The 'Squid Game: The Challenge' End Credits Montage Was Gross

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 8, 2023 |

By Dustin Rowles | TV | December 8, 2023 |

Spoilers

As I mentioned in my initial review, I only meant to watch an episode of Squid Game: The Challenge so I could knowledgeably dismiss it. I got sucked in because it’s an infinitely watchable reality series, and I am weak. In the end, however, the feeling of grossness that I had initially feared finally came to pass after Mai was awarded the $4.5 million prize. It was only compounded by the montage of previously eliminated players that came after.

Good reality television — Survivor, The Amazing Race, Traitors — provides viewers an opportunity to get to know the players, invest in them, and better appreciate the individual stakes. There were 456 players in Squid Game: The Challenge, which made it almost impossible to get to know anyone based on anything other than a few minutes of their gameplay, which almost always involved screwing over someone else. There were a shockingly high number of petty people willing to be shitty on camera to improve their already very small odds of winning a big pot of money in a game of random chance.

Ultimately, that’s what Squid Game: The Challenge boils down to: Games of chance. No one played better than anyone else; it was almost completely random, except when the odd player was eliminated by someone else for appearing to be a stronger player in terms of social or physical skills. But being a “stronger” player in games of chance is an oxymoron. The winner, for instance, claims that she was a superior rock, paper, scissors player, but that game of chance had a second random game built into it — there were around 35 keys, only one of which fit the lock that would release the prize. The winner of each round of rock, paper, scissors got to select a key until one of the players lucked into the winning key. It was totally random!

It’s hard to invest in players, all of whom will probably be randomly eliminated because they picked the wrong line, sat in the wrong seat, or chose the incorrect random shape. The editing attempted to work around this problem by providing the illusion of familiarity by spending a few more seconds in confessionals with certain players before they were eliminated. The pattern became so predictable that as soon as we saw a player deliver a confessional — some of which were probably taped before the game even started — I knew the player would likely be eliminated. Alas, it didn’t matter: We never really knew them, so we forgot about them almost the second they were gone, as the camera turned to a new set of players who would soon be eliminated.

That’s what made the montage at the end feel all the more gross. Four hundred and fifty-five people were eliminated over the course of 10 episodes. We barely got to know anyone, but the two-minute montage at the end attempted to trick our minds into thinking otherwise. It’s like those blooper reels at the end of bad comedies; the movie may be terrible, but you leave the theater laughing because Ben Stiller fucked up his line and Jennifer Aniston laughed at him. At the end of Squid game: The Challenge, they spent 120 seconds giving us the illusion that a few of the more memorable players are A-OK because they were doing push-ups in the gym, playing ping-pong in the living room, shooting hoops with their students, feeding their dog, or riding their mo-ped to work. There is even a three-second scene of one player I do not remember pulling cookies out of his oven and taking a bite.

Squid Games: The Challenge is a cutthroat game of chance; don’t try to sell us on a feel-good illusion set to a Nat King Cole song. At least lean into the dystopian nightmare the game itself represents. The show spent nine hours trying to convince us that these players were desperate to win multiple millions of dollars to better their sad miserable lives only to reveal, in the end, that they are all just fine, scuba diving, eating cookies, and drinking coffee while staring off into the sky. It’s Netflix bullshit, the show’s refusal to let viewers stew in the toxicity of this series. “Look: Everyone is OK! Sure, they tried to fuck each other over for money, but look at them now, kissing their kids in the kitchens of the Florida cul de sac home. None of it was real!”

As the saying goes, “Don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.” Squid Game: The Challenge is a toxic game, where players are herded like cattle and edited by an algorithm desperate to make us believe that the winner “deserved” to win and everyone else has to console themselves with their Instagram-perfect lives. I won’t be tricked into watching the second season.