It's early in the morning, so that may be the issue, but for the life of me I can't figure what this sentence means.

He's saying that popularity is not an indicator of quality.

The Long Walk is one of my favorites also. When this show reminded me of it I went to look and see if it had ever been made into a movie that I missed somehow. Nope, but it's coming soon. Maybe.

https://www.regmovies.com/static/en/...Moving-Forward

Finished it last night. Like others...my god the VIPs were idiotic.

Did anyone think the ending was done to provide an easy launching of S2 (Maybe this has been discussed; I haven't read much about it)?

Just finished it and give it a 9/10. Almost everything about it was done really well.

Also had the initial impression that the VIPs weren't casted all that great but then I tried to imagine what sort of person might actually be attracted to watching and gambling on such a contest. Mostly picturing spoiled trust fund types here that never had to work for anything a day in their lives and also never really grew up emotionally or mentally to a normal level in society. The way those VIP's acted sort of fits that bill.

Finally finished this. Thought it started really strong, but ended weak.

If it was just the main storyline and they’d fleshed it out a little more, maybe fill the time with another game or two, I’d give it a 9/10. The production and main character actors were really good, especially the main guy. Only quibble is why he lost it so bad on the friend for the bridge push. The main guy was willing to take advantage of the old guys dementia to win, knew the smart guy ruthlessly tricked the Pakistani dude, and suspected that he was willing to let him die early on the candy thing for pretty much no reason, but then decided pushing the last guy was too much? I guess seeing it right in front of him makes it worse.

On the other hand, the police officer side story was pretty bad. It didn’t make any sense that he went so long without getting caught, and it ultimately didn’t add anything to the story at all. I think they did it to show “behind the scenes” stuff from a character perspective, but don’t think they really needed to do that. It would have worked just as well without a narrator type, and they just randomly cut to the workers doing stuff every once in awhile.

VIPs we’re terrible and over the top, but kinda felt like it was intentionally so.

Ending after the game was lame and get like they didn’t have a good way to wrap it up. Also I don’t see how they can possibly do a season two for this, so why bother with that to end?

Overall, solid 7.

good point on the police officer side story. read an interesting article somewhere today after binging the last 5 episodes this morning with the three biggest issues for that author were in this order from 1st to worst:

my favorite twist was the red hair

laughed out loud

The "fairness" was being fair to the bettors not the contestants.

Agree strongly with the bolded, although I had an additional quibble with the main character where I didn't love how much how soon his personality shifted to having a heart of gold. You summed up my thoughts about the cop subplot perfectly.

yeah his character arc was total bs.

he was a total degen, always asking everyone for money, and looking out for number one. then all of a sudden with no explanation he was practically a saint

He killed his mom

interviews with the VIPs

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...quid-game-vips

I'm giving it a solid 2.5/5. Well-acted trashy entertainment for teens who haven't seen Battle Royale or read The Long Walk and thought Hunger Games was the deepest **** since Twilight. The whole thing is so full of plot holes and twists that make no sense whatsoever that it's hard to take it seriously. I'm not sure the creators do either, since the VIPs entered I was pretty sure I was watching a satire.

The return of the old guy made no sense whatsoever either. "I had too much money so I wanted to play some games with" ok cool.

Some extremely stupid gambling decisions were made too, made me want to tear my hair off. In the marble games where you guess odd/even the supposedly smart guy had 3 marbles left and he wagered 2 of them when he was the guesser. So if he loses he has 1 left and the other guy can guess whether it's odd/even trololol. You'd think if you go to SEOUL COLLEGE you would be smart enough to go with either 1 or 3 there.

Also doesn't the old guy meet up with the main outside a random noodle shop drinking soju after they come back from from the red light/green light. It doesn't feel like a place an elite would be hanging out very often. I'm not going to watch it again but it felt like they wrote the last few episodes on the fly and just wanted to add some extreme shocking twists:

1) Front Man is the cop's missing brother
2) old guy is an elite

Maybe I'm wrong and it was planned all along but would have been better if the cop's brother was actually a victim in the games and then to somehow have the cop avenge his brother's senseless death and also more meaningful to just have the old guy also be a victim. Those extreme unexpected twists really weren't needed in this series.

As I've had more time to digest what I watched and since binging 'Alice in Borderland' as well I'm going to also lower my rating of Squid Game. The music, acting, and sets were amazing in Squid Game and it felt higher budget than 'Alice and Borderland' but overall I'm more excited for what a 2nd season of AandB will bring compared to what will be offered up in Squid Game.

front man being the cop's missing brother isn't an extreme shocking twist. i was very confident from around episode 3 that that was the case, and i never actively try to predict anything and am constantly surprised by obvious stuff that everyone saw coming but me.

Ya, I must be off then although I did watch the first two or three episodes over about a week span, then took maybe a whole month off, before finally binging the remaining ones over one sitting.

Vaguely remember the cop brother visiting his what I thought at the time little brother's(like university age in my eyes and maybe even from the subtitle's context) apartment and having it look like his brother was struggling to make ends meet.

Definitely was picturing someone hard up for money and desperate and thinking he was one of the ones that had ended up dying in the red light/green light game.

I was watching it with my gf and we spent like 5 episodes going "it would be the stupidest thing ever if the Darth Vader guy was the missing brother, surely it can't be that silly". By the time the so-called shock revelation became close it would actually have been shocking if it somehow wasn't the missing brother.

No for S2 for me, would rather watch Takeshi's Castle/Most Extreme Elimination Challenge.

All those dudes are from Infernal Affairs btw (the actors).

If you liked the movie the Departed, they just redid Infernal Affairs (which does the Departed story over 3 epic movies). If you liked Squid Games I recommend this even more.

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0338564/

It's wild how little these guys age, that's almost 20 years old.

Supposedly Season 2 is green lit, and apparently there will be an actual Squid Game televised competition with 456 contestants competing for a winner take all prize of $4.56M.

Squid Game game show - $4.56 million in prizes

So "Fall Guys" with real people that "do not" die. I feel like many game shows have done similar to this in the past. Maybe this version will hold more true to the TV show but for second there I thought humanity might be moving in a very different and controversial direction.

Take all the wannabe reality tv stars and influencers that will want to be on this, and I don't think it'd be a huge loss to humanity to go full Squid Games on them...

who's gonna rep 2p2?

https://www.squidgamecasting.com/