A damp squid. (Spoilers)

Squid Game Season 2 is finally here and it is Hunger Games. I had a feeling that Season 2 was going to be a part 1 and would end halfway through the games the moment they announced that the two seasons would be filmed back to back. I knew for certain that we wouldn’t get a resolution for season 2 when we got to the end of episode five and game number three had only just started. Season 3 will be the last, thank Christ.

Season 2 of the Squid Games once again stars Lee Jung-jae as Seong Gi-hun, aka Squid von Game. You’ll remember at the end of season 1, Gi-hun resolved to see an end to the Hunger Games and bring down the guy who runs the show; President Snow. In the intervening few years, Gi-hun has been using his fortune to hire dudes to track down the original game player who apparently travels the country and recruits players to play the game. Or travels that one very small section of Korea.

And this is where Squid Game Season 2 becomes kinda stupid. Gong Yoo plays the guy who goes around recruiting people and the way the show makes it seem, you’d think he was the only recruiter. Gi-hun’s crew watch subway stations for years and never find another person recruiting for the Squid Games. Between the first and second season Gong Yoo also becomes an incredibly one-dimensional villain character. He is obsessed with games and choice by this point, going to the park and playing games of choice with homeless people just to taunt them.

He’s like a bronze-age Batman villain. And yes I’m aware the show has other recruiters. Evidently Gong Yoo is the only one who recruits by playing games because everyone else just seems to be approached and handed a card.

I loved the first season of Squid Game so it only seemed natural that the second season would be a downgrade by comparison. And it was. It’s not bad but the first season blew it out of the park and could have easily existed as its own contained story. You know, in a world where capitalism didn’t guarantee the show would be milked for everything it’s worth. Maybe it’s knowing that in season 1 Gi-hun plays the game to square his debt and get money for his mom’s medical emergency, and the creator was on board because he had to pay his debts and handle a medical emergency and season 1 didn’t pay him much.

There are some good characters in Squid Game 2, but they rarely felt up to the fantastic cast that the first one had. Part of that is because they went with “modern” casting, and I’m not referring to the refusal to cast an actual trans person as the trans character Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon). Squid Game 2 has YouTubers in it. YouTubers who make meme references and really ruin most of the scenes they’re in. I get it. It makes sense. I hate it. They’ll probably grow on me more as the show gets further into the rear view mirror.

Im Si-wan for instance plays Lee Myung-gi, aka MG Coin, a YouTuber who screwed over a bunch of people with a shitty crypto coin, including his pregnant ex Kim Jun-hee played by Jo Yu-ri. Unfortunately for him he also pissed off the antagonist of the season Choi Su-bong who goes by Thanos and has his fingernails painted like the infinity stones, randomly talks in English, and is a stupid asshole. Choi Seung-hyun must be a great actor, although apparently he’s hated in South Korea because they have a big stick jammed up their ass toward people who smoke weed.

There’s a mother-son duo, a woman who allies with the bad guy because she believes she can manipulate them (and she can), the kid who wimps out in season 2 so he can probably have a heroic sacrifice moment in season 3 and redeem himself. Hwang Jun-ho is back (Wi Ha-joon) the police officer from season 1 who joins with Gi-Hun to find the island. Also Hwang In-ho is back as The Front Man, aka Player 001 (Lee Byung-hun). The Front Man is the season’s big mystery because he shows up at the end of the vote to reveal that he is part of the game.

I completely forgot Gi-Hun never saw his face at the end of season 1.

My biggest disappointment with the games in Squid Game 2 was that there was only three of them and they were underwhelming compared to the original. Yes they repeat the red light, green light, which is a clever way of discrediting Gi-hun, and we get to feel Gi-hun’s frustration as his attempts to convince the crowd they’re about to die go ignored until it’s too late. Having the carnage devolve into a montage with Fly Me To The Moon playing overhead just kills the atmosphere.

Season 1’s games were great because they intentionally screwed with the players. Red Light, Green Light was for shock value. The honeycomb was for the down to the wire, will he make it tension. Tug of War forced the players to be the instrument of each other’s deaths for their own survival. The marbles game lured players in by having them team up only to find out they were competing against each other. That heartbreaking moment with the husband and wife eclipses a lot of this season. The glass bridge brought some stories to an end, and we had a great payoff before Squid Game itself. All tied together in a neat bow.

The three games feel like they are there because the showrunners knew they needed to have some games. Squid Game’s creator is exhausted by the show, and it’s very obvious in season 2.

The voting concept in season 2 starts out strong but quickly gets boring, like the show knows we’ve been there before and doesn’t feel like iterating but has to fill in the time with “tense” votes between every game. You know from the first vote that they are never going to vote to leave, and the badges clearly exist from day one to pricipitate the “we’re doing the nighttime fight thing again.” The only thing Gi-hun successfully predicts. The pentathlon felt so unfairly difficult, not to mention it too fell victim to the musical montage, that it broke all the tension. The same for the musical chairs in game 3.

What made the vote in Season 1 special was the fact that the audience wasn’t really expecting them to vote to go home. Everyone goes home at the end of the first game? What? How does the show happen now? We get a whole ass episode dedicated to the main characters after they’ve returned home, and we get an insight into how bad their lives are and why they ultimately voted to go back. Even the villains get humanized. But they knew people would come back of their own accord.

The characters here basically talk to the audience like “yeah you know that shit already, we’re staying here.” Thanos’ somber backstory is “I was sad and was thinking about killing myself before the game started.” The mother son duo are just a constant back and forth of the son disappointing the mother.

The fact that the show has so many distractions makes the lack of games even more annoying. We have effectively a four way split in the plot. Gi-hun now has to figure out a way to start the fight against the Front Man and his crew. The Front Man is literally walking around with Gi-hun and we want to know what his aim is. Has he turned sides or is he just screwing with Gi-hun and thus the audience. He was screwing with us. Maybe he got the idea from the old man in season 1 to join himself because it was more fun to play than to watch every year. Or maybe he was scouting to see what Gi-hun’s plans were.

And then you have Guard 011, who for some reason is screwing with the participants and sabotaging the illegal organ trade going on in the island. Yeah, that subplot is still going on. And there is the crew of military dudes out looking for the island. I’m sure we’ll get an explosive scene in season 3 where the military guys come to the rescue at just the right moment, but we’ll have to wait until June for that. Assuming there’s much enthusiasm left for the show then.

There’s a whole ass season left. I wonder if we’ll get more games in season 3. We better. There were still a lot of contestants not willing to join the resistance. The whole resistance arc in the finale was…fine. Maybe it’s just annoying because that’s where the show cut off for the next six months, but the whole thing grinding to a halt just felt disappointing.