1x09 One Lucky Day

[8.0/10] I admire finales that are as much about the aftermath as they are the climax. Gi-hun wins the competition. He battles Sang-woo in the titular Squid Game. He holds onto his soul, or some of it, anyway. He wins the money and walks out the last man standing.

All of this is sufficiently operatic. On a pure visual level, the scrapping, gutting, muddy battle between Gi-hun and Sang-woo is the right mix of gorgeous and ugly. It reminds me of a particular fight from Deadwood, with the way it doesn’t gussy up real life combat. These are not graceful warriors trading blows in noble sport. These are desperate men run roughshod through the wringer, filled with hate and a need to survive, unleashing their basest instincts in gruesome exchange after gruesome exchange.

The rain falls. The ground shudders. The slow motion balletics and close ups on hands, feet, and faces add artistry to this horrible culmination of all they’ve been through. At its core, though, this is a bout of brutal violence enacted by one man against another. Squid Game depicts it with the same gripping visual acumen that’s defined the series from the first game, but it doesn’t pretend this is anything other than what it is: a grim, awful brawl between two sad individuals driven to this state.

In keeping with the operatic tone, there are grand choices made. Gi-hun resorts to dirty play, bitten ankles, and pierced flesh as a last line of defense. Sang-woo finds creative means to gain the upper hand and monologues about what was required and who’s sick in all this. Despite the temptation to turn to the darkside and become the monster this game demand, Gi-hun relents, tries to give up, tries to choose their ability to walk away over all that money. And Sang-woo gets a measure of redemption, killing himself so that this is all for not, with the hope that Gi-hun may look after his mother now that this is over.

The ending to the game is satisfying, poetic, and climactic, with enough twists and character moments to make it more than the telegraphed ending of a victory for the show’s main character. And yet, this final episode commendably spends more time on the aftermath, on what winning this game did to Gi-hun, as it does on the outsized morality play of his victory.

The answer is that Gi-hun is a broken man. In victory, he still demands to know who these people are, why they did this to 456 men and women, how they can live with themselves after so much pain and suffering enacted in their name. Gi-hun has been devastated, leaving him too riddled with survivor’s guilt to touch the fortune he amassed in such harsh circumstances. And his poor mother died in his absence, adding a particularly bitter irony to the proceedings, that the woman he wanted to help, whose desperate needs sent him back to the game in the first place, perished anyway.

Squid Game rubs the audience’s noses in that. As much as it wants to critique the masked VIPs who look upon these mortal sports with glee, it doesn’t let the audience get away with just appreciating the thrills the games provide. The finale forces us to reckon as Gi-hun does, with less of the pulpy excitement and more of the mournful meditations on what was lost in this harsh endeavor. Giving Lee Jung-jae the space to emote, the quiet tone and leisurely pacing that allows Gi-hun’s deep regrets and shattered psyche to blossom before our eyes, comes as the earned, meaningful receipt for so many harrowing events for their and our amusement.

“One Lucky Day” also has the conviction to ask why. Why would someone do this? How could they live with themselves? How could someone who survived it live with themselves? The answer offered is that for the very rich, life loses its luster. As none other than Lisa Simpson (via John Swartzwelder) once opined, getting what you want all the time ultimately leaves you unfulfilled and joyless. The game is a craven opportunity to regain some excitement for the wealthy, to watch the peons dance and die for their entertainment, to regain some shred of feeling from the wealth that so anesthetized themselves to the world, and to the humanity of their fellow men and women.

That is especially true for Il-nam, Number 1, the Willy Wonka behind so much mayhem. He ran the game, but also participated in it, because he too lamented how his wealthy isolated him from his fellow man, robbed him of the camaraderie that he used to experience in his humble origins, left him yearning for the joys of his youth. Therein lies the irony of the game, as an elaborate mock-up of childhood, once which pulls from the poverty Il-nam once knew, with the prize of the untold wealth that is itself the source of the pathology the game’s creator is trying to cure himself of, if only for a spell.

But though it’s never signposted as heavily as Il-nam’s dying monologue, it’s also a referendum on humanity. Yes, the asshole VIPs are simply betting on humans like they’d bet on horses, seemingly deriving little pleasure from the climax. Still, Il-nam seems to have a point in mind, that too often people go unhelped, that they turn on one another, that they ignore the problems of others in pursuit of their own selfishness. His final wager with Gi-hun serves to highlight the point, with the implication that he’s not forcing such cruelty on people, just revealing what was already there in a heightened setting.

And yet, Gi-hun is a walking bulwark against that idea. He won’t touch the money because he cannot stand the bloodstains it bears. He makes good on the requests of his fellow finalists, uniting Sang-woo’s mother and Sae-byoek’s brother with enough of a fortune to keep both of them comfortable. He strives to stop some other poor sap from befalling the same fate he did, from being sucked into this torture in desperation like he was, because he knows that whatever the prize, the cost isn’t worth it. And he even seems to put off his trip to visit his daughter in order to help bring the game down, a resolution to help people even when you have every reason to leave well enough alone.

There is power in that choice, and in Gi-hun’s rejection of the dog-eat-dog principles that his “gganbu” seemed to espouse. There is power in his efforts to help his friends and allies even when death was on the line, and to spare the supposed friend who’d betrayed him. There is power in devoting most of your nearly hour-long runtime to reflecting on what this all meant, how it impacted those who went through this unimaginable wringer, and what this larger-than-life metaphor really means, rather than simply providing more fireworks.

In that, Squid Game has my admiration, as a show that devolves into pulpy thrills and thrilling set pieces at times, but never stops using them as a means to gaze into the soul of man and weigh whether he is good or evil or something in between. It’s a series unafraid to ask what money makes us do, from those desperate enough to risk everything to spare themselves and their loved ones from their debts, to those insulated enough that they can no longer feel and no longer empathize with their fellow man. As inhumane as the games were, as brutal as the deaths we witnessed on an episode-to-episode basis were, this is a humane, humanistic story, about who we become when forced into brutal circumstance, and who we remain when we remember what’s worth holding onto despite everything.

Him suddenly my wanting to end the game right then is the biggest bullshit.
All of those people died for nothing. Or are their families getting the prize money?
Sang-woo was too desperate to giving up on the money anyway.
I felt like him being like “oh hey I’ll be a hero let’s just end the game” was such an insult to everyone’s toils and struggled up to then. Glad “218” chose to do the one valiant thing he did all game.

I should not be surprised to see him go back to being his useless scumbag self after the games, but seriously. You made a promise (well, not really, he almost made a promise) and had very big plans of what to do with the money, among other BE A FATHER TO YOUR KID, but no, zero character progression, reverted right back. I’m livid lol. He never deserved to win.

But then… the old guy. I had not seen that coming. And then suddenly all these theories at once in my head… he’s the very first winner. He’s the host. He’s always been in the games and won them all, or just inserted himself and as he got older, people started ignoring him… except for Gi-Hun.

Who proceeds to be pathetic and choose his selfishness over his family :upside_down: I’m so done.