Netflix’s reality show Squid Game: The Challenge, based on their own smash series Squid Game, was never going to be a good idea. Of course, such a cynical and opportunistic attempt to capitalise on inventor Hwang Dong-hyuk’s insightful ingenuity was not surprising given that the streamer never compensated him adequately despite the value he provided for them. So why wouldn’t they cannibalise the satire on capitalism by stealing its visuals, musical cues, sets, and costumes while scoffing at all the subjects he had been exploring? Respect for his vision and what he was saying is about as important as the money they could make. When this reality show was first announced, it seemed destined to be a blot on an otherwise excellent broadcast. What no one could have foreseen is that Squid Game: The Challenge is more heartless and brutal than even its many detractors anticipated.
From the start, you get the impression that you’re watching a weird nightmare that would be humorous if it weren’t so terrible. While reality television is no stranger to preying on people’s vulnerabilities by dangling life-changing sums of money in front of them, it’s difficult to think of one that so completely evokes the impression that the form itself was a mistake and should be burned down. Contestants will freely discuss how they need money to maintain themselves or their families, which The Challenge will then use to raise stakes in an imitation of a parody whose original point was how awful something like this is. If someone made a show about a world where individuals have to beg for their lives on GoFundMe and are then pitted against each other, the experience of watching Squid Game: The Challenge would be similar. Remember that viral video of instructors desperately trying to raise funds for their children at a sporting event? The show Squid Game: The Challenge saw this and decided it could go lower.
Why Does ‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Exist?
Everything in Squid Game: The Challenge is handled with a consistently nasty approach over the span of eight episodes out of a ten-episode season shared with critics. Frequently, the contestants will grow agitated to the point of crying. Such scenes are depicted in close-ups that feel like a vulture circling above a dead animal. The only distinction is that the vulture is searching for its own existence, whereas the cruelty in this series is entirely human. At one point, a contestant becomes so agitated about the outcome of a game that he begins shaking violently and threatens to vomit. The series revels in this moment, twisting the knife further and deeper until you can’t take your eyes off him. It preys on your feelings of compassion and then exploits them. Squid Game: The Challenge is truly horrible to witness when you consider the economic problems that people are facing as they enter the game.
Although some caring individuals strive to look out for one another, they are fighting a hopeless struggle because the entire system is corrupt from top to bottom. The candidates do not deserve to be judged, because the entire point of the reality show that inspired the original series’ idea is that people would do desperate things when pushed to the limit. Because this is a reality programme, enemies are elevated to provide some type of conflict to keep things moving, but the series itself is the true enemy. Squid Game: The Challenge would resemble the corrupt forces of capitalism if they could be transformed into a shambling corpse of television. Everything goes on and on through different tasks that are in every way derivative of the original series while also doing a disservice to what Squid Game accomplished.
There are allegedly “new” games tossed in, but even these are copied from other sources, and after these complete, the show just returns to the unavoidable truth that it is taking advantage of the original inventors of the show, just as it is all the rivals. Squid Game: The Chllange feels like it would be too on-the-nose if it appeared in a dystopian film about how people are exploited for entertainment.
‘Squid Game: The Challenge’ Is Anti-Intellectual Drivel
The larger issue is that the original series was not just a good show in terms of storytelling, but it was also a successful satire. The Challenge is not for dummies, like the Squid Game, but for people who intentionally oppose any kind of deeper thinking. Although it raises some of the more difficult problems that lurk beneath its surface, this is essentially lip service with no real care or substance. All the gimmicks it slaps on the sidelines can’t disguise how ethically corrupt it is at its foundation. Squid Game: The Challenge will be remembered as the show that experienced the fires of hell and resolved to discover an even more craven low.
Squid Game: The Challenge will be available on Netflix in the United States on November 22.
