No series has ever missed the point as hard as Squid Game: The Challenge.
Netflix’s new reality show goes to painstaking lengths to recreate the deadly contests at the center of Squid Game, the streaming service’s most-watched title ever. Yet for all its attempts to mimic the original’s distinctive aesthetic and larger-than-life stakes, Squid Game: The Challenge fails to capture the essence of why Squid Game resonated with so many viewers. And that failure begins with the very existence of the show in the first place.
That Squid Game: The Challenge even exists is grotesque.
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
At its core, Squid Game was always a critique of capitalism and deep-seated economic inequality. Bored billionaires orchestrate the games for their own enjoyment, getting pleasure out of watching indebted workers kill each other for money. As the show repeatedly emphasizes, these games are the grimmest, most despicable form of entertainment, a circus of human suffering.
So naturally, Netflix decided to make them a reality.
Squid Game: The Challenge reeks of out-of-touch boardroom decisions. Imagine watching a series built on the idea that these death games are bad and shouldn’t exist and thinking, “Hey, those death games seem like they could make us a lot of money.” It would be like Lionsgate greenlighting a Hunger Games reality show.
But perhaps Netflix is aware of just how ill-conceived Squid Game: The Challenge is. Perhaps that’s the point of its entire existence. Perhaps they’re banking on the fact that people will hate-watch this series just to see how bad and out of touch it could really be. Because every choice on display here, from the game design to the trappings of reality TV, feels engineered to make the most infuriating, lazy, and grotesque series out there.
Squid Game: The Challenge is reality TV at its worst.
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Squid Game: The Challenge seems to pride itself on its own fidelity to the source material. Look, we’ve got 456 contestants! Look, our prize money is $4.56 million! Look, we’ve rebuilt the game sets just like in the show!
Of course, there’s one thing the series can’t recreate: the death factor. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t try. When players are eliminated, a squib explodes on their jumpsuit, splattering them with inky black “blood.” Some players try to have fun with this, delivering melodramatic death slouches. Others simply stare down in defeat. Is the squib mechanic in Squid Game: The Challenge making light of its own stakes? Is it meant to be goofy, dramatic, or some bizarre combination of the two? The apparent intent changes from moment to moment as the edit becomes increasingly frazzled.
With 456 contestants on the board, the trickery of American reality TV editing has never been more apparent. If someone gets a talking head confessional, you know they’re either about to become really important or lose in a big way. It’s almost as tedious as the games themselves, which stretch on and on into oblivion. Do we really need to watch four separate rounds of the dalgona candy game in a row? Or four rounds of the show’s take on Battleship? The answer is a resounding no.
To further create the illusion of player “death,” Squid Game: The Challenge forgoes the reality TV tradition of the exit interview entirely. The choice robs us of any catharsis or closure on the few storylines the show bothers to set up, adding further frustration to an already excruciating viewing experience.
The contestants, too, are not particularly interesting, although that’s less their fault than the fault of the edit. Here, as in most reality TV, players are flattened into the roles of hero, villain, or victim, with no time spent fleshing out distinct characters. They are not people, but archetypes — a matter made all the more horrifying when you realize that the fictional characters of Squid Game have more dimension than the real-life contestants of Squid Game: The Challenge. Heck, Squid Game fought against its players being reduced to numbers, whereas Squid Game: The Challenge seems to actively encourage it! Yes, we see players’ names pop up in their confessionals, but for the most part, people refer to each other by numbers alone. What’s a more dehumanizing experience, being part of a sinister death tournament, or signing onto a reality TV show?
Credit: Courtesy of Netflix
Squid Game also gave its characters depth by fleshing out the hardships they faced in the outside world. But Squid Game: The Challenge only dances around these hardships, with vague platitudes from players about how the money would change their lives. There’s no interrogation of the systems in place that make them need this money so badly, no anger or edge to any of the show’s paper-thin commentary.
There are times when some contestants begin to show just a shred of self-awareness at just how horrible a project they’ve signed onto. Early in the show, they cheer upon entering the first game room and the dormitories, as if they’re in a theme park (or have never seen the original show). They cheer further when money — representing the “lives” of eliminated contestants — begins to fill the giant piggy bank hanging over their heads. When they’re sent to perform menial tasks, like peel potatoes or clean bathrooms, they jokingly scream “exploitation!” Yeah, basically! However, those gleeful cheers dwindle with each game. At one point, a distraught player asks, “Why are you making us do this?” (I don’t know, man, why did you audition for a remake of Squid Game?)
Perhaps unwittingly, Squid Game: The Challenge turns that question on the viewer. Why are you watching people LARP a cruel death match for money? Why are you taking on the role of Squid Game‘s billionaires?
The simplest answer to those questions? Just don’t tune in in the first place. Squid Game: The Challenge is as cruel as it is cynical, a bloated exercise in bad spin-off ideas. You may feel some sick sense of curiosity to see how Netflix pulls off a real-life Squid Game, but trust me when I say there is no reward to playing into their game. Sometimes, the best way to hate-watch is to not watch at all.