Watching the second season of Squid Game, I was a little disappointed that it seemed so merciful. The show is as thrilling as it is because anybody can go at any moment, and I didn't feel like enough characters were dying to keep up that tension.
Well, I shouldn't have worried, because they were saving all the heartbreak for this season. We pick up in the immediate aftermath of Hide-And-Go-Seek, easily the most brutal game this crop of players has been through. I thought we might get a break, but "It's Not Your Fault" shows that Squid Game has no interest in taking its foot off my neck.
We have yet another vote, and I admit I'm fed up: at this point, if the players vote to leave, they'll go home with over a million dollars each. Surely, surely that's enough to make it worth their while, especially since they know more of them will die if they continue. Thanks heavens for Geum-ja, decent self-sacrificing Geum-ja, who says everything I was thinking to the group. Come ON, people; vote to get out of there while you still can!
Geum-ja is the star of this episode as far as I'm concerned. Her plea brought me to tears. She's been my favorite of the new batch of characters right from the beginning, and it made complete sense to me that she would be the voice of empathy and reason in this situation. If they're not going to vote to free themselves, Geum-ja entreats the crowd, then do it for Jun-hee and her baby; maybe all of them chose to come here and to stay here, but the baby is innocent. She deserves to have a normal life.
I guess the other players are greedier or deeper in debt or just more sadistic than I am, because they vote to stay. My heart broke for Geum-ja here, and not for the last time.
Later, Geum-ja sits down with Gi-hun, who is still in a deep funk after first blaming Dae-ho for the failure of the rebellion and then brutally strangling him to death during Hide-And-Go-Seek. He's forgotten why he's here: to help everyone. Geum-ja helps him remember. She tells a deeply human story about her son Yong-sik, who was always a bit of a screw-up. She could get fed up with him, but in the end she was his mother, and would move heaven and earth to help him.
And she killed him. She stabbed him in the back so he couldn't kill Jun-hee at the end of the last game, dooming him. She's doing what she can to care for Jun-hee and her baby, but she's clearly in pain, and she wants Gi-hun to promise he'll help look after mother and child.
In retrospect, it's clear what Geum-ja was doing, but I didn't catch on. The next morning, everyone wakes up to find that she has hanged herself with her bed sheet. She's dead.
I don't often single out the acting on this show, but attention must be paid to Kang Ae-sim, who brings a gritty grace to her performance as Geum-ja. I was very moved by her work in this episode, in both scenes of her big scenes. I think she Geum-ja the best of them; she never lost her humanity for a moment, even as it melted off everyone else.
At least her death shakes Gi-jun out of his torpor; he's now ready to help Jun-lee and her baby. Finally, he's back on track and remember why he returned to the games.
The VIPs are here, and they're awkward
The last episode was laser-focused on the games. This one spreads itself out. While the players collect themselves after Hide-And-Go-Seek, the billionaires who are bankrolling the Squid Games — the VIPs — arrive on the island.
The VIPs are an important part of this shows, because ultimately the games are put on for their benefit. They're vital to the metaphor, so it's a shame that they come across as so cartoonish. They all speak in English, but it sounds like stilted, stiff English. In an episode that featured not one but two beautifully naturalistic, heart-rending monologues from Kang Ae-sim, the performances by the VIPs felt jagged and cringey. Maybe something was lost in translation in the directing, or maybe it was impossible for the VIPs not to feel silly sitting there and observing the games in their gold Eyes Wide Shut masks and black tie formalwear. I just knew that something was off.
While that's all happening, No-eul the rebel guard makes plans to escape the island with Gyeong-seok, whose life she saved last episode. No-eul is serious and hard to read, but I support anybody who's had enough of this place and wants out. She tries to persuade, threaten and cajole her superior into letting herself and Gyeong-seok leave on a boat, arguing that she could make things awkward for him now that the VIPs are here. We'll have to check back next week to see if she succeeds.
Finally, we check back in with Jun-ho and his attempt to find the island where the Squid Games are being held. He hits paydirt: he finds the place where the Front Man shot him off a ledge at the end of the first season. The island "must be nearby."
Meanwhile, Captain Park is working for the Front Man and trying to steer Jun-ho as far away from the island as possible. Back on the mainland, Choi Woo-seok is onto him. Woo-seok visits Captain Park's house, a ramshackle shack guarded by a mean dog and what must be a silent alarm, because after Woo-seok breaks in the police show up. But before they take him in, Woo-seok finds proof that Captain Park is indeed connected to the Squid Games. Check back next episode to see how that turns out.
Jump-Rope
The episode does all that and still finds time to introduce another game! Time to jump rope!
As usual, the new game is a triumph of production design; really, who built these sets? They're amazing on top of amazing. For this one, players must walk one by one across a very narrow bridge suspended over a deep drop, with a small gap in the middle they have to jump over. The twist? The big creepy doll from the Red Light, Green Light game is on one end of bridge, holding a jump rope. Another big creepy doll, a guy this time, is on the other end. Together, they whirl the jump rope round and round; all the players have to do is cross the bridge, careful to jump at the right time lest the rope sweep them to their death.
While Hide-And-Go-Seek was big and sprawling, Jump-Rope is cruel and simple. Everybody knows what they have to do at a glance, but no one wants to be the first to try. Min-su, who's been growing a backbone after killing someone in Hide-And-Go-Seek, torments Sam-gyu, who's been going through withdrawals since he lost Thanos' drugs in the last game. Showing a cruel intelligence, Min-su throws the case with the drugs in it onto the bridge. Sam-gyu goes after it, clearing every swoop of the rope by millimeters; I don't even like Sam-gyu but I was still terrified watching him attempt this. He gets to the case, opens it, realizes that Min-su removed the remaining pill, and is brushed off the bridge down into the pit.
The show does a great job of capturing the momentum of the jump rope, which is a solid bar of iron rather than an actual rope. The way it slows down at the top of the rotation only to rush down over the bridge tells you everything you need to know: this things is dangerous.
Gi-jun, now committed to helping Jun-hee, volunteers to carry her baby across the bridge, since she hurt her leg in the last game and will have a hard time of it. Oh, did I mention that the VIPs insisted on including the baby in the game? So now the baby is officially a player. I hope those masks are made of asbestos.
I didn't believe that Gi-jun would die to the jump rope; he's the only person here with any plot armor. Still, watching him hop, skip and totter his way across the bridge is white-knuckle stuff. He gets to the end and drops off the baby, intending to return and help Jun-hee, but by that point other people are crossing, and they're not as altruistic as Gi-jun; the one to cross after him pushes the next guy into the pit. "I'm playing the game," he says.
And so we leave things on a cliffhanger. Excuse me while I watch the next episode immediately.
It's Not Your Bullet Points
- I'm of two minds when it comes to the cliffhanger: on the one hand, I love that I can find out what happens next immediately. On the other, if Netflix released these episodes weekly, I think I would have a blast picking over the details and hyping myself up with the rest of the fans while we wait.
- Woo-seok kills the boat captain's dog by stabbing it in the neck. We see its dead tongue lolling out later. Depicting animals being hurt onscreen is a touchy topic, even if it's entirely fate. But I'll just say it: that dog sucked and I'm glad it's dead.
Episode Grade: A-
Other Squid Game reviews:
- Season 3, Episode 1: "Keys and Knives"
- Season 3, Episode 2: "The Starry Night"
- Season 3, Episode 3: "It's Not Your Fault"
- Season 3, Episode 4: "222"
- Season 3, Episode 5: " ▢△◯"
- Season 3, Episode 6: "Humans Are..."
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