Surprise! The 'Squid Game' reality show is morally despicable (and really boring)

No one asked for this. No one wanted this. And yet, here it is.

Netflix's latest questionable venture, "Squid Game: The Challenge" (streaming Nov. 22, 29 and Dec. 6, ★ out of four), is a 10-episode reality competition series based on "Squid Game," the streamer's most popular series of all time.

When you describe it with only those words, it doesn't sound too bad: What major media company wouldn't want to extend its most popular brand? But then you remember what the 2021 South Korean horror drama was about: 456 impoverished people forced to play lethal children's games for a potentially life-changing cash prize, all for the enjoyment of super-wealthy voyeurs.

So why not get 456 real people to do the same thing, but only pretend to die when they're eliminated, for a potential $4.56 million payout and the entertainment of millions of Netflix subscribers around the world?

Someone had the bright idea, and someone else gave it a green light, and once upon a time I decided I liked television enough to spend my professional life watching and reviewing it, so here we all are. After eight episodes of fake death, real tears and more green tracksuits than anyone could keep track of, I must beg you not to watch "Challenge." Don't hate-watch it. Don't watch it out of curiosity. Don't give validation to this exploitative, unentertaining drivel that showcases real human suffering more than anything remotely amusing.

"Challenge" fails in both of its ambitions: As an extension of the "Squid Game" franchise, and as a social reality-competition show a la "Big Brother." On the first front, it’s simple: Korean director Hwang Dong-hyuk’s record-breaking thriller was a searing social satire that commented on the ever-increasing wealth gap in his native South Korea and around the globe. It despised the very desires that fuel “Challenge”: Exploitation, corporate greed, injustice and senseless gorging of content.

If you were able to forget for a moment that “Challenge” is based on a horror series that denounces the very idea of capitalism, you still wouldn’t find anything remotely worthy. It is choked by its own ridiculous format: 456 contestants? Most viewers can’t keep all 22 on ABC’s “The Golden Bachelor” straight before Gerry began making cuts. Producers and editors struggle to create coherent narratives, find heroes and villains, or even anyone who hangs around long enough and does anything interesting enough to be worthy of screen time. Seemingly trying to mimic the part of "Squid" where contestants begin murdering each other (charming), "Challenge" allows special "tests" that let contestants eliminate or save each other. But just as one contestant gets to vote someone off, they can’t scratch an umbrella out of a piece of honeycomb candy and is gone. It’s so random and unplanned. 

And speaking of that honeycomb, and “Red Light, Green Light” and the rest of the children’s games the producers carbon copy from the fictional original: It turns out that when they aren’t scripted, they’re really boring. It is excruciating to watch grown adults crouch on the floor with candy and a needle, or throw marbles, or any of the other games we stopped playing in elementary school, for good reason. 

The original “Squid” manufactured its drama through story and character, choreographed outcomes and a sense of pace and timing. Its reality cousin can’t specify the winners, but the producers could at least make an effort to pick up the pace a little bit, try some better music and edit this nonsense with an eye for narrative. CBS’ “Survivor,” Fox’s “The Masked Singer,” and even Netflix’s own “Love is Blind” understand how important pace and editing are for good reality TV. 

Red light, or green light?:Comparing Netflix's 'Squid Game The Challenge' reality show to the OG: Dye, but no dying

"Challenge" offers its players small portions of bad food, hides the time of day and isolates them in one large facility (the design of which mimics the nightmarish pastels of the drama series, where the game's complex was created and run by an insane corporate villain). Coupled with the haphazard format, these disorienting conditions create an emotional powder keg. Relationships are formed quickly and with intensity, and broken with ferocity.

The contestants are even more strung out than players on usual reality TV, where it is common for producers to withhold food, water and communication − at least “Challenge” lays that type of unethical scheming bare. But the betrayals the game forces them to enact, and the elimination of players with fake black blood and playacting death, leads to severe, sometimes unhinged outbursts that are icky and intrusive to witness. These people are hurting in the artificial environment, and I can’t even remember their names, just the numbers emblazoned on their chests. 

Nobody ever thought "The Hunger Games" deserved a reality series, nor "Saw" nor "Game of Thrones," no matter how popular these titles became. “Squid Game” will come back with a second season eventually. There is more of this story to tell. 

But this was never the way.

'Squid Game' is horrifying:It's more horrifying that we are all fascinated by it