Intro for December 17, 2024

Dear Gossips,   

It’s eight days until Christmas and this year, on Christmas Day proper, Netflix is giving us what some might consider the most inappropriate – or perhaps appropriate – Christmas gift of all: greed. 

Or, rather, a series about greed that also happens to be the sequel to the most-watched show of all time on the platform – Squid Game season two, of course. I’ve been wondering for months whether or not they’d be putting resources into marketing the next installment and, indeed, showrunner Hwang Dong-hyuk has been joined by lead actor Lee Jung-jae and Front Man Lee Byung-hun on an international press tour, the latest stop was in New York last night. Even though no one asked, yes, I am disappointed not to see Gong Yoo, aka the Slapping Recruiter, alongside them. 

In the first season of Squid Game, you’ll recall, contestants were given a choice, after the first game, if they wanted to continue for the prize money or pack it all up and go home. Remember, they’d just been through Red Light, Green light – a f-cking massacre – and there were a lot of people who wanted to keep going, despite the fact that they’d just seen so many people around them gunned down by that insane giant doll. 

In the second season of Squid Game, the rule changes. There’s a vote after every single game (this is not a spoiler, it’s in the trailer) and if the majority decides that they’re done with all the dying, they can all share the pot and bounce. You’re still walking away with something, just not ALL the things. But, you know, also your f-cking LIFE. 

Season two explores the votes, not just the impact of them but the why of them. And then, of course, what that says about us, about humanity, when the votes don’t go the way we are taught they are supposed to go in fairy tales and elementary school. In a new interview with the LA Times, Hwang Dong-hyuk says that: 

“In Season 2, I look to fully leverage the voting system. There are many issues regarding presidential elections, in Korea and the United States and across the world. [Factions] try to dominate through the rule of majority. And in Season 2 and Season 3 throughout, I tried to cast this question of, ‘What is the meaning of this voting system and this rule of the majority? Is the rule of the majority always correct?’ Looking at the political and social landscape across the globe, I thought that casting this question at this time would be very meaningful. Across the globe, economic and political polarization and extremism are rampant these days. So that was something that I wanted to deal with.”

What’s missing, to me, in this answer is the question of desperation. The people who are invited to play Squid Game are desperate, they have found themselves or have put themselves in the most hopeless situations. Their “excuse”, if you can even call it that, is that they have no choice, that their circumstances have pushed them to the brink of humanity. But there are those who would make the same decision, outside of the game, who do have choices and make them every single day. So what’s their excuse? 

Maybe not the happiest thought as we get closer to the holidays. Let me try to keep my sh-t lighter for the rest of the day. 

Yours in gossip, 

Lainey