1x07 VIPS

[7.4/10] The tricky thing about Squid Game, and all foreign language movies and shows, is that it’s harder to judge the acting. I’ll admit that there’s times when certain characters’ reactions or deliveries seem over the top to me, but when you only comprehend the dialogue via subtitles, it’s harder to judge things like intonation, inflection, and the cultural context behind certain approaches. The non-verbal acting -- expressions, tone, and body language -- still come through loud and clear. But you tend to take spoken words at face value since they’re a little less accessible to a viewer who doesn’t speak the same language.

Which is why it’s a little jarring when a bunch of english-speaking characters show up because their acting...isn’t very good. It’s not atrocious or anything, but falls short of the standards for a semi-prestige production like this one. So when hearing the famed VIPs talk in clunky rich asshole dialogue with stilted, overblown deliveries, it makes me wonder if that vibe extends to the Korean characters as well, and I’m just not discerning enough to detect it.

Nonetheless, I appreciate the general idea of “VIPS”. We see the apparent sponsors of this event for the first time, the ones who treat it as sport, as entertainment, as something to bet on and play favorites and treat as an idle form of amusement rather than a life or death scenario of their own making. There is inherent commentary in the fact that the benefactors here are mostly English-speaking Americans, treating these people from across the sea as disposable lemmings there to dance for their entertainment.

Nothing drives the point home more than when one of the players, the man forced to live at his wife’s expense after the marble game, chooses to hang himself rather than go on. He’d rather commit suicide than live with the blood on his hand, a sign of the cruelty this game imposes on those sucked into playing it. I don’t know if it’s the saddest moment in the game so far, but it’s the first time we see someone end things due to guilt rather than as some sort of noble sacrifice. And yet, all the VIPs can do is laugh and darn themselves for betting on the wrong contender since his number was 69. The disconnect between the humanity of the contestants and the cravenness of these rich assholes has never been more stark.

That said, I am pretty tired of the Hwang story. It’s gone from “This is a little implausible, but I appreciate getting a look into the behind-the-scenes of the game” to “It’s wildly unbelievable that he’s made it this gone, and he’s no longer giving us that much insight into what’s happening behind the curtain.” His ability to sneak around undetected, bluff his way through serving the big-wigs, and nut grab his way into getting a confession from the most lecherous of the VIPs is just too much. The cat and mouse game between him and the Front Man (whom I presume is actually his missing brother) has stretched things too far, and if the show was playing fair, it feels like Hwang would have been caught by now.

That said, the fifth game is an interesting one. Once again, Squid Game has impeccable visual style. For one thing, the gold-spangled masks of the VIPs, including the Host (whom I presume is Number 1), gives the whole thing a creepy, Eyes Wide Shut quality. The same goes for the decor in their viewing room, which has a gaudy, opulent aesthetic, replete with voluptuous bodies and an animal motif that helps convey the way in which they view these fellow human beings as little more than beasts there for their pleasure and entertainment.

The glass-tiled bridge over a death-defying plummet below has visual panache as well. I’ll admit, maybe it was just my television, but sometimes the glass squares were not always easy to make out along the path. Still, the sharp editing between the real life human player and the chess-like figures on the miniature version in the spectator room, the imagery of the slow motion plummets when someone picks the wrong tile, and the arcade-like lighting and patterns in the game room itself all grab the eye.

But I like the subtle theme of how the game preaches equality and fairness, but that it’s a canard, one that forces its players to agonize over the random and unknowable when their lives are at stake. There is no real skill to picking one of sixteen vests that determine the order in which they play the game, or choosing which glass tile is safe and which one spells certain doom. Say what you will about the other games and how arbitrary the outcomes could be, but there was at least some skill and judgment involved. Game 5 is basically random dice roll after random dice roll, with the wrong roll resulting in death. It is, in a way, the harshest game of them all, because there’s barely a game. Instead, it’s just a random number generator that kills you when it spits out the wrong digit.

Nothing demonstrates that more than when someone does use their knowledge and skill to get ahead. One of the players worked with glass and can discern tempered glass from the normal, breakable kind by looking at it. So what do the operators do? They turn off the lights, to make it baseless and random again, a form of “fairness” that results only in more cruelty.

And we do see more cruelty. The one clever element of the game is that the time limit and the order practically forces the players to turn on one another if they want to survive. Someone at the front is inclined to be cautious, or try to force other players ahead of them so as not to be the guinea pig, whereas players toward the back are compelled to encourage or even push those in front of them so they don’t lose by default. It exposes the same cravenness in many of the players here.

It’s striking how quickly one player is willing to push one another to gain the advantage and gain a hint over what the right step is. We again see how craven and self-interested the allegedly high-minded Sang-woo is when his life is on the line. We see Sae-Byeok showing kindness she doesn’t have to when she reminds Gi-hun which path is the correct one behind her. To the extent the game is designed the reveal the evil in the hearts of men, how quickly these miserable people will turn on one another when it suits them, it succeeds for all but a few of our players.

But the most interesting of these is the end of Deok-su and Mi-nyeo. I’ll admit, I was a little surprised to see Mi-nyeo alive. (And we did see a body for Ali this episode, which spoils that theory.) I love the way she goes out though. Deok-su, of course, is as mercenary in ever in trying to force others in ine to go ahead of him, lest he let the whole lot of them die, but he offers the most trenchant insight in the show, “There are no rules in hell.” There’s a sense in which someone as craven as him is at home in this environment, something that’s allowed him to make it this far.

And yet, I love the fact that what ultimately dooms him is his cruelty. He was awful enough to Mi-nyeo, so willing to use her without thought or remorse, that in the end, she’s willing to die so long as she takes him with her. The sequence of her toppling the two of them over, uniting their fates, as they plummet through the glass, arm in arm, in slow motion, is one of the most memorable in the series. A fitting end for the tumultuous “couple”, and as one of the ninnies in the VIP lounge accurately describes it, a poetic way for them to go out.

Overall, this isn’t my favorite episode in the show, particularly outside of the game itself. But it does drive home the inequity, hypocrisy, and outright cruelty that fuels the game, which makes me interested to see where it lands now that we’re down to only three remaining players and one remaining game.