Squid Game – Interpretive Chance

Full transcript of Squid Game – Interpretive Chance.

0:00KT: Fighting. Welcome to another week in the For Your Reference household, and we're starting off with unguess me. Most suitably, Oti and I are going to guess who would, between the two of us, survive in Squid Game. Three, two, one. Me.

0:21Oti: As if. If.

0:26KT: Me. You'll be the fast ones. This is the earliest spoiler warning we're going to get. You need to be okay with everyone dying and you surviving. So based on that fact, I'm I'm surviving. We'll see. Well, let's see where Oti's tentacles take us, friends and lovers. If you're nasty, let's get on with the show. Welcome back to the For Your Reference podcast. You got your host, KT.

0:26Oti: And Oti.

0:26KT: Lay back and succumb to the tightening tentacles of social structures, one dimensional foreigners, and edging without completion.

1:30KT: Meet us at the designated location with Netflix's series Squid Game this week. The edge lord of all the edge lords audibly encaptured on this podcast, Oti.

1:30Oti: Oh, wow.

1:30KT: Welcome, welcome, friends and lovers. We dabble in the Korean K drama film sphere of it all. And we wanna say friends and lovers. Thank you for joining us on this journey. If you have watched maybe the first couple of episodes and you're super nasty and you wanna get spoiled in your splooshy places,

2:11KT: you are most welcome and we wish we were where you were and not at the end. Is it that a spoiler in itself? Well, we gave the spoiler warning very early because I had to, you know, lay out that I would win in Squid Game. Oh, wow. General stats and information created, written, directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk. Released in September 2021 on Netflix. Cast, we have Lee Jung-jae, Park Hae-soo, as well as Oh Yeong-su. Oh, this cast. If you have watched

2:49KT: more than a Parasite, you will be familiar with a lot of, especially the veteran actors in this show. But nevertheless, it is a super fun time. Grab a beverage, friends and lovers. Hopefully, if you're drinking wine like the Juenkos in the For Your Reference household, your wine has more body and more depth than the ending of this series. I said ending of this series, but I'm almost certain there's going to be a season two. Let's get into first impressions, Oti. You know, we we do love the the moral quandary

3:29KT: of it all. We do love the escape room of it all. We do love the social commentary of it all, and we do love Korean written and directed and produced of it all. Did this somehow become a circle in that Tasty Venn diagram? Is it as stacked as I am?

3:48Oti: Oh, it tried creeping in, though. It tried. It tried. I think the first thing I heard about this was its comparison to its comparison to Alice in Borderland. And anyone that says that, I was fully hooked in. I was like, yes. Let's give it a go. I am ready to be blown. And it started off quite well. Was intrigued. I was like, yes. This is good writing. I love the pacing. I love the characters.

4:16Oti: And I thought it was gonna be a a solid, solid story that you can't really mess up. Yeah. I know this is first impressions, but, like, towards the end of it, I started that feeling started slow slowly dying off just because I felt like they were trying to write for a second season Yeah. Rather than trying to just do what's best for the story there and then. Mhmm. And reaching the end, I just felt that a lot of things like, three episodes to the end, I think even four episodes till the end,

4:48Oti: I was like, okay, this thing is starting to wane a bit. Yeah. I tried to remain positive, I tried to keep myself in that sort of psyche, but it just lost me. And I think a lot of the time up until then, was like, yeah, this is just as good as Alice in Borderland until it wasn't. Oh.

5:08KT: But that was very Al. And as Oti was saying, the reason why we came across this show is not because it was released and it was everywhere, but because Alice in Borderland was trending. And it was trending because people were watching Squid Game. So that's by association. And friends and lovers, we do have a very tantalizing multidimensional discussion on Alice in Borderland. So be sure to go and check out the show and then also listen to the episode if you haven't already.

5:43KT: This this is most frustrating, and we talk a lot about this in, you know, our podcast. I get more frustrated where there is a promise. There is an inkling. There is a murmuring of high quality. And that's what we got, I would say, at least in the first three episodes of this series. If it starts shit and it ends shit, it's all shit. Right? But how dare you how dare you give me something that felt so fresh and felt so new an addition to the tapestry

6:22KT: of this sort of genre and not deliver. I think that's more egregious and that's more unforgivable. And unfortunately, that's where we landed. Stylistically, it felt like it was bolstered in substance. They didn't just make good looking colorful things just for the sake of. It all felt like it was part of the inner workings of of a well considered narrative. Unfortunately, it does start to fall on the wayside. And because we are talking very generally about first impressions, I'm going to say it here. I felt very

6:59KT: similar to the way that I felt watching Okja. Friends and lovers, we did cover and we do have an episode in our feed where we covered Okja. And as and as much as we love and lord Tilda Swinton, as much as we or me at Gyllenhaal, There there was a there was a foundational problem that I had with Okja. We're contrasting Korean characters that have so much depth to them, that offer so much backstory. And then you have, you know, Gyllenhaal literal mustache twirling villain

7:32KT: of it all in Okja without spoiling it too much. And it it felt so uneven because you have so much considered detail on one side, and the other side of the dynamic just falls flat as a pancake. And that's what I felt in this show. The introduction of the Westerners, I did not fucking care for.

7:52KT: And I don't know if it was also a tongue in cheek thing to say, like, this is how Westerners are watching and enjoying this, and this is how they're commenting on it. There was one motherfucker that kept saying fuck fuck fuck. And I'm like, I don't appreciate being represented on film. Like, I I just didn't care for her. There was really no dimension. And obviously, we'll get to it later on in our discussion. But just generally, the dynamics between, you know, the Korean characters and then the westerners,

8:24KT: or even like Abdul, for example, non Korean characters, it wasn't written as if these characters were lived in. You know? We we we love representation. We love talking about it. Kim Tony, Itaewon Class. Go and check out Itaewon Class. Don't worry, friends and lovers. We've got many Korean film and TV shows to fill your pussy vallas. Mhmm. But Kim Tony was a great example of a multidimensional non Korean character in a Korean written, produced, directed story.

8:58Oti: 100.

8:59KT: And that's what really bothered me about these westerners. And if I guess if we're just giving, like, general notes in regards to the show, I do wanna in particular, the first three episodes, I do wanna talk about them specifically. But as a general note, when they started to deviate from what made it so special, like the childhood games that may be very, you know, Korean specific, once they deviated from that and it was just tug of war and all that sort of stuff, it kind of lost what made it so great. Because

9:32KT: I think I think, hopefully, the appetite for narratives, we don't necessarily need to see ourselves in order to enjoy it. Yeah. Oti and I have been there for years. We're just waiting for you motherfuckers to catch up, essentially.

9:32Oti: Some people have kill counts. KT has a fuck count.

9:32KT: Mhmm. But I yeah. I don't know. It again, it it bothers me more when it is super solid and then it wanes off. That bothers me substantially. But let's talk about

10:06KT: the first three episodes. I wanna talk about each one specifically, and then we can just do a general package because that's where I started to get disappointed. So let's talk about the first episode. It's called Red Light, Green Light. We're also introduced to Gi-hun as well. He's kind of, I guess, if we were to have a protagonist in this show, he is the protagonist for this show. He he's presented as a good for nothing sort of guy. It it takes longer than you would normally anticipate for us to find out he has a kid.

10:40KT: And and much as he tries, it's kinda got into the scenario where the kid had to grow up to realize that, you know, she had to make excuses for her dad and that sort of thing. So you know, but he was lovable. There was nothing malicious about him. He was just a bit useless. Right? So we're introduced to him and we're also introduced to the world, which is very interesting. Go and check out our Parasite episode. I talk a lot about chaebols

11:09KT: in Korea specifically and how the economy in South Korea grew really fast, and it's not obviously, there are teething issues with with all countries, but specifically with the economy. Unless you're like one of the big five families, you are squandering. Mhmm. Right? So, you know, people without, you know, without any fault of their own can stumble into, you know, debt they can never be able to pay lifetime, within their kid's lifetime. So it sets up a very tangible, a very believable, and a very resonating sort of, you know, premise. Like

11:49KT: they were put into a situation where you can't even live your life. You've got debt collectors coming to you, coming to your mother when you run away. Like there's no way of trying to live a life, you're stacking loans on top of loans on top of loans. So I think it does very well even for those that aren't pull my glasses up, learned to know the contextual nature of the economy. It gives enough for us to want to care about specifically. Right? So how did you feel about

12:24KT: at least in the point in time on the first episode, how did you feel about the setup of Squid Game?

12:31Oti: I enjoyed it. I think it was slower for me to like Gi-hun because I thought he was a good for nothing sort of guy. Yeah. I think we're introduced to him being very rude to the mother, and I was like, who is this guy? Surely, this is not the protagonist. I don't know who is the word. Immature.

12:48KT: Immature.

12:49Oti: Like a teenager. To me, it came off as rude, and I just didn't like it. I think a lot of the take the way he talks to her, he felt very entitled and spoilt. You know? Spoilt was definitely the word. Yeah. And I it it took some warming up to do until he realized his whole story, then you can start buying in on him as a character.

13:12Oti: Mhmm. You know? Then we start caring about him. Then we start rooting for him. Yeah. You know, think one of the scenes for me was when he was celebrating the the birthday, he was taking the daughter. He wanted to take the daughter off of fried chicken, you know? And then he loses the money.

13:26Oti: And all those missteps, you start feeling sorry for the guy. Yeah. And then you meet the daughter and you realize the dynamic. Yeah. Like the daughter's there to make the dad not feel sorry or guilty or you know? And and that hurt me. I was like, I felt sorry. I was like, jeez.

13:43KT: Like, you know, for for non parents, like, are you being parents if your kid has to edit how they're feeling because they know that you feel a way about something? That's

13:55Oti: not fair. It's not.

13:57KT: And the fact that she knew that saying that they were going to America was going to be a problem, that's a Coming 2 America sequel I would like to say. But she didn't enjoy the steaks too much and she loves the sausages more. Like, you know, it's

14:10Oti: it's not right.

14:11KT: It's not right and it's not fair. And Gi-hun definitely he he definitely challenged whether you wanted to care about him or not. I like the way that the show started off and how it all was very mysterious and we didn't know what we were going to get into. But what I also really appreciated was when all of the contestants, shall we call them? When all of the contestants got to the actual arena, all of the rules were set up for them. They were told many times, if you don't wanna participate,

14:49KT: if you don't wanna be here, that's on you. Right? So I like how there's a sense of personal responsibility. And there's also talks of, you know, like, obviously people are like, oh, I can't do this. Why am I here? And then the money, the the the visual promise of the money and the piggy bank filling up. Right? Because you you have your morals in your cojones. Right? Yeah. And you hold on to them until you see the money.

15:21Oti: Yeah. I think the surprising bit was when they did decide to leave in that first episode is that they had already seen the money and we still had one person decide, you know, it it was pretty close. Yeah. But just by a sliver, they managed to get out. Yeah. You know?

15:42KT: But the quandary was, how good was your life out there anyway? It goes back to the same to the same step that you were in. People are still following up with you. And we kind of see that with Sang-woo's character as well. And I have a lot to say about Sang-woo, but we'll come to him in a second. But I loved I I love the idea that it wasn't as if they were under a guise like Cube, for example. They

16:08KT: knew what they were getting into. They were wholly conscious. Not to say that it doesn't make it less scary, but they knew what they were getting into. And this is what I really loved because when we got to episode two, I was saying the fact that they got kicked out of the game, we would have to wait season two for other shows to get to that point in the story. And I was loving it. I was lauding it. I was applauding this show,

16:31KT: and then it fucking fell off the rails. But let's just stay in the happy times where we are. I liked that they definitely it a sort of round the kitchen table discussion where you talk about and then and how it dissects and how it translates to real life. Because again, no one really had any sort of motivation to participate until they saw the money. Right? And so many instances happened in this show where people kept acting like there were other options. No. You chose to be here. Eliminated means more than being eliminated. You're gone.

17:15KT: Yeah. Like, you are Crossroads, Bone Thugs-n-Harmony. You're gone, mate. You're not coming back. But I I really love the way that this show was set up. But let's let's get into the first game that we see in the first episode, Red Light, Green Light. I would like to ask, because I feel like that's what we call it in Australia, at least in in my parts, around my way. Kenya, do you have a variation of this game?

17:15Oti: Yeah. We call it stopo. Like Stopu right there.

17:15KT: Yeah. Oh, Oti, our anime character.

17:55Oti: Yeah. It was it was interesting seeing like them realize just what eliminate mean meant. Mhmm. Slowly coming to terms with the game, we saw at least a couple of guys getting not a couple. It was quite a lot. Yeah. Getting killed because they were starting to run back once they realized. I feel like you'd be one of those.

18:18KT: Me? Yeah. That's why you say I wouldn't survive. Yep.

18:23Oti: Alright. I enjoyed it. And I think seeing Gi-hun sort of struggle with it up until the very end, it was quite It took way too long. Can we just say I'll ask me, get on it. Yeah.

18:38KT: Ride it and snap it off. Pretty much. Go and check out our KMPL episode. It had to be saved by Abdul.

18:45Oti: Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. And, you know, on this podcast,

18:52KT: like, I specifically talk a lot about characters that take too long to accept their world via Hughie from The Boys. And Gi-hun was definitely getting there. Yeah. He was taking way too long. I think it's only like three, four sets of running for him to realize that like, you're gonna die, dude. Like if you first of all, need to move. And second of all, you need to move fast enough so you get there before the timer runs out. Yeah.

19:20KT: Like the setup of it. That doll was very creepy. Apparently, there's a replica of it in The Philippines. Oh. Yeah. So stay away kids. But I I liked how they set it up. It was a bit more accessible because I think all around the world, there's some sort of variation of red light, green light. And it was also to temper the waters of what Squid Game was and how ruthless it was. And we did speak a lot about the the aesthetic

19:48KT: because a lot of the time when you have these devious sort of things like horror movies, right, usually horror movies are like set in set in the nighttime even with Michael Myers taking a thousand steps to get to you.

20:01Oti: Yeah.

20:02KT: So like usually with these dark sort of tones, you know, the imagery and the aesthetic reflect that. This show was very colorful. Oh, definitely Zack Snyder did not get any influence at all from this. Yeah. This is more the James Gunn, The Suicide Squad, polka dot polka dot fantasy. But, yeah, I I really liked it. I thought it was very effective in the way that it primed us if you're nasty to get us all the way into this show. The second episode, as we're mentioning,

20:37KT: was them going back to real life. Gi-hun, it was very predictable that he would be the one to go to police. Yeah. But also very predictably, no one believed him.

20:47Oti: Because to be fair, once you spill out the whole story Yeah. No one would believe you. Yeah. It just sounded so far fetched. Yeah.

20:58KT: And that that's where we're introduced to Jun-ho as well. And he's a police officer. He had a modern day phone, but I have my predictions that he had the battery of a Nokia three thousand three ten.

21:11Oti: That phone stayed on I think how many days was he there? Yeah. Because we saw him go to sleep

21:20Oti: a couple of times.

21:20KT: And he had the brightness at a 100%.

21:24Oti: There's no power saving mode on that shit either. No.

21:28KT: Not at all. But he infiltrated himself into the camps very, very stealthily. He

21:37Oti: did it very well. Even though you would think the driver would be able to count how many bodies were in the van. You've you've picked up, well, three, four guys. Yep. And then there's one person sitting in the middle who was never there. But you think, oh, maybe I was just paying attention. Ridiculous.

21:56KT: Especially because we see the consequences and repercussions of everyone, including the guards who we come to find are champions of previous years, they get penalized as well as getting eliminated as well. So in such a strict secretive place, it makes no sense that they had but I guess that's what the, you know, kids call a plot hole. Mhmm. But again, like, the the title is called Hell and it's them going back to normal life. They're resetting the game.

22:29KT: I don't know. Maybe I'm a vengeful game master. If you voted that you didn't wanna come back, I wouldn't give you the opportunity to come back. But everyone had the opportunity to come back.

22:29Oti: You know what I loved about the game is this the spirit of this apparent sort of fairness as if, you know,

22:45Oti: we're just doing what, you know, you've agreed to. We're sticking to the rules. We're making it as fair as possible. Yeah. And I'm like, cool. At the end of the day, you're still killing people. You know? It's it's it's crazy.

23:00KT: Yeah. But within the realms of the show, it's kind of a victimless crime because these are people that are being chased for debt. And I think they ended the episode quite well. Hell. You know?

23:10Oti: Real life, man, can be really hard. Yeah. Sometimes you think trying to gain a couple of million dollars just by trying to stay alive as we was in living your ordinary mundane life day to day.

23:28KT: Live laugh squid. Let's go to episode three. This is kind of where we learn a bit more about Sang-woo. We do learn about him in the outside world. I I think as far as like the characters that they spend a lot of time on, Sang-woo had the biggest debt. Yeah. Like crazy amount of debt because I think he he was doing something in the financials, was he not? Mhmm. And, you know, it's gotten to the point where

24:00KT: he can't even approach his mother. I don't know if it's an ego thing, if it's an emotional thing.

24:06Oti: Both. Because your mother thinks you're this big shot in America. Yeah. Well, you're swindling people or buying dead stocks somewhere. Yeah. Being being in serious debt, cops looking for you. Yeah. There's no way Jose ever going back to the family or the mother, sorry.

24:26KT: I That's gonna don't need Margot Robbie in the tub. I just need Oti with some headphones and a mic.

24:33Oti: You've not seen Margot Robbie up close then.

24:36KT: Where have your peepers landed? Oh, oh my. But talking about Sang-woo, it gave us enough to understand why he was so laser focused and why he was so determined to win the game. Where my foundational qualms come with Sang-woo was him he wasn't going out of his way to pretend that he was a good person, but he also kept a veneer about him. Because obviously,

25:12KT: it was going to mean that they were gonna pool resources and that sort of thing. But I didn't like that he led people to believe that he was going to be there for them. Yeah. He might not have explicitly said it, but when you're part of an alliance, that's what that means. And he willfully went out of his way to sacrifice everybody.

25:12Oti: Hints in the name, mate.

25:12KT: Yeah. But then and I think Abdul is part of, you know, we'll get to that particular instance. But that's what bothered me about Sang-woo because

25:44KT: very, very clearly, I have outlined many, many times with Troomagasi precision that I actually like these sort of characters in these sort of moral quandary, you know, social commentary sort of narratives. Right? I appreciate it because hard decisions need to be made.

26:05KT: Right? And Sang-woo would be the one to make those hard decisions. I just didn't like that he was acting like he was friends with them.

26:05Oti: Yeah. Yeah. I I wanted him to drop the pretense as well or even help out quite early on. It's quite early on in the game. He found out that what what the next game was gonna be. Yeah. He didn't tell anyone. You know, when they're trying to pick up Yeah. They're trying to pick up the shape, so it's like, I'll

26:29Oti: take the triangle. You guys, let's spread out. I'm like, start start off by killing the enemies or people like Mario Lance before you start taking out your own. Yeah. Far out, man.

26:42KT: But no, that's absolutely right because he knew. And I'm pretty sure it was at that point that Gi-hun clocked it, that Sang-woo was out for himself. And it's like, what the fuck, dude? Yeah. I wanna talk about Il-nam. I wanna talk about the old man. We've said spoiler spoiler spoiler. This is the Obito of it all. If you've watched Naruto, Naruto Shippuden, also go and listen to our episode on it. You'll know what we're talking about. And if you haven't, we haven't spoiled it for you either.

27:16KT: Mhmm. I wanna talk about him. What were your thoughts on Il-nam?

27:22Oti: I there was something like, I thought he was quite innocent. I thought, you know, when we were playing red light green light, he was quite eager and excited. Yeah. I'll just put it on on him Like, you know, he's dying anyway. So what's a bullet in the head? But to come and realize later on at the end that he was the architect of all this, by then I'd already lost the fire that I had at the start of this. And I was, you know, in and out. And I was like, yeah, it's alright.

27:54Oti: Yeah. You orchestrated all this. Now you're dying in your bed. I don't care. Yeah. It was so I was so nonchalant about the reveal, but I suspected that he lived just because it for everyone else, we saw them die. Apart from him. Yeah. Apart from him. And something in my mind was like, could this be something? But I held it back. I was like, surely not. But then they could have explained it away as like, it's an old man. It's an older thing. You know? I thought exactly. I was like,

28:24Oti: I was battling with his thoughts. I was like, okay. Cool. You know, whatever. We don't really need to see an old man die. Fine. You know? It shows Abdul and the other ridiculous characters dying, you know? Fair game. But for that reveal, I really didn't feel like it was that big or it was shocking. I didn't get emotional at all. And at that point, I was like, this writing just went downhill towards the last episode, towards the end of the season.

28:53Oti: I definitely don't see myself watching this again.

28:53KT: But if you were to watch it again, remember, recall to a couple of minutes ago when you were referencing, when they all chose whether they would stay in the game or whether they would leave. And Il-nam was the last person because they did it in number order. Yeah? And he chose for everyone to leave and we thought it was a noble thing. Like he was fine dying, but he didn't wanna have the conscience.

28:53Oti: Exactly.

29:23KT: Yeah. For like all of to be responsible for all of the other people having to unfortunately die in this game. Right? But now you can see it. He I guess it's one of those things like, if you trick someone to fall in love with you, the love will be stronger than you forcing them to fall in love with you. Don't worry about my screenplay friends and lovers, I'm working on it. Sploosh game, if you're nasty. Oh my. Who's thinking about Margot Robbie now?

29:56Oti: Nada.

29:57KT: Nice. I guess you could go back and like look at the reasons why it made it great. But I also feel like The Sixth Sense was a sensation that I really enjoyed. But I also feel like I'm not gonna get that same sensation watching it, knowing everything that happened.

29:57Oti: You could have if it moved to Pornhub, so I'm not sure there.

29:57KT: Wow. It's been a lonely month or two, hasn't it?

30:26Oti: I'm just bringing the freshest teas to you.

30:31KT: Tell us how you really sploosh, my love. You're sweating that incognito just like the phone. Yeah. Because we're talking about him and we've already mentioned spoilers. I don't care that there was a big bad in this show. I thought, at least from what we were introduced to in the first couple of episodes, I felt like the foundation was laid and it was strong enough to enjoy the game as itself. Yeah. I don't think we needed to take a step back and see the investors, the the horny investing

31:11KT: of the game and and betting on the players. Like, I feel like it could have been done well. Not well, but we've seen it in Escape Room and the Escape Room: Tournament of Champions. The poor man's Hunger Games tournament of the champions. So I don't know. I just I feel like it's fine if if they did wanna introduce that, but the way that they wrote it, the way that it was delivered, the way that it waned from the the the the tantamount

31:45KT: quality that we had at the start of the show was definitely a qualm that I had. And him becoming the big bad and I also didn't care for, like, the last game, the last challenge that he had with Gi-hun, saying if that man gets helped, then you win. And, like, what what's the point of that?

32:04Oti: Showing us that we should we should trust in the human in human nature and the human spirit. Oh, piss off with that. We're just in the room seeing people die for money, you know. I'm not really going to trust in human nature at all. But just to go back to Gi-hun a bit, I think you just said something that I thought was quite at the forefront of this show is everyone had their own motivations and ambitions to get their money. Episode two depicting hell, we saw their day to day, we saw their struggles,

32:42Oti: And we got to see Gi-hun really struggle trying to the daughter in Korea. But then at that last episode, he completely loses all that. He doesn't really care about the daughter or getting back to the daughter. That's all gotten back to the to the back of the bus. Yeah. It didn't make sense to me. All the motivations of these people

33:04Oti: for Gi-hun to be in this room. Yeah. Now he's taking himself back there. What are the likelihood for him to survive? Or or does it mean for for the daughter? Has that has he sent that money to the wife? Has he sent that money back? Yeah.

33:20KT: There was over 400 people. Like, there was over 400 contestants, if you will. Anyone else would have used the money. This this idiot

33:29Oti: stayed a whole year out. Yeah. Didn't touch the fucking money. Not even for his family. Yeah. Nothing. Yeah. A lot of people died for you to be here. Everyone knew the fucking risks. Yeah. Everyone knew what they're giving themselves up for.

33:48KT: Hang on a second. You voted to leave the game, then you voluntarily chose to enter the game again, and then you sacrificed all of these people to get to where you were. You won the game, and you fucking squandered it. You had one job. Use the money frivolously or use it of substance. It didn't fucking matter. You had responsibilities. You didn't do anything about it. Your mother suffered. Your daughter suffered. Anyone else. Anyone else. Even if one of the 400 people felt so spiteful, they created their own octopus game. But I'm pretty sure there's a genre on that on Oti's Pornhub. But

34:27KT: anyone else would have used that money in any sort of capability. He didn't use it at all. I'm sorry. Does that make you noble? No. Because people fucking died. Sang-woo could have stayed alive and used that money. Why you?

34:42Oti: He promised to go and take the brother. Actually, yeah, he promised guy for the the guy waited the whole year. Yeah. This kid didn't know where the sister was for a whole year. Yeah. Nothing. Whatever sort of speedy wallowing he was doing, that was all self-service.

34:59KT: Yes.

35:00Oti: It was fucking selfish. He he didn't grow as a character, and him going back is all fucking character development. And he gave the kid to Sang-woo's

35:09KT: mom and then fucked off. Yeah. What is that?

35:13Oti: Oh, man. There are so many decisions just mind boggling. Like, people's motivations to be in the fucking game didn't mean shit. His wish. He holds himself up. Oh, all this honor. I am such an honorable guy. You get out of there. The promise you made to someone who's fucking dying, you can't even fulfill.

35:34KT: But he's like, he's he's so useless at the start of this and it becomes very clear that he is our protagonist. He's the one we're rooting for. He's the one that's going to bring hope in this dreary fucking world, and he does nothing. He does nothing. And it's it's definitely, you know, disrespectful, insubordinate, and trollish to do that to your audience because we need to rally behind someone. You chose for it to be Gi-hun, and he absolutely squandered every single opportunity,

36:08KT: even to the point after he gave the suitcase of money to Sang-woo's mom and he dropped the kid off and he ran off, he went to the train station and saw the same man again. And then what? He felt obliged to help that person?

36:20Oti: Now I need to end this. Why?

36:27KT: Man, I'm I'm more confused and frustrated than when when I watched Tenet because what the fuck kind of protagonist is this?

36:34Oti: So can we segue to Abdul because of fucking crazy writing?

36:39KT: Yes. Yes. That is a perfect segue segue, Edgelord Master.

36:44Oti: Abdul has a wife and a kid. Yes.

36:48KT: We see he does everything for them. And can we agree this is the writing? This is not the character.

36:54Oti: He bloody walked. He shoved his boss, took the money, bloody money, and went to the wife all because he needed a chance to provide for his family. Yeah. This guy, he's gone heaven and fucking earth to do everything he could for the betterment of his family. Yeah.

37:17KT: They didn't even give the kid and wife a name, I don't think. He's like, I have a kid. I have a wife. Who is he? Jason Statham? Who talks like that? In swings Sang-woo. Yeah.

37:28Oti: They become buddy buddies. Yeah. He can understand he's appreciative. Maybe he's the first person to treat him nicely in that in that country. Fair enough. Be friends. But don't forget why you're there. Yeah. Because everyone else isn't. To the point where he's so fucking stupid and deluded. Subservient. To trust this fucking stranger

37:51Oti: Yeah. When he's about to lose. Oh, apparently, they'll change the game if we say that we can we can we can borrow some from the it wasn't even fucking believable. Who would fucking believe that shit? It's not believable. But even if it wasn't believable, Abdul had a life and he had people to lose.

38:08KT: Yep.

38:10Oti: People will fucking depend on him.

38:13KT: And this is what I don't like. Like, I know I know we're in South Korea, not North Korea. On a lighter note, I guess it's naivety, but on like a heavier note, it definitely felt like the good servant. You know what I mean? You did. The subservience order nature. Really? Yeah. Like, I I'm living here or I'm working and and slash living here in South Korea, but I will always bow my head because I will never be equal to you. Exactly. Yeah.

38:43Oti: Mate, you're all on the fucking same platform. Yeah. You're gonna die equally anyway. It doesn't fucking matter. Check out El Hoyo. It's a better one. Shut that subservience nonsense out the window, man. But that's why I think it's a writing thing because the non Korean characters are vastly, very, very painfully one dimensional.

39:01Oti: Oh, I really it just fucking I I I didn't get upset. I think that's one of the moments where I just like, you know what? Fuck this show. Fuck this show and fuck this writing. What the fuck? I didn't understand. I didn't understand. You you take us you name a fucking episode hell. You show us. Abdul had his own fucking episode. Yeah. We saw what he went through. Yeah.

39:25KT: Well, that was kinda glorious when his boss's hand got crushed.

39:28Oti: And then for for that guy to come and trust Sang-woo to do the best for him?

39:33KT: I guess it's kinda the equivalent, like, when you're a kid and specifically if you're a little girl and you watch, like, Disney princess movies and you think that's what your life's gonna be. That's the level of naivety that Abdul had. And I don't understand how a whole adult with a whole wife and kid would would navigate and would move that way. That makes no sense. You're friends with them, sure. Don't manipulate them, sure. But to and then he gave all his marbles.

40:04Oti: I didn't even check. Yeah. You got fucking pebbles. It didn't even sound the fucking marbles when you hide it in your hand. Yeah. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Man, I felt like I don't know if it's right it was the right thing. I just got really angry. Yeah. I got really angry.

40:22KT: But it's like you didn't even need to include Abdul in this story. Because if you're going to include him, give him the same fucking dimension that you give the rest of the characters. If not, that's fine. Just write about what you know. Give him the fucking base intelligence as everyone else. Because who else sacrificed themselves to that level? And except for Sang-woo, like, near the end of the show.

40:22Oti: But I don't really agree with that. He'd already been beaten, man. He was stabbed. He was he was not going anywhere.

40:52Oti: He was

40:54KT: was It wasn't as noble. It wasn't fucking noble. He wasn't going anywhere. He was winded. Do you think from an audience point of view that was supposed to make us feel a way for Sang-woo because he was so garbage up until then? Because I don't even I'm not even that mad at him about the Abdul thing because it kind of it's kind of in Abdul's problem that he gave up so much. Yeah.

41:16Oti: For sure. That was an Abdul problem. And for that last scene with Sang-woo and Gi-hun, I was like, yeah, I don't really care. I don't care for either of you guys. Yeah.

41:27KT: It kind of it reminded me of watching any sort of sports because they explained the rules many times, but I still didn't get what was happening. Because it was hopping and tiptoeing and I'm like, hang on a second. I don't know.

41:40Oti: But now you can run to the end. Yeah.

41:43KT: I'm not understanding how this works. But, yeah, I just there there was so much edging. And again, no completion with a lot of the characters. Let's talk about Sae-byeok because we didn't really get to talk about her at all. And again, her dying wish was please look after my brother.

42:05Oti: We didn't have that way.

42:07KT: I'm telling you, everyone would have used that money not even in a better way at all. Anyone who would have used that money and Gi-hun didn't. Me.

42:17Oti: Donate that money if you don't wanna use it. Yeah. Stop being a fucking shitbag.

42:22KT: Oh, absolutely. I would say the most least shitbags of the show are Sae-byeok as well as Ji-yeong. They had a very nice moment. I think it was it was it was quite clear to me, maybe not as soon as Ji-yeong was introduced, but, you know, especially when they got to the marble scene and the marble episode, it was very clear that Ji-yeong was going to sacrifice herself. I

42:53KT: don't know if she knew what game was coming up, but, you know, she kept mentioning all of the things she wanted to do when she leaves and everything was to do with her. Yeah. So it was very clear. And then, you know, she didn't have anything to lose. She couldn't even envision what she would do. Case in point, Gi-hun, like,

43:13KT: why didn't he say the same thing? I don't know what I will do. I've got all these people depending on me, but I don't know what I'll do when I get out. Right? There is there is a graciousness in sacrificing yourself.

43:27Oti: Yeah. For sure. Like, yeah, it was good seeing that. I think that was one of the most emotional, if not the most emotional thing about this series. Agree. I don't think any other partnership brought such levels of emotion and and and feelings to us.

43:44KT: Yeah. And it's wild. It's wild how there's so much quality there and in pockets of this show. And then it just completely gets glazed over with barely a dimension. But yeah, but I absolutely agree. That was probably one of the best sort of moments. How did you feel about Mi-nyeo? I kind of respected her hustle, you know? She used her sexuality to get as far as she could. She was very annoying. She was very annoying as a character, but I respected her hustle. I'll say that. Yeah.

44:20Oti: Yeah. She she really wanted to survive. So respect the hustle, man.

44:25KT: And she got her comeuppance from Deok-su because he was kind of gross. I think Sang-woo and Deok-su were kind of the same in the way that they would use people. But I think Deok-su didn't pretend like you knew he was going to use you. Yeah.

44:41Oti: But at least she went out on her own way, in her own way, you know, on terms and all that. Yeah. Like I'm going to kill you. We're going down, down in an earlier round.

44:51KT: Yep. Alright. Let's finish off with two more characters. I wanna talk about Jun-ho, not his phone, we've addressed that already. And the Front Man as he's referred to. So this kind of goes back to, you know, more of the orchestration of the Squid Game as opposed to the actual Squid Game. And we come to find that champions years before are embedded within the operations, and you see the different rankings of other people that have survived over the years. Did you see it coming? And did you care?

45:35Oti: The Front Man was his brother that he's been searching coming because he was killing people indiscriminately until he was the cop and he couldn't shoot. Mhmm. It was like, okay, mate, that's your brother.

45:48KT: Especially

45:49Oti: when they found that body wash up on shore and he saw the ID was his brother, but he knew that wasn't his brother. Yeah. And then his next command is, find him, but don't kill him. Bring him to me alive. I'm like, yeah. For sure he's your brother.

46:05KT: I think I think that would have been pretty cool, especially when Jun-ho was like rifling through the archives and trying to piece it together. I thought that was quite interesting. I don't think it was executed quite well or maybe it got to the point where the quality dipped so much that we stopped caring. There was also a scenario where we come across the doctor and he helps harvest the organs. And then there's talk of someone with one Kidney. One kidney, thank you. With one kidney and they're trying to figure out,

46:41KT: you know, whether it was the brother or not. And then we find out at gunpoint by one of the guards that it was actually a woman and then they find we find out that they assaulted the And then us as the audience are trying to reconcile if that really is your brother, do we even want him to be found? Like, we want do we want to save him, shitbag, as Oti referred to earlier?

47:08KT: Like, I I think that could have been quite interesting. I personally don't care for the twists and the gotchas. Like, I don't I don't personally care about that in stories, but I feel like it could have been done in a way that we might have gotten a little titillating chuckle out of.

47:26Oti: Agreed. There was nothing titillating about the reveal. I think it was quite obvious that they had a relationship of some sort.

47:35KT: Final thoughts wrapping up. The only other thing that I would say that was frustrating about this show is they try to allude to the salaciousness and the the nasty deplorable depravity and sex that the Westerners were indulging in. Like, wasn't enough to gamble on actual human lives, but they wanted to use them as meat trays and and and places to shove things. And you kind of see that when they're in their little velvet sex dungeon, and you've got those women that are painted and they're all around,

48:21KT: but they never really followed through with it, which was a bit interesting to me because they're all in their velvet robes and they're they're it's it's quite clear that that's what they're trying to portray. But even when we got to the scene where, you know, one of the investors is trying to take advantage of Jun-ho, like, it didn't feel like, just felt like they were trying to be edgy without the edge. It's like it's like trying to watch Family Guy and then South Park and you realize you realize the literal edge. Right? So

48:53KT: I think that was a bit bothersome to me. But again, I think it's a lot of the writing. I think the acting was actually quite good in the show. The aesthetics were quite good in the show, but there's that finesse, I think, that nuance that was missing in the penmanship to really drive this show home.

49:09Oti: I think my parting bit will be I didn't really care for Gi-hun's red hair, man. The fuck was that? Yeah.

49:18KT: How do you do fellow kids?

49:21Oti: Pretty much. That was energy.

49:24KT: Oti, I've seen your Ed Hardy online orders, okay? Oh, but I absolutely agree. Thank you so much friends and lovers for tuning another week in the For Your Reference podcast. This will be very interesting. If you're new to the For Your Reference podcast, you might not be aware, but we don't talk about numerical ratings in our episodes. We save that for Christmas. So I do wonder after we've had a couple of weeks and months to relax from this show, whether that influences how we're gonna rate it at the end of the year.

50:03Oti: Maybe so. You know, time, there's nothing kinder than time.

50:09KT: Live, laugh, Oti apparently. Alright. We're gonna finish off in a segment we call, For Your Reference, Oti.

50:16Oti: If you wanna see this concept done properly, good writing, good characters with a promising season two to boot, then there's nothing better than Alice in Borderland.

50:31KT: Oh, look at you Oti. And I will reference, forever reference, El Hoyo.

50:39Oti: You're Troomagasi mate.

50:42KT: Troomagasi indeed. If you would like to hear more about my razor sharp commentary on Twitter and Instagram, we're at for your f one. Write us an email at hello@fyrpodcast.com. We're also If you'd like to leave a review and review.

51:04KT: And we'll see you guys next week.

51:04Oti: See you.

51:08KT: Bye.