the man we're looking for and they
• 54:51
  have this really heinous like mannequin with a drawn face.
• 54:54
  And I was like, like, it's this military March on a recorder.
• 55:00
  I don't know if you guys remember that horrible excuse
• 55:03
  for a wind instrument that looked like a flute when we were
• 55:05
  in middle or elementary school. They're playing police marching
• 55:09
  music off key in this music while all these like mercenaries
• 55:14
  and St. thugs are like looking for this.
• 55:17
  It had me rolling. I had to pause.
• 55:21
  The mannequin just took me out like right?
• 55:23
  On the I know same. I couldn't do it.
• 55:26
  I couldn't. Do it I like every single meme
• 55:27
  that I see of of that thing of this just like the head with the
• 55:31
  paste it on paper cut out you see the.
• 55:35
  Foot soldiers at the subway stations.
• 55:37
  Have you seen this man? Shut up.
• 55:39
  They're. Like they're.
• 55:42
  Like what he's seeing, him seeing the recruiter outside of
• 55:47
  his enigmatic state was like the casting.
• 55:50
  They nailed it again. I mean, I know it's the same guy
• 55:52
  from the first season, but just seeing him out of his enigmatic
• 55:55
  state, like going around town, he buys like food.
• 55:58
  Bread versus lottery, Do you want to talk about that scene
• 56:00
  and like. Go for it, lead us in.
• 56:03
  Lead us in. Sadistic.
• 56:06
  Sadistic. He goes and buys the First of
• 56:08
  all, I like that. There's a shot of Kungu's, the
• 56:11
  palm of his hand and it's calloused from slapping people
• 56:17
  in the face. And I was like, wow, that's a
• 56:20
  great touch. That's a blink and you'll miss
• 56:22
  it. He's been doing this so long,
• 56:25
  he's got fucking calluses on his right hand.
• 56:28
  So anyway, he goes and buys all this bread, goes to this park,
• 56:32
  which I think is also significant.
• 56:34
  That park, I can't remember why. I think it was has to do with
• 56:38
  the Democratic movement, I believe maybe in Korea.
• 56:42
  Oh yeah, and they do like everything that goes down
• 56:44
  happens in front of. Their ear but that didn't that
• 56:47
  exactly so this area is significant.
• 56:51
  It's it's charged he goes to this park where all of these
• 56:55
  homeless people were or struggling people are just
• 56:58
  laying about and he gives them the choice to either pick the
• 57:02
  bread which will feed them. They're presumably starving.
• 57:05
  They haven't had anything to eat or a lottery ticket.
• 57:09
  And this basically portends the whole rest of the show, which is
• 57:14
  are you going to get the immediate satisfaction, the
• 57:17
  immediate satiation of your need, or are you going to take a
• 57:21
  chance on the very slim chance that you could win more money?
• 57:27
  Yeah, and then the interaction's horrible.
• 57:31
  I think only one or two people chose the bread.
• 57:34
  Everybody else chose the lottery ticket.
• 57:37
  And he gives them a coin, he gives them money to scratch off
• 57:41
  the lottery ticket. And then he's like, MMM, bummer,
• 57:45
  give me back my coin. And he has to.
• 57:47
  It's so. It's so vile.
• 57:50
  It's so vile. And then he takes all the bread
• 57:54
  and this cracked me up on he was horrible, but he crashes out so
• 57:58
  hard. He dumps all the bread on the
• 58:00
  ground, calls everybody like names and then starts stomping
• 58:03
  on the bread like a cartoon character, which I just want to
• 58:07
  say is an aside. You can tell this is in South
• 58:09
  Korea because that guy would have gotten his shit rocked by
• 58:12
  like everybody in that part. They were like, he wouldn't have
• 58:15
  made it past the first guy. He'd be like, oh, word.
• 58:17
  And then they would have described the bread.
• 58:19
  But anyway, it was such a great crash out.
• 58:23
  And I think one of my favorite qualities of this was I really
• 58:29
  got to commend the actor because he's stomping on it in this
• 58:32
  fury. But you can tell he's getting,
• 58:33
  like, this sick thrill from, like, just stomping out the
• 58:36
  food. Like, he can hardly contain his
• 58:38
  smile. Yeah.
• 58:39
  And then he regains composure and walks away.
• 58:41
  Yeah, it was. It was a great way to open the
• 58:44
  show outside of the terrible red wig like.
• 58:46
  The the Ronald McDonald wig. Yeah.
• 58:48
  So they introduce, obviously in this episode, the food, the
• 58:53
  bread versus lottery, this facade of democracy, which
• 58:58
  appears after every game because they start voting.
• 59:01
  This is new for the season. They vote after every single
• 59:03
  game, whether to stay or go X or O, promising them that if they
• 59:10
  continue with the game, if you can, if you get the lottery
• 59:13
  ticket, there's a chance you can win more money.
• 59:17
  You know, this is all just in Episode 1 where this social
• 59:20
  experiment in the park. Yeah, it it's just like laying
• 59:25
  the whole foundation for how the rest of the show is going to go.
• 59:27
  It was really clever. Really, really clever.
• 59:29
  I love that and just I love it. Sorry.
• 59:35
  So we get paper scissor rock with the loan shark guys because
• 59:40
  they do happen upon Kong Yu. He beats the shit out of them
• 59:44
  and kidnaps them. Two grown men kidnaps them.
• 59:49
  I have no doubt that I don't know that they knew that they
• 59:51
  were rocking against Kong You. There was no chance.
• 59:56
  The paper scissor rock is very memorable and horrible.
• 1:00:02
  I thought it was fitting that their gags that he had on them
• 1:00:08
  were in the shape of dog bones. Yeah, really.
• 1:00:12
  The dehumanizing aspect comes really, really quickly.
• 1:00:15
  Yes. Like these people see these
• 1:00:17
  contestants as just garbage, as animals.
• 1:00:20
  Yeah. Yeah, and Turndo is playing, and
• 1:00:24
  that's the song that he hits play on, and I'm like, wow.
• 1:00:28
  It's always opera with these guys.
• 1:00:30
  Always off. It's the the Blue Denoob Waltz
• 1:00:32
  is back for season 2. But yeah, this whole paper,
• 1:00:37
  scissor, rock thing, it's shocking.
• 1:00:40
  As an audience, you, you don't know what to do.
• 1:00:43
  Like what would you do in that situation?
• 1:00:45
  It's the first like show of overt violence because up until
• 1:00:49
  this point, so I can see why people thought the tone was
• 1:00:51
  inconsistent. But I actually really
• 1:00:53
  appreciated this because instead of going full sadistic like gory
• 1:00:58
  show they started with like a police manhunt.
• 1:01:01
  They throw in some humor. You're getting to know people
• 1:01:04
  and then in the last like 3/4 of the episode is when we see oh,
• 1:01:08
  like this really brutal, sadistic, vile game and they
• 1:01:12
  just it was so gory to like it was I knew it was going to
• 1:01:15
  happen and it was still. Like and the casting of Kong you
• 1:01:17
  is it can't be like understated how they gave this really
• 1:01:23
  sadistic paper scissor rock game to Kong you, who is like the
• 1:01:28
  Brad Pitt of Korea, right? So I loved that it allowed
• 1:01:34
  Kongyu to be super unhinged. It was a great like change of
• 1:01:39
  face. And he was very animated and
• 1:01:43
  riveting to watch. He was so good.
• 1:01:45
  Yeah, then Kongyu finds our 456 at the Pink Motel, which I think
• 1:01:52
  it's funny that he owns the Pink Motel and that it's pink, right?
• 1:01:56
  Like pink is the signature color of the games the Squid Games.
• 1:01:59
  After everything that happened, I would never want to see that
• 1:02:01
  color. Again, exactly.
• 1:02:02
  It's literally the same exact pink.
• 1:02:05
  And then when Kong Yu is there, and this is before they do the
• 1:02:10
  Russian roulette, his presence is so imposing in the room.
• 1:02:16
  When 456 walks in, Yes, you just see his back phone use back.
• 1:02:21
  And then he turns around and he's sipping on some, like,
• 1:02:24
  banana juice through a straw. And he's almost childlike.
• 1:02:28
  Yeah, it. It's so weird.
• 1:02:31
  I love that juxtaposition. Weird character.
• 1:02:33
  I love. And I think that people didn't
• 1:02:34
  really get it. I don't.
• 1:02:37
  That is the tone of the whole rest of the show, embodied.
• 1:02:41
  That's the whole point. Like childlike imagery juxtapose
• 1:02:45
  with brutal violence. Yeah.
• 1:02:46
  You're playing games you played when you were a child, but it's
• 1:02:50
  life or death. The stakes are way higher.
• 1:02:52
  So like they. Go out of their way to point
• 1:02:54
  this out multiple times to like, player 100.
• 1:02:58
  Yeah. Is like, how hard could this be?
• 1:03:01
  Like, we're just playing Children's Games, like, so they
• 1:03:04
  really push that point. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:07
  It's terrifying. The story about shooting his own
• 1:03:10
  dad. So we get that from recruiter
• 1:03:12
  Kung Yu. You get immediately through his
• 1:03:16
  story, through his the way he's speaking and what he's saying,
• 1:03:18
  he he thinks he's above it. He thinks he's superior.
• 1:03:22
  He thinks he's cut out for this job that he worked his way up
• 1:03:27
  and doesn't believe that he's trash like the contestants are
• 1:03:34
  or that he's just a dog with a master, which is what 456 keeps
• 1:03:38
  calling him. You're like, you're just a,
• 1:03:40
  you're doing their bidding like a dog.
• 1:03:43
  You're a trained animal. I like the I like it when we see
• 1:03:47
  true psychosis in a show because he's so convinced that he's not
• 1:03:52
  a lap dog. And he's like, yeah, OK, that's
• 1:03:53
  what you say, but I'm not. He's so.
• 1:03:55
  The illusion of. Dedicated to this he's like,
• 1:03:58
  yeah, my dad begged for his life and I had no problem shooting
• 1:04:01
  him like that's when I knew I was cut out for it and it's.
• 1:04:03
  Like, and it's a God complex, like you're crazy towering over
• 1:04:06
  your your own father, like the person who gave you life.
• 1:04:10
  Classic. And I'm like, wow, this is
• 1:04:12
  really powerful and crazy and this is episode 1, the time to
• 1:04:19
  say goodbye Russian roulette. He wants him to admit when the
• 1:04:23
  odds are one and two that he'll die.
• 1:04:26
  Not saying the names makes it so confusing.
• 1:04:28
  So Kong Yu wants 456 to admit that he's a piece of trash who
• 1:04:33
  got lucky and made it out of the dumpster.
• 1:04:35
  Yeah, and he doesn't really jive with that.
• 1:04:37
  No, of course, the odds are in 456's favor because he gets the
• 1:04:46
  last shot. Kong Yu has to kill himself.
• 1:04:49
  Yeah, I love that. There's also, and this is also
• 1:04:52
  echoed throughout the rest of the show, the rest of the plot.
• 1:04:54
  Where are you going to follow the rules?
• 1:04:57
  Yeah, yeah. It's like because that they're
• 1:05:00
  given the opportunity where they can break them but.
• 1:05:04
  Because they could just walk away.
• 1:05:05
  There's no they don't have to play the game.
• 1:05:08
  Right now they're given the option to just like leave and
• 1:05:11
  they don't or. You can just be like, you know
• 1:05:13
  what, never mind and just yeah. Just go get a job somewhere like
• 1:05:17
  and get a life. But instead he feels so trapped
• 1:05:21
  and he feels, So what is it? Superior committed all of these
• 1:05:27
  things that he was like, fine, I will kill myself for nothing.
• 1:05:33
  It's for nothing. It really is, and he almost to
• 1:05:36
  prove. A point.
• 1:05:37
  He did it to prove a point. Thus ending.
• 1:05:40
  I mean, I don't know. He'll never be back so.
• 1:05:43
  No, he's not going to go back. Is he going to be OK?
• 1:05:47
  No. So.
• 1:05:49
  But I love the the fact that you he was treating the the two
• 1:05:54
  gangsters who he kidnapped and had them play, Saber says.
• 1:05:59
  Or Rock. They were not.
• 1:06:01
  They didn't sign up to play the game.
• 1:06:03
  No, he's just a sadist like, and he's, he's about that life like
• 1:06:08
  he really is like that. He gets to how many people he's
• 1:06:11
  done that to. Exactly, exactly it makes you
• 1:06:15
  think. Amazing casting.
• 1:06:17
  I I couldn't get out. I was in absolute law.
• 1:06:19
  He was the real star of that first episode.
• 1:06:21
  And the acting in that, he was just so excellent.
• 1:06:23
  A lot of people have been taking screenshots of that scene and
• 1:06:28
  how Kongyo has like a uneven face, basically how 1/2 is
• 1:06:34
  shaded in like pink or something and he looks confident, he looks
• 1:06:39
  cocky, he looks determined. And then the other half, which
• 1:06:42
  is I think shaded in blue. He looks terrified and unsure.
• 1:06:48
  Love this. It's quite interesting to see
• 1:06:51
  how he's a mix of fear and doubt and sadistic overconfidence.
• 1:06:58
  It's so weird, but I was here for every second of it.
• 1:07:02
  Yeah, every second of it. Loved it.
• 1:07:04
  So episode 2 comes along, the game will not end unless the
• 1:07:08
  world changes is the concept of this episode.
• 1:07:12
  They put him in the games after his pitiful little 456 is
• 1:07:17
  pitiful plan doesn't happen. It's like crashes.
• 1:07:21
  Yeah. Don't they like put like they
• 1:07:23
  put a chip in his? Yeah, they put a chip in one of
• 1:07:26
  his molars, but. When he gets in like they find
• 1:07:28
  he he's just like I'm fucked. At least that's what the
• 1:07:32
  subtitle said. Like he goes to check they had
• 1:07:34
  removed it. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:07:36
  I I thought it was funny that people were like, how can they
• 1:07:38
  remove his tooth that had the implant and all this stuff and
• 1:07:42
  they don't remove TOP's drug cross.
• 1:07:47
  This was one of my favorite. Details and I'm like in.
• 1:07:49
  The whole show. Why would they remove his drug
• 1:07:52
  cross? That's going to make for better
• 1:07:54
  entertainment if someone's coked out and like tripping balls.
• 1:07:59
  They're like everything they do is from that angle of sadism and
• 1:08:04
  like, this is going to tie back to something that happens, I
• 1:08:06
  think in the last episode. But I love that detail so much
• 1:08:11
  because it was the first thing I thought of, like when I saw him,
• 1:08:14
  I'm like, oh, OK, So they look through everyone's stuff and
• 1:08:16
  they're like, OK, let's see what how this guy tries to play all
• 1:08:19
  drugged out. Let's see if he distributes any
• 1:08:22
  of this to anyone else. And let's see how they play
• 1:08:23
  drugged out. Like this will be a fun wild
• 1:08:25
  card. They're horrible.
• 1:08:26
  They're letting people destroy themselves.
• 1:08:28
  So yeah. Yeah, why wouldn't, why, why
• 1:08:31
  would they take that away and have him play sober?
• 1:08:33
  That's ridiculous. Like that.
• 1:08:36
  Even me, like I'm not running no games here, OK?
• 1:08:41
  I'm like, yeah, that's stupid. Like from an entertainment
• 1:08:43
  standpoint? I would.
• 1:08:44
  Absolutely. Think of reality television.
• 1:08:47
  Why would you take the drugs away from this?
• 1:08:51
  Give him more and work it into the.
• 1:08:52
  Budget. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:08:54
  It just, I didn't think people weren't thinking on that.
• 1:08:57
  They were just like, they took away his implant.
• 1:08:58
  I'm like, yeah, so they won't be found out and they can't be
• 1:09:01
  tracked. When you look at, I think the, I
• 1:09:04
  think it, it's interesting because when I look at all the
• 1:09:06
  faults, it really comes. I'm not really the kind of guy
• 1:09:09
  who's like, oh, well, if you don't like it, it's because you
• 1:09:11
  don't understand. But from all the criticisms I've
• 1:09:13
  heard, I think that's the case. When you look at this show
• 1:09:15
  through the lens that the people in charge are just
• 1:09:19
  unrelentingly, bottomlessly sadistic, everything in the show
• 1:09:23
  makes perfect sense. So of course they let him keep
• 1:09:27
  the cross. And I love that detail.
• 1:09:30
  I love it. The backup plan for 456 is OK,
• 1:09:34
  reinsert me back in the game, reinsert me back into the matrix
• 1:09:38
  and I'm going to destroy the matrix from the inside out,
• 1:09:41
  right? That was his Plan B, and he was
• 1:09:45
  he was going to show Player 001 that someone did help that
• 1:09:50
  homeless man in the end, and he lost the final game in Season 1.
• 1:09:56
  As he died. There's this thought that the
• 1:09:58
  world is predictable, and that's coming from the front man.
• 1:10:02
  This is back when they're talking through the loudspeaker,
• 1:10:06
  a Charlie's Angels style. The limo.
• 1:10:09
  He's like Bosley coming into the.
• 1:10:11
  Car, literally. So the game makers think that
• 1:10:16
  people are predictable, that people are hopeless, that no one
• 1:10:20
  is ever kind. It's survival of the fittest.
• 1:10:23
  The richest, the poor, are just horses to be raced, trash to be
• 1:10:27
  incinerated, playthings. And what Kyun 456 says is I'll
• 1:10:33
  show you that the world doesn't always go the way you want it
• 1:10:35
  to. I love that it's not always
• 1:10:37
  true, but I. Love it, right?
• 1:10:39
  It's like very like, OK, hope. Hope that's awesome.
• 1:10:43
  Yeah, at the end of episode 2 we get the twist, which I this was
• 1:10:48
  the only thing that surprised me in the whole fucking show was
• 1:10:51
  that Pakyu Young is a pink soldier.
• 1:10:54
  That threw me super hard. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:57
  Everything with the little girl. I have notes on that, like the
• 1:11:00
  little strawberry hat, the rabbit, seeing the characters.
• 1:11:04
  You know, we are so by osmosis, if that's the one, right?
• 1:11:09
  Like familiar with Disney culture and we hear horror
• 1:11:12
  stories in our own community of like, oh, somebody did a big no
• 1:11:16
  no, they saw Mickey Mouse or something without their helmet.
• 1:11:19
  And it's just so when I saw that little girl in the dressing room
• 1:11:23
  and then Oh my God, I hated everything with a little girl.
• 1:11:27
  I hated it so much. And then when I began to hate it
• 1:11:30
  even more, something that really pulled me out was we went and
• 1:11:34
  it's always the bone marrow transplant.
• 1:11:36
  Literally it's always the fucking bone marrow transplant.
• 1:11:39
  Like it's on every K drama drinking game.
• 1:11:41
  I don't know if you've ever read through them.
• 1:11:43
  There's always a bone marrow transplant right next to the kid
• 1:11:47
  that goes away and comes back from overseas.
• 1:11:51
  I'm like. It's very cliche, but I think
• 1:11:55
  that there were a lot of clues that I missed about Pacu Young
• 1:11:59
  being a pink soldier. The fact that she's literally in
• 1:12:02
  a pink Bunny outfit. Yeah, in retrospect, it's
• 1:12:06
  weirdly obvious. And her theme park Co worker
• 1:12:09
  said that she's the only one who can last a long time in that
• 1:12:11
  sweltering pink Bunny costume. She can do that because she's
• 1:12:16
  used to being messed up for the games.
• 1:12:17
  Like it just makes a lot of sense and I did not see it
• 1:12:21
  coming. I just don't get what her
• 1:12:24
  motivation is yet. That's the only thing that there
• 1:12:26
  was me. Like the twist was great.
• 1:12:27
  But yeah, she's. Like the North Korean defector
• 1:12:29
  Part 2, because we obviously we had that character in Season 1
• 1:12:33
  who was so compelling and trying to win the games for her little
• 1:12:37
  brother. And then this character who is
• 1:12:40
  not quite developed at all really in season 2, she's
• 1:12:45
  introduced but not fleshed out really.
• 1:12:47
  She wants to bring her son from North Korea, which it's very
• 1:12:53
  highly likely that that kid is dead and buried or not even
• 1:12:57
  buried. Highly unfortunate for the
• 1:13:01
  character, but she still holds out a little bit of hope.
• 1:13:04
  And she kind of got not hoodwinked, but you know, it was
• 1:13:08
  one of those side hustle jaws that they were like what?
• 1:13:12
  You have some skills, we can use you.
• 1:13:15
  It's high paying. Come and do this job.
• 1:13:17
  They don't got Uber out there. Like what's going, you know, I,
• 1:13:21
  you touched on something really interesting because that's
• 1:13:23
  something that stood out to me very, very quickly.
• 1:13:25
  And at first I was kind of like, this seems kind of lazy, but I
• 1:13:30
  really came to appreciate it. It's interesting how many of
• 1:13:33
  these characters are basically just, they're basically not a
• 1:13:38
  copy and paste, but their essence is very similar to the
• 1:13:42
  characters we got in the first season.
• 1:13:44
  So we have she turns out to be a soldier.
• 1:13:47
  She's basically like a facsimile for season 1 North Korea girl.
• 1:13:51
  We have the trans character who stands out for being different,
• 1:13:55
  much like the Indian expat who is living in South Korea.
• 1:13:59
  We have the shaman lady, which that's going to be a whole
• 1:14:02
  thing, who's basically effects Emily for the really needy,
• 1:14:06
  annoying older Ajuma from the first season.
• 1:14:10
  You remember the really annoying lady who was just like, OK, like
• 1:14:13
  for every. It's a lot of the characters
• 1:14:16
  were kind of like plucked, like their essence was plucked in.
• 1:14:20
  Yeah, they're archetypes. We were carried over.
• 1:14:23
  But I still, I was here for it. So yeah, I really.
• 1:14:25
  So we don't know her motivation though, right?
• 1:14:27
  We don't exactly know her motivation for staying and doing
• 1:14:31
  these games, I guess year after year, because it's not her first
• 1:14:34
  year doing this Pink Soldier gig.
• 1:14:37
  And I thought it was interesting that they spent time in this
• 1:14:41
  particular episode and in Season 2 for Pakya Young's character.
• 1:14:45
  They're setting up that she she's not immune to like other
• 1:14:49
  people's struggles, right? She really connected with the
• 1:14:52
  little girl she saw whenever she was there present in the park at
• 1:14:57
  the parade, and she gave her a lollipop.
• 1:14:58
  And so she's looking out for the little guy.
• 1:15:01
  She's looking out for this. Those less fortunate than her
• 1:15:04
  who have maybe another, everybody's got a sob story, but
• 1:15:07
  that's a really sad sob story that she's terminal.
• 1:15:10
  She needs a bone marrow transplant.
• 1:15:12
  It's horrible. And she did that little like
• 1:15:14
  crayon drawing with her in the. It's adorable.
• 1:15:17
  And the little hat brought it to the hospital.
• 1:15:19
  It's a beautiful moment. Went out of her way to get the
• 1:15:22
  strawberry hat to her in the hospital after she collapsed and
• 1:15:25
  you're like, Oh my God, she can't possibly.
• 1:15:28
  That's why it's so surprising that she is a pink soldier who
• 1:15:33
  throughout Season 1, faceless, most mostly faceless.
• 1:15:37
  And we do see some pink soldiers, their faces, but also
• 1:15:41
  trying to profit off of the contestants and their dead
• 1:15:44
  bodies. And you know, you had that whole
• 1:15:48
  organ harvesting ring happening in season 1 with the pink
• 1:15:51
  soldiers. And so when she puts on the
• 1:15:54
  costume, you're like, but she's a mother, but she's a North
• 1:15:56
  Korean defector just like that other girl from Season 1.
• 1:15:58
  And like all these things that make her human, it goes away
• 1:16:03
  when she has the mask on. I guess she's just trying to.
• 1:16:06
  I guess this is their way of telling us that, well, you're
• 1:16:10
  either a contestant, it's like the victim or assailant thing,
• 1:16:13
  right? Either maybe?
• 1:16:14
  The victim is the assailant. Maybe the assailant is the
• 1:16:17
  victim. And I think that's.
• 1:16:18
  Because this. Character is telling you.
• 1:16:21
  It obviously doesn't pay well. No, she uses most of her money
• 1:16:24
  and her resources to try to contact.
• 1:16:26
  Yeah, try and get her kid. Back but she's living out of her
• 1:16:29
  car. Yeah, she's homeless.
• 1:16:30
  Like sleeping in parks. She's doing nothing so.
• 1:16:33
  We head into episode 3, we get all of the new contestants,
• 1:16:38
  another partner, 56 contestants in the game, and we we meet the
• 1:16:44
  the shaman. The irony of the Shraman saying
• 1:16:47
  that Kihuen for 56 is surrounded by spirits and can't stay or go.
• 1:16:52
  She correctly assumes that he's plagued by guilt basically, and
• 1:16:55
  says that if they get out of there, let her perform a ritual.
• 1:16:59
  And I'm paraphrasing because I don't think I have a direct
• 1:17:01
  quote. Dragged back here by angry
• 1:17:03
  souls. That's what she was saying.
• 1:17:06
  Even a broken clock, right? So exactly a broken clock is
• 1:17:10
  right twice a day. Even though she sees clearly,
• 1:17:12
  sees his plate and what he's struggling with, she can't see
• 1:17:16
  the obvious danger in front of her that she might die.
• 1:17:20
  All these people are are going to die.
• 1:17:23
  I mean, it's pretty obvious, right?
• 1:17:25
  Like if you were to wake up in that room thinking you were part
• 1:17:28
  of a game, you'd just be like, wait, this is.
• 1:17:31
  Only one winner. What could that mean?
• 1:17:34
  I could say just send them home. So the shaman, and of course the
• 1:17:38
  fact that later on in the show she exerts her power through her
• 1:17:44
  having a pulse on like the spiritual and the spirits and
• 1:17:48
  stuff like that, she is getting people to vote the way she wants
• 1:17:52
  them to. Yeah, she starts basically
• 1:17:54
  making like a micro cult and like, yeah.
• 1:17:57
  And considering that the impeach South Korean president was
• 1:18:01
  taking advice from a shaman for years.
• 1:18:05
  It it's starting to all fall together.
• 1:18:07
  Yeah, yeah, this is very touchy for the Korean audience, I would
• 1:18:11
  say. Building a militia out of people
• 1:18:13
  already within the games too, like, OK, yeah, horrible.
• 1:18:17
  But in Episode 3, one of my favorite things that happens is
• 1:18:22
  it shows in a way, it's kind of good that there it was this long
• 1:18:27
  because I mentioned this earlier, but Gen.
• 1:18:29
  Z has really come of age. So my I love this, the
• 1:18:33
  orientation, for lack of a better term, when they're
• 1:18:36
  introducing and it's all these Gen.
• 1:18:38
  Z kids. Like, what about my shoes?
• 1:18:40
  They were limited edition. I bought them off of stock X Oh,
• 1:18:44
  can I have a pink suit instead, please, Mr. Pink man?
• 1:18:47
  Like this, Like this jumpsuit's ugly.
• 1:18:50
  They're trying to take a group selfie with Thanos.
• 1:18:56
  All of it was very, very believable.
• 1:18:59
  And it's so ridiculous. I'm like, this is exactly how
• 1:19:01
  this would go down. Like I was rolling at.
• 1:19:03
  This. Yeah, it's very apartment.
• 1:19:05
  You know the director slash writers is really tapping into
• 1:19:11
  something here. Really has their finger.
• 1:19:13
  On the pole, so I was. Like, oh, this is exactly how
• 1:19:16
  this would go down exactly. And even when they take that,
• 1:19:19
  when they go to take the group selfie, I love the game Masters.
• 1:19:22
  I guess the soldiers. Yeah, pink soldiers.
• 1:19:25
  And they're like, you can't do that to the selfie.
• 1:19:28
  And they're like, Oh no, it'll be really quick.
• 1:19:29
  And they're just standing there like in disbelief.
• 1:19:32
  You can't see these soldiers faces, but they're just standing
• 1:19:35
  there like I but I said no, like what do you mean?
• 1:19:40
  It's so funny. Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:19:43
  The new rule is vote after each game whether or not to continue
• 1:19:46
  if the majority votes to end the games and the winnings will be
• 1:19:49
  distributed amongst all of these people and game over.
• 1:19:53
  It's a. Pretty good deal.
• 1:19:54
  But I thought I was like, wow, that's really generous.
• 1:19:57
  So you can see that that doesn't go down easy after any game.
• 1:20:04
  Like they always vote to still play the game, whether out of
• 1:20:10
  there's not enough money, I'm not going home with enough
• 1:20:12
  money, which means not enough people died.
• 1:20:16
  And they don't care. And they don't.
• 1:20:18
  Start dividing in the X's and O's.
• 1:20:20
  We said this, I think in the Season 1 review, that Korea
• 1:20:25
  doesn't give second chances to people a lot like that's not a.
• 1:20:30
  Really a graceful culture. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:20:33
  So when you're branded someone who is severely in debt, let
• 1:20:37
  alone you actually owe millions of one, it's often not just to
• 1:20:44
  the bank. You're owing loan sharks,
• 1:20:47
  predatory loan sharks, just like the ones that you know played
• 1:20:51
  paper, scissor, rock in Episode 1.
• 1:20:53
  And it's something you can never pay back and they're counting on
• 1:20:56
  you to never. Be exactly.
• 1:20:57
  This isn't like our culture, which everyone has credit card
• 1:21:00
  debt, everyone's in debt. Yeah, like who cares?
• 1:21:03
  If anything, you're supposed to build debt so you can buy a
• 1:21:05
  house. Yeah, you can just claim
• 1:21:07
  bankruptcy and then you'll rebound in a few years.
• 1:21:10
  But over there, that's not the case.
• 1:21:13
  The fact that they're like, we're not going home with enough
• 1:21:15
  money is more severe than the games are played here.
• 1:21:20
  And we'd be like, well, I'll just declare bankruptcy.
• 1:21:23
  That's a very important thing to point out too, because it's a
• 1:21:26
  criticism that I've heard a lot. And it's like, no matter how
• 1:21:29
  much debt you're in, you're not like, most people wouldn't do
• 1:21:32
  that. It's like, no, not over there.
• 1:21:34
  Like, well, not in any society that would basically, I mean, in
• 1:21:39
  real life even like in a society that you're basically so
• 1:21:43
  ostracized for being in debt. Like of course this would
• 1:21:46
  probably play out like. That right, Because these loan
• 1:21:49
  sharks and the entities that you borrow from are not just going
• 1:21:53
  to come after you for the money. They come after your family to
• 1:21:56
  pay off the debt they're threatening you with.
• 1:21:59
  You know, I'll sell your organs and things just to pay for the
• 1:22:02
  money out and things like that happen all the time.
• 1:22:05
  People get kidnapped. Do they have protections over
• 1:22:07
  there? Like, I know this is getting
• 1:22:09
  into the weeds, but we do like we have really extensive laws
• 1:22:13
  against predatory loans and gambling only became legal two
• 1:22:16
  years ago. If your mom had medical debt and
• 1:22:19
  unfortunately she passed, you don't assume that debt.
• 1:22:23
  No. But it could be a they do,
• 1:22:25
  right? They do.
• 1:22:26
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 1:22:28
  Jesus. So it's serious.
• 1:22:30
  I don't know how else to say that.
• 1:22:32
  So that's why people are like, we're still going to play.
• 1:22:34
  My life is not worth anything unless I get the money to pay
• 1:22:39
  off my debt. Jeez.
• 1:22:41
  Well, I mean, at least that kind of bolsters and.
• 1:22:46
  I think there's been a lot of conversation about the fact that
• 1:22:49
  people aren't looking at the collective period like when it
• 1:22:53
  comes to because there's people that are begging to leave,
• 1:22:56
  begging. They don't want to die, They're
• 1:22:57
  scared shitless. I would be too.
• 1:23:00
  I'd be shaving my pants first of all and I'd die first round but
• 1:23:04
  be stop I. Wouldn't make it past where I'd
• 1:23:07
  like. Green No.
• 1:23:08
  It's. Shaky.
• 1:23:09
  I'd be like shaking like a leaf. The fact that people are just
• 1:23:13
  not caring about other people really struck a chord with, I
• 1:23:18
  think, viewers in the season. They saw a lot of comparisons to
• 1:23:23
  the political climate that's happening today.
• 1:23:26
  And even if I don't subscribe to that, let me just say the
• 1:23:31
  creator really did not give 2 shits about the American
• 1:23:35
  election. This was written maybe finished
• 1:23:39
  in 2023 and they had their first script reading in June 2023.
• 1:23:44
  So the 2024 election. Yeah.
• 1:23:48
  Nobody gave a shit about that. That was not I.
• 1:23:50
  Mean it just it just dropped yesterday.
• 1:23:52
  It's not like they just filmed it yesterday.
• 1:23:53
  You know what I mean? Like so that's a weird SO.
• 1:23:55
  People are like wow, this is so like whatever.
• 1:23:58
  I'm like OK settle down. I'm glad you found that
• 1:24:00
  interpretation. You're not wrong for your
• 1:24:02
  interpretation, that's totally fine.
• 1:24:04
  It's art. You can interpret it however
• 1:24:05
  what the fuck you want. But.
• 1:24:07
  In terms of events and consequence, though, you're
• 1:24:09
  wrong, so there you go. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:24:12
  That's exactly what I want to say.
• 1:24:13
  We meet TOP's character, purple hair, which if you don't know
• 1:24:18
  anything about TOP, he's known for having crazy hair colors.
• 1:24:21
  My favorite is the pink. Do you remember the pink hair
• 1:24:23
  with the pink suit for that of wardrobe?
• 1:24:26
  That was a whole moment. That was a whole moment.
• 1:24:28
  I loved it. Their collaboration with 21 on a
• 1:24:31
  couple of songs and then like the Pink and the Pink and had to
• 1:24:35
  be there. They gave him purple hair, and
• 1:24:38
  he plays a rapper who won some reality show and then lost it
• 1:24:42
  all because of drug addiction. And I was like, oh, you can't
• 1:24:49
  make it. Oh, my God.
• 1:24:51
  So this character was written before TOP was ever, you know,
• 1:24:55
  attached to the project. That is what the writer director
• 1:24:58
  said. But when it came to casting, he
• 1:25:01
  was like, OK, great. Like I'd love to take a meeting
• 1:25:04
  with TOP and it happened. That is so great.
• 1:25:08
  The fact that he's even in this, I'm telling you, it is special.
• 1:25:12
  It's special to see him on our screens.
• 1:25:15
  He was so funny. He was easily just, he was so
• 1:25:19
  endeared because he was so dumb. He's so dumb.
• 1:25:22
  I love like he's just kind of like he kind of reminds me of
• 1:25:24
  Orla from Dairy girls. No matter what's going on, he's
• 1:25:28
  somewhere in the background just like like just bombing his head
• 1:25:31
  and just like beat that. He's making himself like they're
• 1:25:35
  just introducing rules and he's like his ad libs in English are.
• 1:25:42
  Quit, quit and if you don't know anything about TOP, this is not
• 1:25:45
  going to land as well because even the raps and things that he
• 1:25:49
  was doing, I was like, oh. Hey, Senorita.
• 1:25:55
  And then he would say something Korean.
• 1:25:56
  He's like, we can make it out of this game, OK?
• 1:25:59
  I'm just like, what? Bro?
• 1:26:01
  Shut the fuck. Oh God, it's so great.
• 1:26:05
  So anyway, we also see curly haired dude with his mom.
• 1:26:12
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So double O seven with his mom
• 1:26:16
  149. This was like the one that I
• 1:26:20
  really sank my teeth into this relationship and those two
• 1:26:23
  playing together, especially in light of the fact that 456 Kyun
• 1:26:29
  like reinserted himself back into the game in season 1
• 1:26:32
  because he needed money to save his mom.
• 1:26:35
  Like his mom was sick. The irony is it didn't matter,
• 1:26:38
  right? His mom died anyway when he
• 1:26:41
  exited the game and won the squid game to see this
• 1:26:46
  character, the wires got crossed.
• 1:26:48
  They're both in playing the squid game.
• 1:26:51
  I'm like oh shit. That was rough.
• 1:26:54
  Yeah, that was rough. But that was immediately the
• 1:26:58
  idea that the characters aren't memorable.
• 1:26:59
  Like, what are you talking about?
• 1:27:00
  Like we have a mother son duo. Yeah, the son is like a greedy,
• 1:27:06
  like nightmare. The mom's like this empathetic
• 1:27:09
  woman who literally joined this just to get him out of debt, not
• 1:27:12
  even her own. Powerful.
• 1:27:14
  Iconic. And then also they meet the
• 1:27:16
  trans character 120 is Hyunju. I I think people, I don't want
• 1:27:23
  to say that this is like the mom is very traditional, right?
• 1:27:28
  She's a comes from a different generation.
• 1:27:29
  And so when they meet 120, she like, doesn't get it.
• 1:27:34
  Like, she doesn't get the concept of being trans and why
• 1:27:37
  would you change your sex and gender?
• 1:27:39
  And, like, you can tell that she's traditional just from her
• 1:27:44
  hairpin. Yeah, right.
• 1:27:45
  Like, Korean married women traditionally wore a hairpin
• 1:27:48
  called a bigno to hold their hair in a bun at the nape of
• 1:27:51
  their neck, and she's wearing one.
• 1:27:53
  This is like a relic. Like she doesn't have to do this
• 1:27:56
  to signify that she's married. She's like literally an old
• 1:28:00
  Korean woman who was in the war. Like because she mentions, I
• 1:28:04
  think she mentions like and what?
• 1:28:05
  I'll give her credit for this. Nothing was really out of
• 1:28:07
  malice. She was just remarking she's
• 1:28:09
  like, oh, she looks really ugly. What an unfortunate looking
• 1:28:12
  woman. I was like, well, she was just
• 1:28:13
  like. Is that a man or is that a
• 1:28:14
  woman? Yeah.
• 1:28:15
  And I'm like, this is you could have this conversation with any
• 1:28:18
  person from an older generation. Yeah, like it was.
• 1:28:22
  There was no malice there. No, no, no.
• 1:28:25
  And you know, as the show goes on, it's not like it just gets
• 1:28:28
  better. So I mean.
• 1:28:30
  It does. And then we have 120 who tells
• 1:28:34
  her story and she says, oh, I was fired from my job.
• 1:28:39
  Come to find out, she she was in the military in the ROK Special
• 1:28:43
  forces. Wow.
• 1:28:44
  That was such a great reveal. Yes, I love that.
• 1:28:48
  I loved it and that again just echoes the true story that I
• 1:28:53
  said in the non spoiler section. Thanos cracking open his pills,
• 1:28:57
  stashing across, was actually reminding me of Cruel
• 1:29:01
  Intentions. Yes.
• 1:29:03
  Bro Oh my God I was like he's the Marsha fucking Brady of the
• 1:29:07
  Upper East Side. I love this.
• 1:29:09
  Yeah, you can't make it up. Thanos shoves three people to
• 1:29:14
  their deaths. And that part took me out.
• 1:29:17
  And you go thing and then fly me to the moon, pop slash remix
• 1:29:22
  versions starts playing and I'm like, wow, that's is that a a
• 1:29:27
  bit? Because TOP really wanted to go
• 1:29:29
  to the moon and then they cancelled that trip.
• 1:29:31
  The note is the same 1 I had for the first season.
• 1:29:34
  I need that jazz set. I need that jazz set like I
• 1:29:37
  don't know, I need it. And then the remix jazz
• 1:29:40
  sequence, like just stop. Like, like they dropped a beat
• 1:29:44
  and everything. What did you think of 456 trying
• 1:29:47
  to warn everybody? Yeah, that whole segment, that
• 1:29:50
  was really good. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:52
  And then people are actually taking direction versus the
• 1:29:55
  complete carnage and panic from Season 1.
• 1:30:00
  But that's why more people died in Season 1.
• 1:30:01
  Nobody had nobody. Knew what they were getting
• 1:30:04
  into. Yeah.
• 1:30:05
  And it's like when they're running, I do love how at that
• 1:30:08
  point they kind of establish who's going to be an ex, like,
• 1:30:11
  who wants to leave the game and who wants to stay in the game.
• 1:30:14
  So very clever groundwork. There and then, just like Ali's
• 1:30:18
  character in season 1120 is there helping 456 save that dude
• 1:30:26
  who ends up getting shot anyway cuz.
• 1:30:28
  That was cuz life is cruel if I busted Elon Musk as I keep
• 1:30:32
  calling 001 just looks he looks like Elon Musk.
• 1:30:36
  I don't know. Yeah, so we got to talk about
• 1:30:37
  001. I was seeing too much of this
• 1:30:41
  that people didn't realize that player 001 was the front man.
• 1:30:46
  But right. Like, yeah, like I am convinced.
• 1:30:50
  They did not. I'm like what?
• 1:30:54
  I'm convinced. I'm convinced that people are
• 1:30:56
  watching this show while like, scrolling on their phone
• 1:30:59
  literally because there's no way.
• 1:31:00
  Like you can't. How?
• 1:31:02
  Can you not? Attain that like it happened
• 1:31:05
  like 10 minutes ago. People are talking about
• 1:31:06
  theories and I'm like, that's not a theory.
• 1:31:08
  That's that is the thing. The thing is that that's not
• 1:31:11
  subtext. That's what actually happened.
• 1:31:14
  That's the actual identity of this person and people missing
• 1:31:18
  that Ebungun is the front man is 001 is shady is playing the game
• 1:31:23
  out of for some underhanded reason.
• 1:31:27
  Yes, exactly that's. So what did they think was
• 1:31:30
  happening when they made that big show of not showing who 001
• 1:31:34
  was until he turned around? It was, they explained that it's
• 1:31:38
  not even yet. Whatever.
• 1:31:40
  Oh. God.
• 1:31:41
  Yeah. Yeah, Ebungun's.
• 1:31:43
  Character. Me too.
• 1:31:46
  Evington's character decides the vote at the end of episode 3 and
• 1:31:52
  he votes to continue the game. And the fact that he looks back
• 1:31:57
  and witnesses 456 and his look of despair, and he smiles.
• 1:32:04
  Yep, classic. To tell you everything you need
• 1:32:06
  to know about that character and his motivations, he's there to
• 1:32:11
  Humble 456. Yeah, right off RIP.
• 1:32:16
  Like there was never a moment in the entire thing where I
• 1:32:19
  thought, oh, maybe he's coming around and he'll see these
• 1:32:21
  people. This man has watched thousands
• 1:32:23
  upon thousands of people die in those brutal ways.
• 1:32:25
  He's not going to come around. So I, you know, there is
• 1:32:30
  something that I was wondering about though, like 456 not being
• 1:32:33
  immediately suspicious about 001 considering what happened.
• 1:32:37
  Last that didn't make sense to me I was like 0456 is actually
• 1:32:41
  stupid because any and there. Was like falling in there was
• 1:32:44
  enough in there like when 001 new 456 is real name and he's
• 1:32:50
  like how did how do you know my name?
• 1:32:51
  He's like no poker face whatsoever.
• 1:32:56
  Your friend said it and he's like, oh, OK.
• 1:32:58
  Like what? That that would have been like.
• 1:33:02
  I'm going to sit over here now. Yeah, like, OK, I'm going to
• 1:33:05
  isolate you, bitch, because you're going to kill us.
• 1:33:08
  So I don't know why he wasn't immediately suspicious of 001,
• 1:33:12
  but yeah, wrong choice. That was the only thing that
• 1:33:16
  kind of threw me. Like whatever, I overlooked
• 1:33:20
  that. But also, oh man, I forgot to
• 1:33:23
  ask you this. When did you know that the boat
• 1:33:26
  driver, the captain of the boat, was this?
• 1:33:30
  Immediately. Immediately.
• 1:33:32
  Well, there's a there's an old trope of like the shanty guy who
• 1:33:36
  plays both sides. Whoever pays who plays pays
• 1:33:40
  more. It goes back to the Hardy Boys.
• 1:33:42
  Like, it's such a classic trope. But also just every single
• 1:33:46
  chance he got, he was like, I think we should turn around.
• 1:33:49
  Yeah. Oh, no, we're all fine.
• 1:33:50
  We're good. Oh, well, he should go to a
• 1:33:52
  hospital. When one of the men get hurt on
• 1:33:55
  the ship, he's like, I still think we should go back.
• 1:33:57
  No, we're good. He's like, all right.
• 1:34:00
  So like immediately, like there's too much resistance.
• 1:34:02
  There's so much resistance. You can't tell me that looking
• 1:34:05
  for two, I think it was two years that the cop was out there
• 1:34:09
  searching the surrounding islands and barrier islands for
• 1:34:14
  the Squid Game island. And I'm like, he's undermining
• 1:34:17
  that investigation. Like, period.
• 1:34:20
  I don't understand why people were people were surprised in
• 1:34:24
  the final episode that he was evil and on the Squid Game
• 1:34:29
  payroll. I was like how it.
• 1:34:32
  Makes perfect sense. It makes perfect sense.
• 1:34:35
  Like you have this guy navigating those islands for a
• 1:34:39
  living. How the hell did he find it?
• 1:34:41
  Whatever. How the hell did he find the cop
• 1:34:43
  just floating around and he was like, I just stumbled across
• 1:34:45
  you. I was like, bullshit.
• 1:34:46
  What is this the? Border on this remote like UN
• 1:34:50
  like uncharted island like he obviously he goes there.
• 1:34:54
  Obviously the front man let him know, hey, my brother just fell
• 1:34:58
  off a Cliff, why don't you come and pick his ass up so he
• 1:35:00
  doesn't die? That I mean.
• 1:35:04
  So many opportunities to get that.
• 1:35:06
  Or like with the chip that was in 456's tooth, they find it in
• 1:35:10
  a tackle box full of bait. Like, Oh yeah, this was sold to
• 1:35:15
  us on the pier. I wasn't.
• 1:35:18
  Fucking let. Me, be clear.
• 1:35:19
  He's in on it. Completely clear.
• 1:35:21
  I wasn't disappointed with the reveal.
• 1:35:23
  No, but I was waiting for it because I was like, I wonder how
• 1:35:26
  they're going to show. It 1000%.
• 1:35:28
  But I love that. People didn't read it.
• 1:35:30
  They're not reading it. I was convinced because so many
• 1:35:33
  people are watching Squid Game and they're coming up with
• 1:35:36
  theories and I'm like, it's not a theory.
• 1:35:39
  Did. We watch the same show did.
• 1:35:40
  We watch the same show. Like I don't like spouting that
• 1:35:44
  media literacy is dead. But after going through the
• 1:35:48
  frenzy, the social media TikTok frenzy of Squid Game and seeing
• 1:35:51
  the comments and seeing how people were reacting and what
• 1:35:54
  they were guessing and what they weren't picking up on, I'm like,
• 1:35:56
  yeah, media literacy. Maybe.
• 1:35:59
  Maybe it's. Dead.
• 1:36:00
  Maybe it's dead. I don't.
• 1:36:03
  I don't know. Yeah, I don't.
• 1:36:05
  Episode 4 and five Kanganul, we get his reveal.
• 1:36:09
  He like pops up when they're eating and he's 388.
• 1:36:12
  He grew up the only boy in a generation or two among five
• 1:36:16
  sisters. And when his fellow Marine asked
• 1:36:19
  why his family let him become a Marine, a Marine, he said.
• 1:36:23
  And there was definitely a look, a beat there before he answers
• 1:36:27
  and says, he said, oh, my dad wanted to be wanted me to be
• 1:36:30
  more manly. So he encouraged me to enlist.
• 1:36:32
  I'm like, there's something he's not saying there.
• 1:36:34
  There's a history, There's something shady about his
• 1:36:38
  reaction and whether he's a Marine or not.
• 1:36:41
  And his name means like Big Tiger, which is like really
• 1:36:45
  massive, like overtly masculine. So I'm like, he's compensated.
• 1:36:49
  This is a big compensation for something, right?
• 1:36:52
  Yeah, I think it's just like, I think if we read it on the
• 1:36:56
  surface, because it happens every day.
• 1:36:58
  The dad obviously wanted a boy and instead got a bunch of girls
• 1:37:02
  before him so. That they were trying for the
• 1:37:05
  boy. That's why there's five sisters.
• 1:37:07
  So they finally have the boy and they're like, all right, we're
• 1:37:10
  going to like, we're really going to make this one as
• 1:37:12
  masculine as we possibly can. Doesn't work because, you know,
• 1:37:16
  he's out there playing Lulu. Skip to my loo or whatever their
• 1:37:19
  analogue is for that. Like over there.
• 1:37:22
  He's like, they're like, how do you know how to play this game?
• 1:37:24
  This very girly hopscotch game? Oh, I have like 5 sisters.
• 1:37:28
  Oh, OK. Yeah, I liked his character.
• 1:37:30
  I think he was very like, I don't know, friendly.
• 1:37:33
  Yeah, he's very friendly, very tripper.
• 1:37:35
  And I love how Kanga Noel plays it like to be quite honest with
• 1:37:39
  you, because you could miss all, all of those cues unless you
• 1:37:44
  were, you're sitting there and you're like, oh, he's there's
• 1:37:46
  something he's not saying. I wonder if he was in the
• 1:37:49
  military at all or if he defected or something.
• 1:37:51
  That's my whole thing exactly. That's.
• 1:37:53
  What a lot of people think is that maybe he's a defector or
• 1:37:56
  maybe he never went to the military and he's not a Marine,
• 1:37:59
  or maybe he just, you know, Marine drop out or something
• 1:38:02
  like that versus a defector. He was discharged or something.
• 1:38:06
  When he shows his tattoo to like the crew on the XS during, well,
• 1:38:10
  the last episode and everybody just busts out laughing and this
• 1:38:14
  like insecurity that he has around it.
• 1:38:16
  He's like, they can see through me.
• 1:38:17
  Like I, I wonder what that's going to.
• 1:38:19
  Turn out the coward is that's his trigger, right?
• 1:38:21
  Is that someone thinks he's a coward?
• 1:38:22
  Yeah, and it's. And that comes into play in the
• 1:38:26
  final episode is that he is having some sort of trauma
• 1:38:30
  response to the shooting. I actually wrote there the
• 1:38:34
  Marines are so endearing they must be headed straight for
• 1:38:37
  death. That was my note for them.
• 1:38:40
  Not wrong. Episode 4, Let me see.
• 1:38:43
  Oh, can we talk about that nightmare that 456 has?
• 1:38:47
  Oh yeah, sure, go for. It, yeah, so like the first game
• 1:38:49
  is the same, which I appreciate, you know, but then the second
• 1:38:53
  game, we think it's going to be the Dalgona game again.
• 1:38:56
  Plot twist. Not so plot twist.
• 1:38:57
  They end up changing it. But 456 and it was clever
• 1:39:01
  marketing too, because it was misdirection right from the
• 1:39:03
  start. He tells everybody, OK, the
• 1:39:05
  triangle's the easiest shape, just get the triangle.
• 1:39:08
  But when he opens his container, it's a bunch of triangles within
• 1:39:12
  a triangle. He starts getting berated by a
• 1:39:14
  room and it turns out to be a dream.
• 1:39:16
  I don't know what's worse. I don't know if it's worse that
• 1:39:19
  that was that that would have been a possibility, or the games
• 1:39:23
  that we got instead. Right, Because instead we get
• 1:39:25
  this nightmarish group project of a game.
• 1:39:29
  Yeah, we get the five game relay.
• 1:39:31
  What is it? It's like Jack's it, It's a
• 1:39:33
  relay race and then it's Jax and there's like a hopscotch game
• 1:39:38
  like Kiki, like where you just hold up like like hacky sack
• 1:39:42
  basically. And then then the envelope game
• 1:39:45
  and whatever. Yes, the spinning top game.
• 1:39:48
  I love those games. Me too.
• 1:39:49
  I thought that was so. This was a really great episode
• 1:39:52
  I thought. It was so.
• 1:39:53
  Good or it was I think it was 2 episodes like the games.
• 1:39:56
  It was 2 episodes, yeah, like, and it was just as the trans
• 1:40:00
  characters team like she was, she was basically leading.
• 1:40:04
  This pack of misfits. Yeah, you could tell.
• 1:40:06
  Her the shaman is. A leader.
• 1:40:08
  Yeah, which, you know, special. Great under pressure, and that
• 1:40:12
  all comes back in the final episode, right?
• 1:40:14
  Like these great qualities Set 120 has.
• 1:40:17
  I have a quote here. Oh yeah, 'cause the shaman, I
• 1:40:21
  have two. Did you laugh when the shaman
• 1:40:23
  got like? Decked in or yes, I was like
• 1:40:26
  cheering because like the shaman's getting very mouthy and
• 1:40:31
  the older lady, the movie she's like, why does the skank keeps
• 1:40:34
  talking, keep talking down to us.
• 1:40:37
  But then I got man fuck group projects, which I stand by.
• 1:40:41
  But when the shaman is like, I don't know if I can do this.
• 1:40:44
  The spirits or whatever, the Special Forces agent, she just
• 1:40:48
  slaps the shit out of her and says if you give up, I'll kill
• 1:40:51
  you before the gods do. Took me out.
• 1:40:55
  Took me out. I was busting out laughing
• 1:40:58
  because my favorite bit in this, again, I love the humor in this.
• 1:41:02
  And they say, well, what are you?
• 1:41:03
  She's like, I am whatever, shaman of the sea.
• 1:41:06
  And everybody just looks at her like a Bikini Bottom resident,
• 1:41:09
  like just exhausted. Just like.
• 1:41:12
  Yeah, like. I loved it.
• 1:41:15
  And then a lot of people picked up on the fact that 456 and his
• 1:41:20
  group with the front man, they went last because if they failed
• 1:41:25
  then the pink soldiers could just kill everyone and leave the
• 1:41:29
  front man 001 alive, maintaining his anonymity and his identity.
• 1:41:35
  And then I also like the fact that front man people picked up
• 1:41:38
  on the suit. This isn't my original thought,
• 1:41:40
  but in all of the points leading up to he's inserted into the
• 1:41:45
  game, 001 slash front man was using his left hand or
• 1:41:50
  everything. Like picking up his glass of
• 1:41:52
  whiskey and taking off his mask and stuff all with his left
• 1:41:54
  hand. And then once he does the
• 1:41:57
  spinning top game, he's failing over and over again because he's
• 1:42:01
  using his right hand to throw the top.
• 1:42:04
  That was a really good detail. I love that detail as well.
• 1:42:07
  And then of course, a successful attempt was with his left hand.
• 1:42:11
  I love also the. SO after each game they clean up
• 1:42:15
  the bodies. Yeah.
• 1:42:16
  Something I found really clever was they didn't clean up the
• 1:42:19
  blood. No, the blood was there for them
• 1:42:21
  to slip in, to trip in, to throw everybody off.
• 1:42:24
  That was a really clever, if not, you know, sadistic.
• 1:42:27
  Yeah. What was your favorite game of
• 1:42:29
  those? Mine was the Jacks.
• 1:42:30
  Yeah, yeah, I really like the jacks that.
• 1:42:33
  Was wild. Because I thought that like
• 1:42:34
  hacky sack, the hacky sack thing, I was like, I think I
• 1:42:37
  could do that. Like I was like, that's not I.
• 1:42:39
  Have the coordination of a dead moose and I could do that so
• 1:42:42
  like. Or I think it's really difficult
• 1:42:44
  to flip the the Takchi game where they have to flip the
• 1:42:48
  folded paper. I'm like, yeah, I could not do
• 1:42:52
  that. That would take me like 1500
• 1:42:54
  tries to do that. But the Jacks thing, I'm like,
• 1:42:57
  Oh yeah. Which a lot of people have been
• 1:42:59
  posting their family members playing this game on TikTok.
• 1:43:02
  I don't know if you saw that trend.
• 1:43:03
  I have been like, this is my mom playing the game or whatever.
• 1:43:05
  I forgot what the game is called.
• 1:43:07
  And they are not a day has passed since they last played
• 1:43:10
  that game. It's.
• 1:43:11
  Amazing. I love it so.
• 1:43:13
  You have to pick up like. I think it's one, then two, then
• 1:43:16
  three and. So on and so on.
• 1:43:18
  You got to do a trick shot for the last one like you just.
• 1:43:21
  Yeah, the trick shot of like flipping it and then catching it
• 1:43:24
  on the top of your hand. It's crazy.
• 1:43:26
  I love. It it's a game of skill that
• 1:43:28
  turns into a game of chance. Here for it.
• 1:43:30
  Love it. Oh, my God, The timid girl who
• 1:43:34
  was in Yeah, 120, the trans woman, her group also had this
• 1:43:39
  really timid girl who was begging to leave the game.
• 1:43:41
  She had like, short cropped hair.
• 1:43:43
  Yeah. When she calls 120 unni, I, like
• 1:43:48
  I almost cried. Yeah, really affirmed like, no,
• 1:43:52
  it really like shook me to my core.
• 1:43:54
  She's. Like unni which means older, it
• 1:43:55
  means older sister. Really affirmed like who she
• 1:43:58
  was. It was great.
• 1:43:59
  It was great and she was the first one to reach out to her.
• 1:44:02
  Everybody was rejecting 1 Tony so.
• 1:44:05
  Exactly because everyone was just looking at, I mean, it's a
• 1:44:09
  microcosm of, I suspect Korean society at large that they like,
• 1:44:12
  I want nothing to do with this anomaly.
• 1:44:15
  And they keep othering her. And then this girl just opens up
• 1:44:20
  and says, hey, like, do you have a partner?
• 1:44:22
  And like, it's so touching. It was great.
• 1:44:25
  Loved. It second vote and I, I think
• 1:44:28
  this one, I kind of kept getting the idea that everyone was just
• 1:44:31
  addicted. It was a gambling addiction.
• 1:44:33
  Yeah, you got a room full of gamblers being offered a chance
• 1:44:36
  to win something they're of course going to win to keep
• 1:44:38
  going. Exactly.
• 1:44:39
  So I was like, what is addiction?
• 1:44:41
  These people are in severe debt. Society has written them off.
• 1:44:44
  They're outcasts. They have nothing technically to
• 1:44:47
  lose. And like you said, many of them
• 1:44:50
  are addicted to gambling, or at the very least they're risk
• 1:44:52
  taking. And this is the ultimate gamble
• 1:44:55
  with their own lives, the chance to win more money literally
• 1:44:58
  hanging over their heads in a giant childish Piggy Bank.
• 1:45:01
  Yeah, and the casino sound effects.
• 1:45:04
  Yeah, the casino something like no, no, no, like and then
• 1:45:06
  introducing all of what they could win.
• 1:45:09
  Yeah, it was very structured, just like a casino, like the
• 1:45:12
  flashing lights, the positive color for staying.
• 1:45:15
  Yeah, No, no windows. There's no windows.
• 1:45:19
  Are about closing the red light, green light and closing the roof
• 1:45:23
  on that. Oh yeah.
• 1:45:24
  That's what I read that as. I'm like, oh, they're really
• 1:45:26
  gonna like, they were trapped before, but now they're like
• 1:45:29
  trap trapped like. And then we also get talking
• 1:45:33
  about the trans character. She's talking about, like, where
• 1:45:36
  she wants to go. She wants to go to Thailand to,
• 1:45:38
  like, finish her transition. She's not done.
• 1:45:40
  And of course the girl says you're beautiful too, Ani,
• 1:45:43
  because they're talking about oh, like there's so many people
• 1:45:45
  just like you and Thailand and they're all so beautiful.
• 1:45:48
  Like she just says you're already beautiful.
• 1:45:50
  I don't like. Even the curly haired dude was
• 1:45:55
  like oh some of them are even prettier than the women here.
• 1:45:57
  Yeah. I love a great.
• 1:46:00
  Moment of community and like, I don't know.
• 1:46:03
  Like but then the Ajima comes in with the like.
• 1:46:06
  That cracked me up. She's like, well, I'm not going
• 1:46:09
  to go as far as to say you're beautiful, but you're very
• 1:46:11
  pretty and I see you and I'm like, that is such an old woman
• 1:46:15
  compliment. She's not a liar.
• 1:46:17
  Like she didn't lie. She was like, I don't, not
• 1:46:20
  personally do I think maybe not, but.
• 1:46:24
  It's always that, it's always that compliment from an older
• 1:46:26
  person. But it was still very touching.
• 1:46:28
  She's like inviting her to her home, like we'll have soup.
• 1:46:31
  We'll have. Beef.
• 1:46:32
  I mean, this is the equivalent of like Princess Diana hugging
• 1:46:36
  somebody with AIDS. Like this is literally it's big
• 1:46:39
  right for. It's really good representation.
• 1:46:42
  Like I don't, I don't know how it would be received in Korea,
• 1:46:45
  but I I thought it was very respectful representation.
• 1:46:48
  I thought it was very positive representation.
• 1:46:50
  Someone from an older generation, someone who's very
• 1:46:53
  traditional, who already voiced some of the things that maybe
• 1:46:56
  society at large already feels. And then she's getting to know
• 1:47:00
  120 and she's like, well, you're nice, like you're a good person
• 1:47:03
  and like I just why don't you come to my home?
• 1:47:05
  Like that is very to invite her to her home and like cook her a
• 1:47:09
  meal that's does a lot. Yeah, and the concept of like
• 1:47:12
  forgiveness when she because the transcriptor she ultimately does
• 1:47:17
  in one of the votes, votes to stay.
• 1:47:19
  Oh yeah, she votes. Yeah.
• 1:47:21
  And everybody feels very betrayed.
• 1:47:23
  But it's also like, at the end of the day, you know, she's a
• 1:47:25
  great leader. She's friendly, she's welcoming.
• 1:47:27
  She wants to be seen for who she is.
• 1:47:29
  But ultimately, like, this surgery means so much to her.
• 1:47:32
  It means being realized as a woman and living her life.
• 1:47:37
  It represents like a new life. Yeah, so she apologizes and they
• 1:47:41
  quickly accept her back to like, you know what, We get it, but
• 1:47:44
  don't do it again, Yeah. Don't do that shit again.
• 1:47:47
  Episode 6 and seven we get the mingle game, which is like that
• 1:47:51
  rotating platform and they have to.
• 1:47:53
  Musical chairs. Yes, musical chairs.
• 1:47:55
  It's very. Much musical chairs.
• 1:47:58
  Man, the girl who called 120 on these she dies brutally because
• 1:48:04
  she fell down and. You know, I know that they tried
• 1:48:08
  to like I still blame. We haven't talked about him and
• 1:48:11
  I'm kind of glad because I hated him like right off RIP more more
• 1:48:16
  than TO PS character, which really tells you something.
• 1:48:19
  Was this dirtbag with the cryptocurrency?
• 1:48:21
  No, the crypto oh man, she. Wants what a piece of shit he
• 1:48:24
  was the he was the reason why home girl died.
• 1:48:27
  I mean, I know they're like, you wouldn't have had time, but the
• 1:48:30
  way that 120 sees it is I could have at least tried to sue her
• 1:48:36
  and you shoved this bitch out of the way so that you can come in.
• 1:48:39
  No, you like ran into our room and shut the door, right?
• 1:48:43
  Exactly. Horrible.
• 1:48:44
  She could have made it. I don't.
• 1:48:46
  I don't buy that she could have made it.
• 1:48:47
  She got up with the quickness. But no.
• 1:48:49
  This is the new like. Could Leo have survived on the
• 1:48:53
  door at the end of Titanic? Could this poor little girl have
• 1:48:59
  survived 095095 young me man, just As for young me.
• 1:49:05
  Because damn, she was. Devastating.
• 1:49:08
  It was devastating and she wanted just being like she
• 1:49:10
  wouldn't have made a yadda yadda bitch like.
• 1:49:13
  If I was him, I'd keep it. But you know what?
• 1:49:14
  I loved that detail too because it's a classic pump and dump
• 1:49:21
  scheme behavior. It's like, well, I never told
• 1:49:23
  you to buy it. I never told you when to sell
• 1:49:25
  it. I was just promoting it heavily
• 1:49:27
  and encouraging you to do it. I never told you to do it.
• 1:49:30
  You bought it, you sold when it was low.
• 1:49:32
  That's your problem. Everybody who's historically
• 1:49:34
  been in that kind of pump and dump scheme has a very like, I
• 1:49:38
  have no accountability for this whatsoever.
• 1:49:40
  So and then on top of that, his pregnant ex-girlfriend who he
• 1:49:44
  ghosted being in the games, which we haven't even talked.
• 1:49:47
  About we haven't talked about her, but like, damn, yeah, the
• 1:49:50
  mingle game is devastating. And I think 120 has to feel
• 1:49:55
  extremely responsible for the death as well, not just because
• 1:49:59
  like, oh, she couldn't make it in time, She couldn't get her
• 1:50:01
  and she won. Like push shoved his way in and
• 1:50:03
  all that shit. The fact that just before 120
• 1:50:06
  voted to keep going in the games.
• 1:50:08
  Yeah, accountability rolls really deep in this.
• 1:50:12
  Was it worth it? Like even if you win, was it
• 1:50:15
  worth it to kill this girl who like actually affirmed your
• 1:50:20
  identity and called you unni with like all the love in the
• 1:50:23
  world and was supportive of you? Like, did you really want to
• 1:50:26
  kill this kind of person? She better not have died in
• 1:50:28
  vain. Oh yeah, no.
• 1:50:30
  Oh my God. Because like I love the mother
• 1:50:33
  son duo. I can't say it enough.
• 1:50:34
  Like when the mom approaches the girl and she's like, you need to
• 1:50:38
  eat more eggs because you're pregnant.
• 1:50:40
  And like, oh, stop immediately. I was like, if anything happens
• 1:50:44
  to this woman, I'm going to kill everybody in this fucking room
• 1:50:47
  myself. I will be a pink soldier.
• 1:50:50
  Like I will go in. I'm going back to the mingle
• 1:50:53
  game when her son gets dragged off and he's trying like
• 1:50:57
  fighting those two dudes and stuff to get back to his mom
• 1:51:00
  because I think the number was 3.
• 1:51:02
  And so they were trying to find one other person.
• 1:51:05
  He like, can't, no matter what he's struggling against, he
• 1:51:09
  couldn't get back to her and her face and his face and how sorry
• 1:51:12
  he was after they survived that game.
• 1:51:14
  Oh my God, it killed me, Cut me to.
• 1:51:15
  Pieces horrendous. But a plus for front man 001 and
• 1:51:20
  4:56 just swooping in to save her.
• 1:51:23
  They did not ask her like do you want to live?
• 1:51:25
  Do you want to be in a group with us?
• 1:51:26
  They just picked her up and ran into a room and I was like, wow,
• 1:51:30
  yes, that's. That was great because even 001
• 1:51:33
  couldn't let that happen. 001 was playing that game as if he
• 1:51:38
  was really kind of die. What do we feel about his
• 1:51:43
  motivation? His motivation was that.
• 1:51:44
  Well, The thing is, he really puts on a good show in the game
• 1:51:47
  before that, which was the pentathlon, the five game relay,
• 1:51:52
  he's like cheering and shit and like all in the game and.
• 1:51:57
  He's like vibing. He's like.
• 1:51:58
  Yeah, he's vibing like he just. It's almost like he forgets.
• 1:52:01
  He gives a story though, that his wife had cirrhosis and
• 1:52:05
  needed an organ or whatever. I wonder though, that's true.
• 1:52:08
  That's. 100% true. It's a. 100% true because we
• 1:52:11
  find out this season that it was an organ harvesting thing.
• 1:52:14
  The best lies have a little bit of truth in them.
• 1:52:17
  Yeah, and that story rang of truth to me.
• 1:52:21
  It's too specific. It's too specific and of course
• 1:52:24
  it ties perfectly in with the story that we had.
• 1:52:27
  June's mom is saying, yeah, I think in one of the 1st 2
• 1:52:31
  episodes where he's having dinner with his mom.
• 1:52:34
  And of course Ebiungan is still missing.
• 1:52:36
  They don't know where he is. And the mom is talking about
• 1:52:39
  family history and that family tea of like, I couldn't do
• 1:52:42
  anything to help his wife. Ebiungan's wife, 001 lost his
• 1:52:48
  wife and I couldn't do anything and all this stuff.
• 1:52:50
  And that tracks that he lost his wife to cirrhosis of the liver,
• 1:52:55
  couldn't get a liver transplant and she died.
• 1:52:57
  And to me the story is in 2015 he entered the games to win
• 1:53:02
  money to pay for his wife's surgery or whatever or buy a
• 1:53:07
  liver off the black market or something for her.
• 1:53:10
  And he won the game but it was too late.
• 1:53:13
  His wife already died. Same deal as 456 and his mom
• 1:53:17
  dying. Yeah, so he made it up the ranks
• 1:53:19
  and like, that's what the organ harvesting things for, can you
• 1:53:23
  know? Like he couldn't cope with that
• 1:53:26
  irony, the injustice and being too late.
• 1:53:30
  Yeah, so then he goes on to lead and then.
• 1:53:32
  Yeah, exactly. The Oregon harvesting, Yeah.
• 1:53:35
  Which some people are like I don't think he's in the Oregon
• 1:53:38
  harvesting ring or like he doesn't know in season when he
• 1:53:41
  did find out and he was like, I don't really give a shit with
• 1:53:42
  like what they do with the organs.
• 1:53:44
  Which is weird because I thought that I forgot about that detail.
• 1:53:47
  Admittedly that, but I feel like that makes perfect sense.
• 1:53:51
  These people are garbage, but at least we can get organs that'll
• 1:53:54
  be valuable to someone else. Yeah, and he has a personal
• 1:53:56
  story of needing an organ or wanting to buy an organ off the
• 1:54:00
  black market, possibly to save his wife.
• 1:54:03
  Missed opportunity I guess. Whether he condones it now or he
• 1:54:08
  wants it to end now or looks down on it, or he just tolerates
• 1:54:11
  it in the happening in the background, that seems like
• 1:54:14
  that's all what's happening in Season 2.
• 1:54:16
  Yeah. So yeah, we're talking about the
• 1:54:18
  mingle game. We can talk about TOP and how he
• 1:54:24
  sets off even in 001 and Front Man goes and beats him to a pulp
• 1:54:31
  right there and it's because he mentioned.
• 1:54:34
  Save this speech for your kids. Like, yeah.
• 1:54:36
  Exactly. And that like set 001 off
• 1:54:39
  because of course his wife and his unborn child died.
• 1:54:43
  Extra funny when you consider like the cracks in his facade
• 1:54:48
  are so big because then he doesn't just like punch him like
• 1:54:52
  he goes and like does a like a Vulcan grip on his neck.
• 1:54:55
  Yeah, he starts. Wailing punches him in the face,
• 1:54:57
  like starts chopping up everything like it's it's like,
• 1:55:01
  oh, he can fight. And I think it was 456's best
• 1:55:04
  friend was the one who witnessed everything like he he thought
• 1:55:08
  the whole thing stunk from the very beginning yeah and then
• 1:55:10
  he's like, how did he know your name?
• 1:55:12
  And he's like, oh, and then when they're doing the matchmaking
• 1:55:15
  game or the merry go round game, whatever, yeah, mingle witnesses
• 1:55:19
  mingle. He witnesses 001 choke a guy out
• 1:55:23
  and kill him just so that they don't get eliminated.
• 1:55:25
  Yeah. And even within the
• 1:55:27
  constructive, like, yeah, it was the ferocity, the motivation and
• 1:55:31
  everything that he did, Like, he didn't even think twice about
• 1:55:33
  killing this guy. It was like, the biggest red
• 1:55:36
  flag to him. So.
• 1:55:38
  But 001 is clever enough not to show his hand because on the
• 1:55:42
  next vote, he votes to leave. I don't know.
• 1:55:44
  That was it was a good detail. I don't know what they mean by
• 1:55:47
  saying that there was no the critic idea that there was no
• 1:55:50
  meaningful death. Like there was a couple.
• 1:55:54
  And the structure is just different in this one, right?
• 1:55:56
  Like they have someone tipping them off.
• 1:55:59
  They have people who are willing to work together.
• 1:56:00
  There's a faction of people who want to leave.
• 1:56:03
  Of course there's not going to be as much death.
• 1:56:06
  They're not experiencing it the same way.
• 1:56:08
  One last thing I'll say about the mingle game is that TOP and
• 1:56:11
  his minion were dancing on the rotating platform.
• 1:56:15
  It took me out. I was so.
• 1:56:17
  That's not just any dance. That's apparently the dance for
• 1:56:20
  the song that's playing. Yeah.
• 1:56:24
  So they're do, it's like choreo, like they're doing the the dance
• 1:56:28
  of this. The song that's like.
• 1:56:30
  So we would not get that as a Western audience.
• 1:56:32
  I've never seen that, no. Some people have commented who I
• 1:56:36
  think they're Korean American or they're Koreans on TikTok.
• 1:56:38
  And they said like this game is you played it as children.
• 1:56:41
  But it's very easy to be exclusionary and mean as a child
• 1:56:44
  and play this game because because you could say you don't
• 1:56:46
  have to have to call out numbers.
• 1:56:48
  Basically you could say like everyone wearing bread, like
• 1:56:50
  come here, everyone wearing this, everyone who has a dad,
• 1:56:53
  come here and he can get really mean.
• 1:56:56
  Like the kids can be mean playing this game as innocent as
• 1:57:00
  the game is. Like, I guess we can be mean too
• 1:57:03
  when we're playing like Red Rovers.
• 1:57:05
  Red Rover. Red Rover San Miguel over and
• 1:57:08
  And if your name doesn't get called like your shit had a log,
• 1:57:11
  yeah. It's like me pick last in
• 1:57:13
  dodgeball but literally instead. Literally getting pick last in
• 1:57:17
  dodgeball is a wonderful way to put it too.
• 1:57:19
  Love that we come to. They get another meal and it's
• 1:57:22
  Kimbop wrapped in foil. Love this.
• 1:57:25
  OK. I want to point this out that
• 1:57:27
  like people don't really get, the western audience wouldn't
• 1:57:30
  get why having a fork wrapped up in the quembop is a red flag.
• 1:57:36
  Why would that set off alarm bells in 456 when he looks down
• 1:57:40
  at his food and he sees a fork with his quembop?
• 1:57:43
  People don't eat quembop with a fork.
• 1:57:45
  This is like finger food. This would be as if they gave
• 1:57:49
  them PB and JS and there's a knife in the PB and J sandwich
• 1:57:54
  when it's already sliced for you in half.
• 1:57:58
  That is what they did with the Keem Bob.
• 1:58:00
  They're like, oh, violence is about to happen because they
• 1:58:03
  just. Gave.
• 1:58:04
  It's a metal fork. It's a metal fork.
• 1:58:05
  It wasn't plastic. It was like 'cause.
• 1:58:07
  Even. Yeah, everything was finger
• 1:58:09
  foods up until they finally voted or when it was a draw.
• 1:58:13
  That's the only time they introduced this.
• 1:58:16
  So very clever. They put a fork in the Keem Bob
• 1:58:19
  and they wanted violence and they got it the better to skewer
• 1:58:22
  each other with and. Iconic prison riot.
• 1:58:25
  The prison riot Exactly Prison riot season 2 The significance
• 1:58:31
  of using chopsticks in Asian cuisine.
• 1:58:33
  I just want to point this out. They're like, they don't eat.
• 1:58:35
  You're normally with forks and knives because of Confucianism.
• 1:58:40
  Confucius, who was against violence and disliked pointed
• 1:58:43
  objects to be present when eating.
• 1:58:45
  He was a vegetarian and he believed that sharp utensils at
• 1:58:48
  the dinner table would remind eaters of the slaughterhouse.
• 1:58:51
  He also thought that knives sharp points evoked violence and
• 1:58:54
  warfare, killing the happy, contented mood that should rain
• 1:58:57
  during meals. Which is why chopsticks kind of
• 1:59:01
  people cook with chopsticks, but now they started to eat with
• 1:59:04
  chopsticks as well. The very fact that the Asian
• 1:59:07
  cultures don't tend to use knives or forks in their
• 1:59:11
  cuisine, It's very alarming when you see the fork in with the
• 1:59:16
  Kimba. I just want to like point that
• 1:59:19
  out. Because the only ones who do
• 1:59:21
  like are children. That's the other layer to that
• 1:59:24
  is only kids when they're eating.
• 1:59:26
  Like you don't learn how to use chopsticks a little bit later.
• 1:59:29
  So even in the Bento or whatever, it's like the teensy
• 1:59:31
  tiny, kind of like hordor of fork that you get.
• 1:59:35
  Yeah, so. And I love the way they reveal
• 1:59:38
  the fork. Yes.
• 1:59:39
  When he opens it and it's like this shining, and it's a really
• 1:59:43
  sharp fork, like the tines are kind of like, cut inward.
• 1:59:47
  And I'm like, oh, shit. Like they planned it.
• 1:59:49
  Yeah. Everything is so well
• 1:59:51
  calculated. I wanted to say that on here
• 1:59:54
  because I feel like some people might not have had the moment
• 1:59:57
  when he looks down and sees the fork in the Keem Bob.
• 2:00:01
  You're just like, oh. Gagged, gagged, Absolutely
• 2:00:05
  gagged. Because it's just like the look
• 2:00:06
  of horror on his face when he sees it.
• 2:00:08
  He's like, Oh no. Yeah, then there's a rumble in
• 2:00:11
  the men's bathroom and TOP gets a fork in the neck.
• 2:00:15
  Saddest moment in the show. Second saddest?
• 2:00:18
  Stop it, Stop it, of course. It was that dirt.
• 2:00:22
  But I mean, they're both terrible, right?
• 2:00:23
  But man, that that Bitcoin guy, man, I can't right in the neck.
• 2:00:30
  Right in the jugular. Then the other dude cribs is
• 2:00:32
  drugs. Yeah, he's like, bummer.
• 2:00:37
  Let me get that good shit. So I wanted to point this out
• 2:00:40
  here because I have it in my notes that the Puck you young,
• 2:00:43
  her character, who's the pink soldier, the North Korean
• 2:00:46
  defector, she almost gets raped at one point like there was.
• 2:00:50
  Oh, that's right. Yeah, like they threatened her
• 2:00:53
  with basically rape if she continues to kill people instead
• 2:00:57
  of leaving a few of the the losers alive for organ
• 2:01:03
  harvesting. Because they can't remove the
• 2:01:04
  organs. If they're like, they're dead,
• 2:01:06
  there's nothing left. Exactly, I feel like violence
• 2:01:09
  against women in the show is shown but not addressed in any
• 2:01:14
  meaningful way. Right, because they just like
• 2:01:17
  pin her down. It's very.
• 2:01:19
  I don't know if you felt any type.
• 2:01:20
  Of it was deeply uncomfortable. Yeah, I'm just I.
• 2:01:22
  Already repressed it like I'm. Unsettled in my soul when they
• 2:01:27
  did this to her and there's literally like no way for her to
• 2:01:30
  get out there in a locked room together.
• 2:01:32
  Terrible. You know, it's because she's
• 2:01:34
  humane that she keeps just like offing these people instead of
• 2:01:38
  allowing them to be harvested for organs.
• 2:01:41
  It's completely unethical. It's disgusting.
• 2:01:44
  And she's like, well, fuck all that.
• 2:01:47
  Like the rules say, you kill them, you kill them.
• 2:01:49
  Yeah, and she made a point to do it.
• 2:01:51
  She's like, I don't she when she talked to like basically the
• 2:01:55
  assistant manager, for lack of a better term.
• 2:01:56
  Yeah, that was interesting. Which that assistant manager was
• 2:02:01
  in my name, which is another I think Netflix original show,
• 2:02:05
  which is like very violent. But I remember him from that
• 2:02:07
  show and he was great so. There you go.
• 2:02:12
  I I like that she spoke to him directly because he was like,
• 2:02:14
  oh, I was the one who got you in here and you had nothing.
• 2:02:18
  You had no one. And she's like, yeah, I don't
• 2:02:20
  really care what you want. My job is to kill them, and I'm
• 2:02:23
  going to kill them. So there you go.
• 2:02:25
  Because she has nothing left to lose.
• 2:02:27
  But I don't think that the villains really experienced that
• 2:02:32
  much. They experienced nothing left to
• 2:02:34
  lose so that all of these contestants can kill each other.
• 2:02:37
  But I don't think they have enough people on their team to
• 2:02:39
  realize, like, that cuts both ways.
• 2:02:41
  Like she doesn't give a shit and why should she?
• 2:02:43
  They hired her to kill these people.
• 2:02:44
  She's going to kill them, so. And I think the final conundrum
• 2:02:49
  or moral quandary of the show happens in the last episode or
• 2:02:54
  so, which is they're going to stage a coup.
• 2:02:58
  Yes. And try and get into like the
• 2:03:00
  control room of the games, the moment when 001 front men glocks
• 2:03:07
  in and asks 456, are you suggesting that we make a small
• 2:03:11
  sacrifice for the sake of the greater good?
• 2:03:14
  And 4:56 with his bull chest says if we miss this
• 2:03:18
  opportunity, the sacrifice will be even greater.
• 2:03:20
  And it's like, OK, so the ends justify the means.
• 2:03:23
  You're going to leave all of these people to get slaughtered
• 2:03:27
  in the middle of the night with forks while we hide and strike
• 2:03:33
  after this carnage happens? That's just good strategy
• 2:03:36
  though. It's terrible, but it really is
• 2:03:38
  because it's like there is nothing they're going to be able
• 2:03:41
  to do. The people who wanted to
• 2:03:43
  continue the game were just as bad, if not worse than the
• 2:03:46
  people running it because they were not going to let up.
• 2:03:48
  They already, they said everything they needed to say.
• 2:03:50
  Like we have nothing less to lose.
• 2:03:52
  We're not going to change our minds.
• 2:03:53
  Like that's it. And they were the ones who
• 2:03:55
  initiated the attack to begin with.
• 2:03:57
  So like when you see all that IR footage?
• 2:03:59
  Of well, he's talking about he's leaving Team X to to fend for
• 2:04:03
  themselves in the bloodbath. Yeah.
• 2:04:06
  He's not really talking about Team O, who wants to continue
• 2:04:10
  the games. He's talking about, oh, you're
• 2:04:11
  going to leave all of these people in Team X who want to
• 2:04:15
  leave, who are begging to leave the games to fend for themselves
• 2:04:19
  because they're going to get slaughtered.
• 2:04:21
  Well, I mean, got to break a few eggs.
• 2:04:23
  And that was so you're the quandary isn't so much of A
• 2:04:27
  quandary for you. You're like great decision.
• 2:04:30
  I don't think so because I if it means ending the games, because
• 2:04:34
  I can see how 001 will kind of use that as kind of like, what
• 2:04:38
  is that not? Yeah, like false equivalency,
• 2:04:41
  right. It's like, oh, see, we're not
• 2:04:42
  that different. It's like, no, we kind of are
• 2:04:44
  because like your end justify the means is we're going to
• 2:04:48
  throw away people that we deem useless and expendable just for
• 2:04:52
  entertainment. Mine is we're gonna hide out
• 2:04:56
  because we're not gonna be able to stop them anyway.
• 2:04:59
  And then we're gonna stop this game from ever happening.
• 2:05:01
  Right. So there's like a futility.
• 2:05:03
  Right, there's a bit of a. Different thing.
• 2:05:05
  Yeah. OK.
• 2:05:05
  I see what you're saying. Yeah.
• 2:05:07
  All right. He's got my vote.
• 2:05:09
  He's got my vote. Also cuz I would have hit and
• 2:05:11
  even if he wouldn't have told me so by that last night I would
• 2:05:14
  have been sleeping under the mattress.
• 2:05:16
  I would have been like. So Kangan Dole, the Marine,
• 2:05:21
  quote, UN quote, he turns out to be having some sort of trauma
• 2:05:26
  response to everything that happens, the shooting, the
• 2:05:29
  shootout. He doesn't know how to use a
• 2:05:31
  gun. That threw me.
• 2:05:33
  When he didn't know how to use a gun, I was like never been a
• 2:05:35
  Marine in his life. He has never served.
• 2:05:38
  He maybe got a tattoo overseas or something of the Marines and
• 2:05:42
  like he is pretending to be a Marine because even if he served
• 2:05:46
  he would know how. And again this is coming from
• 2:05:49
  all of the males in Korea have to serve A2 year mandatory
• 2:05:52
  enlistment. Even if he wasn't a career
• 2:05:55
  Marine he should have served his two years and he should know how
• 2:06:01
  to load a gun, use a gun. He's a completely clueless, even
• 2:06:06
  if he'd never used that type of gun before, he should be holding
• 2:06:11
  the gun a certain way and like all the stuff, let alone he's
• 2:06:14
  saying he's a Marine. Yeah, like, even the most basic
• 2:06:17
  Marine can, like, do some damage.
• 2:06:20
  So like 120 coming back 'cause he he's sent back to get all of
• 2:06:25
  the like leftover ammo and magazines from the soldiers
• 2:06:30
  after completely having a nervous breakdown in the hallway
• 2:06:33
  and just standing there like a sitting duck, which couldn't be
• 2:06:37
  me, runs back into the room to start collecting these things,
• 2:06:40
  starts panicking. 120 is like, cover me, I got to go see what's
• 2:06:44
  holding this guy up and finds him shaking.
• 2:06:46
  And she looks at him like, OK, like we'll talk about this
• 2:06:49
  later, give me the ammo and runs back.
• 2:06:52
  But she recognizes something in him At this point, I don't know
• 2:06:55
  if you've never been a Marine or maybe you have really violent
• 2:06:58
  PTSD, but something's wrong. So but you know, just runs back
• 2:07:03
  because they need to kill off these pink soldiers.
• 2:07:06
  So also 120 taking out the cameras.
• 2:07:10
  Oh my God, Carrying that team, genius, Carrying that team.
• 2:07:14
  She was strategizing the minute she got in there.
• 2:07:17
  Yeah, like right off RIP. As soon as she saw things were
• 2:07:19
  off, she was like, OK, we're going to do this, we're going to
• 2:07:22
  do it right. Love it.
• 2:07:24
  Love to see it. I love the final episode.
• 2:07:27
  I love the final sequence of 456 and his bestie trying to make it
• 2:07:35
  to the control room and getting pinned down and you know, 001
• 2:07:40
  front man finally betraying them.
• 2:07:43
  It took long enough, but it took in a good way.
• 2:07:46
  In a good way. You can see Evie and then it's
• 2:07:48
  just like fucking over it. Like he's like.
• 2:07:49
  Yeah, he's like, it was fun to play pretend over here like
• 2:07:52
  Marie Antoinette, but we got to get back like and let's just
• 2:07:55
  like. Let them eat cake.
• 2:07:57
  And it just goes to show the consequences of playing a hero
• 2:08:00
  game. And that's what 001 I think says
• 2:08:03
  to him. And he's like, you were playing
• 2:08:05
  hero and for what? Yeah, this is the consequences
• 2:08:08
  of you trying to be a hero. It's like, Oh my God, I'm
• 2:08:11
  looking forward to the next season.
• 2:08:12
  So when he takes off that mask, he's like, it was, yeah, that's
• 2:08:16
  gonna be like a whole moment. Yeah, something that not now
• 2:08:19
  that we're at the end of the show and we have like that
• 2:08:22
  little flash card that says 2025 is season 3 coming 2025, we did
• 2:08:28
  not actually see any of the VIPs in no.
• 2:08:32
  Thank God, I thought that was really.
• 2:08:34
  Really. I hated it.
• 2:08:36
  I hated it. The whole like animal masks,
• 2:08:38
  human furniture. I think that after three years
• 2:08:42
  of living with Squid Game, it is I think overdone at this point.
• 2:08:46
  We are over saturated on Squid Game and then season 2 comes
• 2:08:48
  out. Yeah that there was almost no
• 2:08:52
  need to show the VIPs because you are the VIP.
• 2:08:56
  Oh, oh, I like that you the. Viewer are the VIP.
• 2:08:59
  You're like, why aren't there more games?
• 2:09:01
  Why aren't we seeing this? Why aren't we seeing more
• 2:09:03
  deaths? I don't care about these people.
• 2:09:05
  Like, yeah, oh, you're the VIP. Love that I also if that you
• 2:09:11
  know, if that means not having to hear really really bad
• 2:09:15
  English. Horrible English.
• 2:09:17
  Nobody speaking like they couldn't whatever.
• 2:09:20
  Yeah, who was the most annoying character?
• 2:09:24
  Shaman. The shaman.
• 2:09:25
  No no no, I love the shaman. In a weird way I do the most
• 2:09:30
  annoying character. Oh the the Bitcoin guy.
• 2:09:33
  Piece of shit floor to ceiling. And it's not even close.
• 2:09:38
  Floor to ceiling, like just a piece of shit.
• 2:09:40
  Like even more than 001. Palpably, viscerally a piece of
• 2:09:45
  shit. Yeah, yeah, him.
• 2:09:47
  Him. Yeah, just him.
• 2:09:49
  Everybody else I can live with in some way or another.
• 2:09:51
  By him specifically. Yeah, and the poor pregnant
• 2:09:53
  girlfriend also powerful moment in the show.
• 2:09:56
  The show keeps making a lot of statements in the statement
• 2:09:58
  about the trans character when she and the Ajima, the old lady
• 2:10:04
  mom and the pregnant girl all go and use the restroom together.
• 2:10:08
  The ladies restroom. Iconic.
• 2:10:10
  You cannot tell me that it's not a clear statement.
• 2:10:12
  Yeah, very clear. Yeah, very, very clear.
• 2:10:14
  And she's like, it's OK. She's a woman.
• 2:10:16
  Like she can come with us. Yeah.
• 2:10:18
  Yeah, I do love that, Ajima. Like the mom.
• 2:10:21
  Just please, Mr. Triangle, don't you have a mother?
• 2:10:24
  Oh my God. Diaper I couldn't bring my
• 2:10:26
  things. I couldn't.
• 2:10:27
  And just like mid sentence just opens her.
• 2:10:29
  Oh, OK, Well, thanks. Yeah.
• 2:10:32
  I loved it too. More out of annoyance than
• 2:10:36
  benevolence. I know what Whoever is behind
• 2:10:37
  that triangle mouse is just rolling their eyes like Jesus
• 2:10:40
  Christ come. On Shut up, I'll let you go to
• 2:10:42
  the bathroom. Like enough love that.
• 2:10:43
  There are so many theories floating around for what's going
• 2:10:46
  to happen in season 3 for the mid credits scene as well.
• 2:10:50
  Do you have any theories? I'll share some that I've seen.
• 2:10:54
  It threw me really hard to see the red light green light girl
• 2:10:58
  again, just kind of standing there.
• 2:11:01
  So I got to be honest, I have, I got nothing.
• 2:11:04
  I got nothing. Because if it's going to be, if
• 2:11:06
  it's going to be 1/3 full season, that changes things
• 2:11:10
  because I'm guessing we're going to get like 7 more episodes so.
• 2:11:13
  Yeah, it'll be 7 to 9 episodes I would say, but.
• 2:11:16
  What have you got? For theories, theories about the
• 2:11:20
  next game. So we get the mid credits scene
• 2:11:22
  where it's a train light thing and we see Chosu, who is the
• 2:11:27
  little boy mannequin. Yeah, so we'll see.
• 2:11:31
  First theory is that they're going to play Jack and Joe go up
• 2:11:33
  a hill to fetch a pail of water. That doesn't make any fucking
• 2:11:36
  sense to me. I don't, yeah.
• 2:11:38
  What is it that's not even a game?
• 2:11:40
  That's not. That's a nursery rhyme.
• 2:11:41
  That's a nursery rhyme and #2 they're not playing Western
• 2:11:45
  games, period. I don't know where people
• 2:11:50
  they're like, they're going to play Jack and Jill.
• 2:11:51
  I'm like what the fuck? Are you Jack and Jill?
• 2:11:54
  Like where? Where?
• 2:11:55
  Ain't no Jack or Jill out there. It's just because the two, the
• 2:11:59
  boy and the girl animatronic, they are kind of the equivalent
• 2:12:04
  of a Jack and Jill in Korea. But again, like a Dick and Jane
• 2:12:08
  type of. Thing Exactly, exactly.
• 2:12:09
  But I'm like, they're not going to play Jack and Jill go uphill
• 2:12:12
  with a pile of water #2 I saw people saying it's going to be a
• 2:12:16
  train dilemma, which I'm like, oh, that's, I like that.
• 2:12:20
  I like that. Classic.
• 2:12:22
  Classic number 30 Do you want? Why don't you explain what a
• 2:12:25
  train dilemma is? For people, a train dilemma is a
• 2:12:27
  really classic psych game, basically or scenario where
• 2:12:32
  basically you're given a moral quandary of like, OK, on there's
• 2:12:38
  a train coming and it divides among two different tracks.
• 2:12:42
  You're the one who's going to pull the lever that pulls it to
• 2:12:44
  one track or the other. So on track A, for example,
• 2:12:48
  you'll have a group of terminally ill children, and on
• 2:12:53
  track B, you'll have the most powerful CE OS in the world.
• 2:12:57
  And your dilemma is who do you? Don't let handsome men do crimes
• 2:13:06
  stand there. It's up to you to decide.
• 2:13:10
  Are you going to pull the lever and spare all of these people
• 2:13:14
  who control all these companies, Or are you going to kill
• 2:13:17
  terminally ill children who ostensibly don't have a future
• 2:13:19
  anyway? Or are you going to try to Save
• 2:13:22
  the Children so that they can at least have a chance at life?
• 2:13:27
  And that sounds like such an absurd example, but that really
• 2:13:30
  is that's a. Train You have to choose who
• 2:13:32
  lives and dies. It's an impossible, it's very
• 2:13:34
  Sophie's Choice. It's a really brutal like
• 2:13:37
  there's no winning if you're a moral person on in any way,
• 2:13:41
  there is no winning either way because ultimately people are
• 2:13:44
  dying and all the rest of it. So that's the classic train
• 2:13:47
  dilemma. The other theory is that the
• 2:13:50
  black and white tiles that are on the wall in the sleeping
• 2:13:54
  chamber, you know, where they are when they're not playing
• 2:13:56
  games, suggest that they're going to play maybe trackers or
• 2:13:59
  chess. And I'm like, again, that's a
• 2:14:02
  Western game. Every everybody plays chess
• 2:14:05
  though. Not checkers, but.
• 2:14:06
  Yeah, but again, these are like games from the 70s, eighties,
• 2:14:09
  90s in Korea. I also, I'm a little sceptical
• 2:14:13
  about that. Some people also suggested that
• 2:14:15
  it could be another black and white game.
• 2:14:17
  It's Go, you know, game with a little white and black tiles.
• 2:14:21
  Yeah. A lot of theories around that,
• 2:14:23
  there's theories around who dies.
• 2:14:26
  The first theory is that there are crosses.
• 2:14:29
  A lot of iconography, I would say in the season deals with
• 2:14:32
  crosses. And so in certain frames, you
• 2:14:35
  can see there's a cross in behind 456 or a cross behind
• 2:14:41
  front man 001. And they're saying, oh, they're
• 2:14:44
  going to die because they have a cross nearby them or upside down
• 2:14:49
  crosses in the design of the voting booth as well, which what
• 2:14:54
  does that say about the voting process and this like fake
• 2:14:57
  democracy that they have going on here?
• 2:15:00
  Will 001 in front man die? I don't know.
• 2:15:02
  We'll see. Another theory is that, and I
• 2:15:06
  like this one, the tunnels beneath the island which you see
• 2:15:10
  in season 1 and it's explained that these tunnels are for the
• 2:15:14
  VIPs to escape and it's all rigged with explosives to
• 2:15:16
  destroy the island and any evidence that it existed in the
• 2:15:19
  games. We at June will evacuate the
• 2:15:23
  players through the tunnels and then blow the whole island or #2
• 2:15:29
  which this is a very elaborate theory.
• 2:15:31
  And I was like, wow, I have to say this one.
• 2:15:33
  Number two, even then, 001 slash frontman will threaten 456 with
• 2:15:39
  his daughter's life, so that 456 will assume the role of the new
• 2:15:46
  frontman and will be completely enslaved by the games.
• 2:15:51
  I can kind of see that, but then I can also see him just taking
• 2:15:54
  himself and everybody out by detonating everything.
• 2:15:58
  So I hope it doesn't go beyond Season 3 because I think at this
• 2:16:02
  point like no season. 3 is the final season.
• 2:16:04
  OK, I think, I don't think that there's any angle where this
• 2:16:07
  game survives. I don't, I really don't.
• 2:16:10
  I think that they're really just gonna like nuke it out and just
• 2:16:13
  end it. Because here's the thing, all of
• 2:16:16
  the VIP are international, right?
• 2:16:18
  Like, we don't know exactly who they are, but these people are
• 2:16:21
  powerful and they're rich and they're global, so who's to say
• 2:16:24
  this is the only Squid Game? It can't be.
• 2:16:27
  It can't be. Maybe they'll be a reveal kind
• 2:16:29
  of like, well, it's a spoiler for that show, but maybe, maybe
• 2:16:33
  they'll be a reveal like, oh, this is just going on everywhere
• 2:16:36
  else, too. Exactly.
• 2:16:38
  Yeah. Or they, you know, kill Squid
• 2:16:40
  Games in Korea. But then there's Squid Games
• 2:16:43
  happening in in other places. I fully believe there's a real
• 2:16:46
  Squid Game, but we're not getting into that.
• 2:16:49
  I have no trouble believing. You're like, I don't know if
• 2:16:51
  this is a conspiracy or not, but I think there's.
• 2:16:55
  It makes perfect sense to me. So those are some theories that
• 2:17:01
  I wanted to share. We're at the tail end of this
• 2:17:05
  episode. One thing that I really liked
• 2:17:06
  about the show was that it is a real journey.
• 2:17:10
  You know for 456, right? He was so innocent, so naive, so
• 2:17:16
  happy go lucky and and smiling and much happier in season 1 and
• 2:17:23
  he. Even his picture that became a
• 2:17:24
  meme of just like, yeah, yeah, I.
• 2:17:28
  Know. And then in Season 2, he's just
• 2:17:30
  completely downtrodden, guilty and depressed and really haunted
• 2:17:36
  by the choices that he did or did not make while playing Squid
• 2:17:40
  Game. They did a good job with the
• 2:17:42
  makeup too. Like it's not just the passage
• 2:17:44
  of time. He looks visibly older and like
• 2:17:47
  beat down in this new season. No offense to the actor, but
• 2:17:51
  it's like it's only been three years.
• 2:17:52
  You shouldn't look that much he. Looks really correct.
• 2:17:55
  That's a man who lost sleep. I'm here for it.
• 2:17:58
  I'm here for it. Yeah.
• 2:17:59
  Seeing the game leader in the trenches I thought was really
• 2:18:02
  refreshing, if not a little bit annoying that he didn't
• 2:18:06
  immediately 456 and immediately pluck out to be suspect of
• 2:18:10
  anybody who would have been 001. Crazy.
• 2:18:13
  It's just unacceptable because you think he'd have all his
• 2:18:17
  faculties and be more street smart after season 1.
• 2:18:21
  Yeah, and I don't know, I guess my main stray observation of all
• 2:18:27
  of this was that I don't normally like sequels in
• 2:18:30
  general, like they and they very rarely work out, but I really
• 2:18:34
  love that they did. I think they did an amazing job.
• 2:18:36
  I think that we have analogs for characters from season 1.
• 2:18:40
  And yeah, I can. I can see why.
• 2:18:42
  The pseudo like sapphic romance of the first one between the
• 2:18:46
  North Korean girl and the other girl, the you know, you got Ali
• 2:18:50
  fighting for his life, you got all this stuff.
• 2:18:51
  I could see why anybody who was interested in that tone wouldn't
• 2:18:55
  really resonate with this, but we needed to move away from
• 2:18:58
  that. There's no way this season would
• 2:19:00
  have been the same way. If you have somebody who's
• 2:19:03
  trying to warn them every step of the way and trying to kind of
• 2:19:07
  like bring consciousness into them, for all intents and
• 2:19:10
  purposes, everybody who goes into this game gets locked in
• 2:19:14
  and can't even remember what life was like outside of it.
• 2:19:17
  So you have this person haranguing them the entire way.
• 2:19:20
  Like, hey, it doesn't have to be like this.
• 2:19:21
  We can leave everything. I love the direction of the
• 2:19:24
  second season I see and I'm just really looking forward to the
• 2:19:27
  third season. Nice all.
• 2:19:29
  Right. Well, that's it.
• 2:19:32
  We've kept you guys here long enough.
• 2:19:33
  We've said our piece about Season 2.
• 2:19:35
  We'd love to hear from you guys. You know where to find us.
• 2:19:38
  Miguel, do you want them to contact you?
• 2:19:40
  If you want to, I'm here. Like, tag me in the thing and
• 2:19:43
  I'll be here. Fight me.
• 2:19:45
  Fight me, OK? I'll link resources for how to
• 2:19:48
  help TOP and everyone else involved.
• 2:19:50
  OK, Yeah. All right.
• 2:19:53
  We're gonna get out of here. That's been our show.
• 2:19:55
  Thank you for being here, Miguel, once again.
• 2:19:58
  And hopefully we'll have you back really soon, but that's
• 2:20:01
  been our show. I'm Jessica and this has been
• 2:20:03
  the Tiba K Rambles podcast.