Squid Game -Episode 1 | Right Light, Green Light

Ladies and Gentle, it’s about time I made this review for a series that has taken the whole world by storm. Netflix’s Korean series, Squid Game. Right off the bat, we are shown how children play the game itself called Squid Game, the rules, and the skills it takes to win.

We then meet the protagonist of the story, Seong Gi-Hun who is a man in his early forties living with his elderly mother who is the breadwinner in the family. While Gi-Hun is eating his breakfast, his mother gives him twenty thousand won, equivalent to more or less two hundred and fifty-three rands in South Africa and he randomly makes a joke, asking if this is his allowance? To which sadly it isn’t.

His mother had given him money reminding him that today is his daughter’s birthday, he needs to get her something nice as a present and get her something she loves to eat which is fried chicken. So from the get-go, we understand that Gi-Hun is a deadbeat father who can’t even remember his own daughter’s birthday and still living with his mother at over forty years old.

He asks her for a little more money now than he remembers he has more things to do and she gives him another twenty thousand won, so now Gi-Hun has five hundred and two rands but as soon as his mother leaves him he starts searching for her bank card and immediately leaves the house as well to go and withdraw a few more won to spend but unbeknownst to him, his mother has changed the pin to the bank card and Gi-Hun struggles to figure out the new password until it warns him that one more incorrect input and the card will be blocked. He decides to input his daughter’s birthday and it accepts.

He decides to go gambling with the money he received for his daughter’s birthday and loses a few times until finally with the last of his won he beats on the right horse and wins four million six hundred thousand won to which he screams at the top of his lungs praises that could be heard throughout the entire room. Now we also understand that he’s a compulsive gambler and with gamblers comes a huge debt.

After collecting his money he gives the teller lady ten thousand won as thanks and goes out of the gambling establishment with his head held up high, immediately calling his daughter and promising her anything she wants to today, but that is all short-lived as a couple of men he knows to call out his name and Gi-Hun starts running like his life depends on it. He dumps into Kang Sae-Byeok falling over and tries to assist her but is eventually caught at the toilets. 

The men are revealed to be money lenders that Gi-Hun has been owing for quite some time now, they threaten to make him bleed badly by sticking a needle down his nose if he doesn’t pay up leaving Gi-Hun with nothing left to do other than give them the money he had just won but to his and everyone’s surprise, the money is gone, with a cut in his blazer.

Gi-Hun remembers Sae-Byeok being the last person he ran into and concluding that she must have stolen the money which makes the lenders even more upset because they believe Gi-Hun is only making up excuses, so they give him an option, either pay the remaining money owed within 30days or they can take anybody organ from him until he had paid off his debt, to which Gi-Hun happily signs with blood running down his nose. 

After signing his rights away, Gi-Hun returns to the gambling facility and asks the same young lady he given money to if he can have it back, thankfully the young cashier remembers him and returns it to him, now with only ten thousand won Gi-Hun must make do with it for his daughter.

He takes his daughter out to a cozy stall and buys her something to eat and gives her a present that appears like a gun but is instead only a lighter looking like a real gun. She’s only happy to be with her father but is worried that his involvement in too many fights after seeing how badly swollen his face was, he promises her to get her something better and bigger next year but she pauses slightly when she hears the word next year, Gi-Hun realizes this but makes to further inquiry, she also doesn’t want to upset her father so she brushes the subject away and returns her to her mother carrying her on his back as she had fallen fast asleep.

Gi-Hun misses his train home and sits on one of the chairs at the train station whilst waiting for the next one when a random man in a suit carrying a briefcase sits next to him and tries to talk to him but Gi-Hun is feeling overwhelmed and tells the man that he’s not interested in anything he has to offer, he even threaten the man with the toy gun he had bought for his daughter.

The man opens up his briefcase and offers Gi-Hun to play a game, once he sees wants in the briefcase, being money stacked in thousands the man tells him, if you flip the card then you win a hundred thousand won but if you lose then he owes that man a hundred thousand won. Gi-Hun decides to play and loses the first round but the man changes his win from getting a hundred thousand won to slapping Gi-Hun in the face, this continues and Gi-Hun is getting the complexion of skin slapped right off at the many times he’s lost to the point that even the train comes and goes without a win.

Finally, Gi-Hun wins and has forgotten what he wanted tries to slap the man but the man in the suit stops him and gives the cash instead, one hundred thousand just like that, it only motives Gi-Hun to continue playing until he is satisfied with the money he has.

Before leaving the man offers Gi-Hun another opportunity, saying that he could win a lot more than that if he’s interested to which Gi-Hun happy with his current money on hand declines the man offer but the man in the suit stands up and tells him everything h knows about him, that he early today chose to sell his organs away, that he is in so much debt and gives him a brown card with a number on the back, he tells Gi-Hun that there aren’t many spots left so please make your decision fast and leaves. 

On his way home Gi-Hun buys a few things to eat from his childhood friend’s mother for himself and his mother. Once home she asks him about the day and if he had bought his daughter fried chicken, he doesn’t confirm getting her that but agrees to get her something. she also asks him if anything came up during the talk with his daughter and he says no. 

That’s when she drops a bomb on him by revealing to him that his daughter is moving away to America in a few weeks and that if Gi-Hun wants to fight for her to stay, he will need to prove that her stepfather can afford to take care of her that side but he will need money to fight this case. With all his problems bothering him that night, he chooses to call the number from the card the man in the suit had given him, and that night is asked to wait at a certain location for pick up.

As he waits an unknown silver vehicle arrives and confirms his name and password, once accepted he may get in the vehicle and is surprised to see other people as well. The door closes and sleeping gas is released inside the car to put everyone to sleep and next thing he wakes up, he’s in a facility wearing a green tracksuit with the number 456.

Gi-Hun notices that everyone is wearing the same green tracksuit with different numbers on them from 1 to 456 meaning there are 456 players, he also notices the girl (Sae-Byeok) he ran into at the gambling facility amongst them and confronts her, telling her to give him back the money she stole from him but are interrupted by a group of men wearing red tracksuits with masks on their faces.

These are the men who play both administration and security in the facility, they welcome everyone and tell him that either of them has been kidnapped but are all here for the same reasons, to play the games. There will be 6 games in total, and only the square figure mask is allowed to talk while the other keep watch and do what they are told by the square figure.

Once everyone settled the paperwork needed to be read and signed before the games could begin. “Rule 1, A player is not allowed to stop playing once the game has begun, Rule 2, A player that refused to play will be eliminated, Rule 3, Games may be terminated if the majority agrees.” With this everyone had signed and the first of game 1 was about to begin.

The layers are then taken through a hall maze of many doors and stairs with their pictures of the player being taken as they approach the doors of the first game. Once everyone was on the field and the doors closed behind them they were given the rules f the first game being “Red Light, Green Light”. A player is supposed to walk forward during the green light and stand still at the red light but unfortunately, some people didn’t take this seriously as they thought nothing much of this child’s game.

As soon as the first player is eliminated the players went into a panic frenzy and start running towards the door not adhering to the rules they had signed, nor the rules of the game. Players who are eliminated are killed and things move along, our main character though is unable to move and figure out what to do with people dying everywhere around him but is given the advice to move forward by his childhood friend Sang-Woo is also at the facility and is saved at the last moment by Abdul Ali who risked his own life to save Gi-Hun from falling and getting shoot for moving at the red light.

The amount of strength it must take to hold a person at that position without making any slight movement is almost inhuman and I wasn’t the only one to notice that. With the last players crossing the finish line and the remaining shot to death where they stand, the players see birds above them and notice they are not in their country anymore but are on a completely different island.

WHAT A START TO A SERIES…

All this must leave you with questions on how did they get there, where are they and who is behind all of this. Good thing for you, I will be reviewing this once a week to stay tuned for more Squid Game reviews per episode.

Thank you for reading…