The Ten Dumbest Thoughts I Had While Watching Squid Game
"Is this a sequel to 'The Squid and the Whale?'" didn't make the top ten
THIS LIST CONTAINS SPOILERS! Obviously — it really contains nothing but spoilers. If you haven’t seen Squid Game, I recommend it, especially if you watch Tarantino movies and think “should be bloodier”. I agree with those who argue that it didn’t have anything profound to say, but I thought it was good storytelling and undeniably unique.
Here are the ten dumbest thoughts I had while watching.
10. Who’s their contractor?
Say what you will about that dehumanizing murder factory: It was built with some real panache. The textures, the colors, the spatial of flow in the VIP observation grotto — it’s all quality. It’s also functional design; someone showed real foresight to put those blood sluices in the tug-of-war pit. The only issue I have is that at one point, we see coffins being carried down stairs — you really need to put the incinerators on the same floor as the games. It’s like putting a washer/dryer on the third floor; it might not seem like a big deal when you do it, but you’re not going to want to be constantly schlepping heavy stuff up and down those stairs. Now that’s inhumane!
9. What are the organization’s safety protocols?
The forklifts that carry the coffins away beep. That’s good; those things are dangerous. You should have a guy walk in front of the fork lift with flags like they do at Home Depot, but I’m nit-picking. At any rate: This organization obviously has safety protocols, but what are they? Are the mask guys unionized (seems unlikely)? Are they covered by the South Korean version of OSHA? This is where it would really help to know where the island is located; jurisdictional issues are going to affect the labor laws.
Maybe they’ll address that in the sequel!
8. Is the whole cell phone situation just much, much better in Korea?
The cop is in the compound for several days, and his phone works the whole time. Did he bring a charger? Maybe he used the Front Man’s charger — that seems plausible, because I’ll bet most of Korea uses Samsung. Plus, the cop and the Front Man turned out to be brothers, so maybe their family had brand loyalty. At any rate, the cop swims ashore and is way out in the wilderness, and he sends like 2,000 MB of data and fully expects it to go through. If I send my wife a photo from the grocery store asking “which brand of beans?”, there’s about a 60 percent chance that she gets it.
7. Instead of creating a Hobbesian death tournament, did the old man ever consider pickle ball?
It’s fun and low-impact — a lot of older people really enjoy it!
6. Did any of the VIPs balk at wearing masks?
They’re paying top dollar, and they seem to know each other. How anonymous could the whole thing really be? How many people have that kind of wealth? After one or two games, you’d figure it out — you’d realize from context that the aardvark must be Steve Balmer. So, why the dumb masks? If you invited me to any place where I’d have to wear some stupid mask the whole time that makes me look like I’m in a glam rock version of The Lion King, I’d be a hard “no”. And I probably wouldn’t enjoy the other parts of that entertainment package, either, but the mask is my main problem.
5. Did any of the players ever ask “If I win, in what format is the money delivered? I can’t exactly roll a giant hamster ball filled with 40 million dollars into TD Bank.”
This seems like a practical question that someone must have asked at some point. The bank-card-shoved-in-your-mouth method is a good solution, but the organization should have said that’s how it would be done. Contestants would have understood that the cash was like the cash on Win Ben Stein’s Money — it’s just a device to make things more fun.
4. Why did contestants get picked up in a 2009 Dodge Caravan?
Are you collecting people for a death tournament, or taking Dylan to soccer practice? It seems like big, black SUVs would be the order of the day, but the budget appears to be radically different when dealing with parts of the game that the old man doesn’t use. Contestants get picked up in what’s basically the airport shuttle, except they get knocked out with noxious gas (so, I guess it’s actually quite a bit more pleasant than the airport shuttle).
3. They don’t drive with those masks on, do they?
It’s night time; that’s not safe. Again: WHAT ARE THE ORGANIZATION’S SAFETY PROTOCOLS???
2. Is “tempered glass/regular glass, ha ha fall to your death” a Korean children’s game?
I know red light/green light, marbles, and tug-of-war, and apparently squid game and the cookie thing are real games that kids in Korea play. But what the fuck is the thing where they have to cross the glass bridge? That doesn’t seem very practical for kids. For starters, kids suck at making tempered glass; they never get the compression or thermal resistance right, and if an eight year-old managed to crap out something they called tempered glass, you’d spot it a mile away. Plus, it’s hard for me to imagine them getting the forge up to the necessary 470 degrees Fahrenheit before the end of recess. It’s all just ridiculous — I thought these were supposed to be kids games! It ruined the verisimilitude for me.
1. What the hell is the point of the contracts?
Who’s going to uphold that? What are contestants going to do, file a civil suit against the Front Man? And when would they do that — after getting improperly shot in the head? The whole process is a farce anyway unless the mask guys are notaries. Which…are they? Is that what the shapes mean, e.g. triangle = notary? I guess in that case, the contracts might have some legal force, but there’s still the question of legal fees and the contestants are clearly going to struggle with those.
I want to see a mash up of Squid Games and an HGTv show like 'Love it or List it' to show the complex being constructed.
Also, no matter how good the cell phones are, they are nothing compared to the ones used by Jack Bauer in '24'. The man once was on a nuclear submarine, standing next to the reactor and had 5 bar coverage. That is the true test of cell coverage,
I wondered about the VIP masks too. I feel like if you’re paying top dollar to watch gladiatorial games you wouldn’t want your vision restricted by an ostrich nose