Recapping this episode of Squid Game is a daunting prospect. Not because it’s complicated — on the contrary, it’s a simple as these things get. The players play a game, the survivors take a vote and then a break, they bond with each other, they start a new game, there are brief detours for the No-eul and Jun-ho side plots, the end.
No, the problem stems from how much of the energy of Squid Game is lost if you summarize it. I mean, the show really is as simple as it sounds above. The characters sound equally sketched out when you break them down in text form: the kindly old woman, the genial jarhead, the arrogant celebrity, the gentle trans woman, the surprisingly human villain, and so on. I found all their interactions compelling, but if I were to sum up their conversations without the benefit of the performances conveying them, they’d seem gossamer thin.
I reviewed the fifth episode of Squid Game‘s second season for Decider.
Tags: decider, horror, squid game, TV, TV reviews