What's next, Squid Game: The Musical? Squid Game: The Breakfast Cereal?

With the exception of cooking competitions, I've never been much of a "reality" TV viewer. But because my daughter, who is very much into everything Korean or Korean-adjacent, is home for Thanksgiving, we watched season 2 of Squid Game: The Challenge, in which contestants, most if not all from the USA and other English-speaking countries, compete for $4.5 million.

If you haven't seen Squid Game, the K-drama series that spawned the game show, it is an allegory explicitly about the evils of capitalism and how folks struggling to survive exist only to serve and amuse the obscenely wealthy. Players enter the game because they have no other choice to get out from under crushing debt, pay for needed medical care, or provide for their children and elderly parents. Losers are summarily executed by masked soldiers, and their dependents get nothing. The ultimate lesson, beyond "capitalism is bad, m'kay?", especially in the 2nd/3rd season, is that the only way to "win" is to take care of one another.

There are a number of shows and movies that depict the competitions of the sort seen in Squid Game as a dystopian aspect of an authoritarian state. In none of "The Hunger Games", "The Running Man", "Alice in Borderland", and "Series 7: The Contenders" is a winner-take-all death match portrayed as a positive thing for society.

But because we live in Orwellian times where those with any positions of power are required to live by doublespeak, that lesson is subverted in this "reality" show for the viewer's entertainment. Only the last player remaining gets the money, and they are each expected to do what "they have to do" to win the prize including lying, backstabbing, and making (mostly poor) guesses about the character and abilities of other players. All others are eliminated along the way with black ink squibs meant to simulate the kill shots of the original.

Why did the producers feel the need to do this, by the way? The deaths in the original show are meant to be shocking and horrific. Is simulating death on the game show instead of giving the contestants an opportunity to show a little grace supposed to please the viewer? Do the producers think we're ghouls? Or are they trying to teach us a subtle lesson? Ha ha ha, no, of course not.

I say this because the game show makes a point of highlighting the contestants who are there out of self-proclaimed financial need and who want to win so they are better able to care for their families, including one woman whose child suffers from an incurable lung ailment. The narratives of reality-tv are created by the editors sifting through many hours of contestant audio and video captured by omnipresent cameras and microphones. We viewers only see, hear and feel what the producers want us to see hear, and feel. It's intentional that we feel sympathy for a number of contestants in need, just as we are meant to feel antipathy for the player who lies about having a girlfriend with a baby on the way or the player who was already a secret millionaire while claiming need. We are trained to care about the "truly" needy contestants (in fact we don't know any of the contestants true financial situations) but still accept their elimination and "death" as all part of the game. The opposite lesson of the original show.

The one exception to this comes late in the series when one contestant, moved by some of his opponents' stories, chooses to stop playing, sacrifice himself for the benefit of the others. It's a remarkable and unexpected bit of television, and the rare time that I could empathize with a contestant and highlighted what I would like to see in shows like this.

Much is made on reality game shows of contestants forming alliances that all eventually have to fail or be broken so one person can emerge victorious. In season 1 of Squid Game: The Challenge, it was reported that contestants were forbidden to make alliances in which they promised to share the winnings with another contestant. I don't know if this was also the case for season 2, but I suspect it is because, otherwise, why wouldn't the alliances of moms or dads with kids do that?

What if players were allowed, encouraged even, to form real alliances in which if any one member wins, all get an equal share of the winnings? What if instead of the inevitable betrayals we got to witness more mutual support and sacrifice to a common goal? I don't believe for a second that the producers of this show couldn't still create a compelling competition. Maybe it wouldn't be true to the "reality" of Squid Game, but I think it would be closer to its spirit.