'Squid Game' Season 3, Episodes 4-6 Reactions
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This episode is brought to you by Diet Coke. You know that moment when you just need to hit pause and refresh? An ice-cold Diet Coke isn't just a break. It's your chance to catch your breath and savor a moment that's all about you. Always refreshing, still the same great taste. Diet Coke. Make time for you time. Greetings, and welcome to House of R, a Ringerverse podcast on the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Mallory Rubin. Joining me today...

To let me know that she'd rather drink with her footstool than with me, it's my favorite VIP, Joanna Robinson. Mallory Rubin, what a joy, what a delight to be with you here at the end of this week. We have some Squid Game to talk about. That's right. We've got some nerd news to talk about. There's a lot going on. Joanna. Mallory. Mallory.

Before we hit that, before we hit our exciting slate today of discussion topics, some quick programming reminders for everybody because we've got a lot coming when we return from the holiday weekend. Hot House of Our Summer continues and so does Hot Nolan Summer because next Thursday we will be continuing Hot Nolan Summer with our Inception Turns 15 pod. But we have another anniversary to hit before that on Tuesday. Yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. Back to the future. On Tuesday.

Back to the Future, perfect film. Timey-wimey? I can't wait. Yeah, so we're going to talk about Back to the Future. Once again, a perfect film of just a young mother wanting avidly to fuck her son. Like, what a great story. A story for all ages and a story for all time. It wouldn't be House of R if every few months we didn't hit an...

overt incest plot or something incest adjacent. That's just canon. Lorraine McFly walked so that Cersei Lannister could run. You know what I mean? So, okay. So true. So we've got that coming. And then also as part of it, we are going to do a little sort of mini best of the quarter century smuggle. We love a smuggle. We're going to do our sort of top timey-wimey moments of the quarter century. And if you're like, what

What the hell does timey-wimey mean? That means you did not listen to our Doctor Who rewatch, which is fine. But that is just like a Doctor Who-ism about time travel. So we can pick from any house of our friendly property of the last 25 years. A lot of people have been doing some time traveling. The Avengers did some time traveling. You know, Doctor Who is doing a lot of time traveling. Some Germans were doing some time traveling. So we're going to talk about...

We're each going to pick five moments. If you have a time travel moment from the quarter century that you think is worth highlighting, hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. We would love to hear from you. That's right. So yeah, that's the Tuesday plan. I'm excited. Next week's going to be really fun. It's going to be a blast. More fun than watching the back half of this quick video.

People might be wondering, is the Back to the Future anniversary that is the impetus for that pod in the quarter century? It's not. It doesn't matter. We're using it as time travel of our own, and that is a little meta aspect that we have decided to lean into and join us and have fun. Why don't you? Joanna, listen, that's not it for us next week. Oh, I know.

Little movie. Small... Flickaroo. Independent film. Yeah. Called Superman. Comes out next week. And obviously, it's the full court press here at The Ringer. So we will have our Superman deep dive coming next week.

Probably a touch earlier than usual because we're going to record a little earlier than we usually do and get that out hopefully over the weekend ahead of a off week for us, which we are all looking forward to. The Midnight Boys! Pew, pew, pew! Will of course have their instant reaction. Big Pic is covering Superman. Everybody's covering Superman. The Midnight Boys have some other special stuff coming as well.

It is time at long last for the fabled, rumored, hotly anticipated, delayed but not denied, Midnight Court, Superman vs. Fantastic Four. The guys will also be having a funeral for the Snyderverse. So it's just like a Superman bonanza with the Midnight Boys next week. Incredible stuff. Who would have guessed that...

Van Lathan, the person that I know who talks about Superman the most in this world. And that's a lot because you also talk about Superman a lot, Mallory Rubin. But Van slightly outpaces you on the I am obsessed with Superman front. So this does not surprise me, and I'm excited to hear what they have to say. Likewise. And if anyone is wondering, the guys already have waiting for you right now in your podcast feeds over on the Ringerverse and on the Ringerverse YouTube channel.

their reaction to the Ironheart finale. We will not spoil here on this podcast for people who would not be expecting Ironheart spoilers on a Squid Game podcast, what happened in the finale, but there's some fun Marvel stuff cooking on the interwebs, so check out that pod. The guys also talked about Jurassic World Rebirth.

So a film that they seem to have liked and most other people did not like. I have not seen it yet. I can't comment. I can't comment. Interesting to me. Will you be spending your holiday weekend with the dinosaurs? I'm going to check it out. Yeah. Van swears to me. It's great. And then everyone else I know and respect thinks it's bad. So I'm really intrigued to see what that means at the cinema. But yeah, I'm like Jurassic Park.

is a top tier film. I put this on my hype meter because Hope Springs Eternal. Yeah, I was like, this is my time to return. I really hated the last three movies and the Hope Springs Eternal that maybe they figured it out again. And, you know, Mahershala's here, Johnny Bailey's here, what's not to love? So, yeah. I've consumed an incredible amount of Instagram Reels content around the press tour.

Johnny Bailey and his slutty little glasses. The slutty little glasses are just crushing it, taking the world by storm. So no matter what, I feel like I've engaged with Jurassic World Rebirth, even though I have not yet seen this movie. How many times have you seen the clip of Johnny Bailey playing the clarinet on the score for Jurassic World Rebirth? A lot of that...

a lot of Instagram content about Scarlett Johansson and Johnny Bailey loving each other and, you know, running into each other's arms to passionately embrace, um, as co-stars, friends, and, and, uh, creative soulmates on the red carpet. It's been a lot of that. Uh,

There's a lot of this intensive ScarJo, Johnny Bailey, we're in love platonically energy. And then also two-time Oscar winner Mahershala Ali is sat right next to them. And a lot of these interviews is just sort of like, and also Mahershala Ali is here. And I'm like, Mahershala, I would like to talk to your agent. And I just wish you have two Oscars. The world should be your oyster. That's what I think. So, yeah.

I'll share my thoughts with you via text message if I see this film this weekend. No promises, though. Please do. No promises, though. Joanna? I mean, I think those chicken tenders aren't going to eat themselves. So, you know, who's going to keep the chicken tender economy afloat if not you? Well, here's what I can promise you. Whether or not I secure chicken tenders at an AMC in Los Angeles, I'll probably have chicken tenders this weekend at some point. That feels like a safe bet. What's your non-movie theater source for a chicken tendy? Oh.

Too many lists. I have all sorts of chicken tenders in my life. Well, depends on the mood, depends on the level of crunch, the type of seasoning I'm in the mood for, what other items at a given establishment I might be craving as well. I'm going to need your definitive chicken tender ranking because this is via the DoorDash offerings of Los Angeles.

Every now and then I'll go to a restaurant in person, but certainly, as you know, the on-demand food economy is a big part of how I secure my sustenance. So yeah, I can't quite be a chicken tender expert, I don't think, but I am an enthusiast. I think you can. I think you just rattling off several metrics for achieving perfect chicken tenderness is a...

Yeah. All right. Exactly. We'll look forward to our future chicken podcast. I'm always happy to talk about foodstuffs with you. We were recently talking about peaches and I thought to myself and then said to you, if only you would use those peaches, which look delicious, to make a wonderful warm fruit cobbler. And as always, we are like 93% bonded in mind, heart, and soul. And then there's a fork in the road and it's hot fruit. It's fruit. It's fruit in general, it seems to me. Yeah.

I ate those peaches. Were they wonderful? Raw and wriggling. Raw and wriggling. I ate those peaches fresh from the farmer's market stand and they were absolutely smash-ro delicious. So no need to cook them into sweet syrupy goo when you can just like take a fresh slice. That's what I'm saying. Why not both? Joanna, speaking of raw and wriggling, fresh and delicious, like you noted, we have some news to hit. Some news to hit. Uh,

We got a couple interesting headlines. Highs and lows. Highs and lows for us. Tell the bad babies what's cooking. For creators that we love here on House of R, right? So high point would be Deadline is reporting that our beloved Jack Schaefer, showrunner of Agatha Long and WandaVision, dare I say friend of the pod, Jack Schaefer, not really, but let's say it, is

Is in talks to helm the fourth wing adaptation that's going to go forward at Amazon. She has an overall deal with Amazon. And so like she's, she's going to be doing something for Amazon and why not fourth wing? Fourth wing had a,

previous showrunner. She has since departed, so they are in the market for a showrunner. You and I, like this happened while we were recording on Tuesday. This news broke. And when we stopped recording, I wish we had been like still recording when I broke the news to you because you lost your mind. I lost my mind. Here's the deal. We've talked about Fourth Wing on this podcast. You can listen to our Romanticist episode. You should watch our Romanticist episode because it involves some excellent artwork from Mallory Rubin. Truly all-time pod content from Mallory Rubin.

So we have spent time in the fourth-wing universe. I expressed, as is my want, extreme skepticism about adapting this for television. Because we are aligned on our enjoyment of this book series, which is compulsively readable, pretty poorly written a lot of the times. And what did you say on Tuesday? You were like... Oh, I mean, first of all,

Anything that Jack Schaefer is attached to, we're going to be excited about. This feels to me like the skeleton key for how to adapt fourth wing in the Imperium series overall. Obviously, like...

All of the other questions about how expensive is it going to be to make a show that has this many dragons in it all the time. Like, how long is it going to take between seasons, et cetera. They obviously have, I think, a fairly Herculean casting task ahead of them to capture the chemistry between these characters. Their history with Rings of Power and Wheel of Time both sort of having truncated runs. Right, right. All of that, yeah. But...

The real-time reaction, it was like, I would say, seven and a half minutes of just gasps and screams. Yeah. Fitting, because that's actually what happens while reading Fourth Wing. I think you're under-examining the percentage of gasping and screaming that happens while reading Fourth Wing. It's true. You're right. Definitely. The Jack Schaefer-Fourth Wing pairing...

is like I can hear angels singing when I think about this because first of all, a brilliant creator, an incredible showrunner who has made two shows that we have loved and loved covering. Jack Shaver is a very gifted writer. The prose is excellent. A gifted writer who surrounds herself also with incredibly gifted, brilliant writers. Yes, and the spirit of collaboration very clearly so alive in those writer rooms and show teams. And so...

All of the, you know, the thinking of what Jack will do with a character like Violet, how to kind of like channel and present to us this mythology and like calibrate it in a TV season. But then I just had to elevate the subject.

Dips the sentence. Prose. And the dialogue, I think, is, like, really a great thing for people who love this series and are wondering how it's going to fit on the screen. So this would be amazing. And I'm excited.

You know, we did get an email from someone who was saying, like, what do you think this means for Marvel? And, like, if I were Marvel, I personally would have, like, dropped a, you know, helicopter full of money on Jack Schaefer's lawn. Yeah. Probably not that way. That sounds like a fire hazard. But, like, you know, I would have given her so much money to stay and do more work for me if I were Marvel. That is not seemingly what happens. Or Bezos outbid them or whatever the case may be. But, um...

To get to see Jack Schafer, who did a really good job, I think, pushing the needle on the darkness factor inside of WandaVision and Agatha all along. To see her in, even though fourth wing...

in a YA space. It is a more adult, obviously, story than what Disney can offer on Disney Plus. And so to watch Jack Schafer sort of expand into a darker world

more violent or more emotionally turbulent or, you know, more sexually explicit, like all of those spaces. I'm really excited to see her get to, you know, step out of the Disney world into that. I like, I'm just hopefully thrilled for her. Like, I just want all good things for her. And if that also results in us getting the best version of the Empyrean saga, like for Amazon. Yeah.

Please do sign me up for that. Um, I, on the flip side of this, yeah, I will say speaking of like creators who maybe have not had a great time with their, uh, with their high profile adaptations, uh, Neil Druckmann has announced that he will not be, uh, participating in the last of us season three. Um, Halle Gross is also departing, uh, the last of us, uh, season three. Um, and,

I, my immediate reaction to this, like we don't, we don't know a ton of the behind the scenes. Neil put out a statement where he's basically like, I would like to focus on, you know, this new game we have coming out and what's going on at Naughty Dog. It was sort of a statement as put out by Naughty Dog more than like Neil himself, though Neil, you know, did author and own that statement. I, my first thought was like,

He has dealt with so much shit as a creator, both off of part two of the game, which had people just sort of haranguing him for years, and then all of the drama that we discussed around the second season of the show. But I'm like, if this is for peace of mind, if this is just to chase his own peace, I really support him in that, personally. Yeah.

I thought we agreed that his episode last season was just like an absolute knockout masterpiece of the show. We've loved listening to him on the official podcast and his insights. Hallie, too, like to hear these people who created the game together talk about the adaptation process, all of that. We love listening to...

to Craig Mason talk about the show too. So it's not like, you know, it's, it's often brand new hands that we are unfamiliar with, but I'm quite bummed personally that Neil is leaving the last of us though. Again, if it means like his life is healthier, happier, I, I, I wish that for him as well. So, you know, yeah, I, I feel very similarly. I was quite, quite sad to see this. I, uh, like you, I'm a huge admirer of Neil and his work and, and have been, um,

You know, so like intellectually and creatively captivated by the Druckmann-Mason partnership and have just really loved not only what they've made, but hearing them talk about the process of making it. Like that's been such a really rare treat and level of insight for all of us to be able to observe. So, yeah.

Yeah, I mean, you know, what it must take to make a show like this and also be operating in his capacity at Naughty Dog and making these new games. Like, it's obviously, this is a number of immense undertakings. And so, yeah, if this is, like, what feels right or good, wonderful, but he will be missed. I certainly, you know, obviously have, like, nothing but faith in Mason's ability to make an excellent third season, but I will miss their, I will miss, you know, Neil's presence in their show.

I'm sure the partnership, you know, remains obviously a kind of core strand of DNA in the series overall. But just the heartbeat of that, like, is a very active part of the text. I will miss it, truly. I don't have any information. I'm not breaking any news. So reddit.com, you can calm down from transcribing anything I'm about to say. I have no news on this. I will say that, like,

Every entertainment reporter I know is sniffing around this story to try to figure out what happened. Because Neil's statement is pretty boilerplate, and so I think there's probably another story here. I hope that we don't uncover anything like...

That will disappoint us and anyone who's involved in the show. But I suspect we will learn more about this story as the TV investigative reporters try to uncover the full story. But I wish Neil and Hallie nothing but the best, and I thank them for their work on the show. And...

I'm still really excited about The Last of Us Season 3. We are big Caitlin Deaver fans, so we should see what happens. Deaver Hive. Rise up. Okay, Joanna, future conversations about The Last of Us, about Fourth Wing, about Superman, about anything and everything that we cover. Of course, y'all know the drill. Follow along. Follow the pods on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can watch full video episodes of House of Horror and Midnight Boys Pew Pew on Spotify and the Ringerverse YouTube channel. You can, of course, follow the Ringerverse on the social media platform of your choosing. And you can email us always at hobbitsanddragons at gmail.com. The inbox is open. Our spoiler warning, friendly neighborhood spoiler warning, is...

for the three episodes of Squid Game that we are focusing on today, season three, episodes four, five, and six, but it is about all of season three, all of season two, all of season one, all of Squid Game to this point. If it's ever happened in the series, it could come up. There's, I mean, kudos to you if you've navigated the internet the past few days and avoided this, but there is like a big splashy thing that happens at the end of this season that if you have yet to be spoiled, you might want to see for yourself. We will talk about it, obviously. We will be talking about it. Yeah, we'll be talking about it.

I look forward to discussing it shortly. Excited. All right, Jo. Anything else on the Nerd News front, programming reminders front, time travel front, peaches, chicken tenders, anything else at all before we put on our tuxes and get to the Squid Game talk? Yeah, actually, yes. Last night. Look at that. In my house.

We made our second round. I was really a personality hire. I was there to play music and name the final product because I disappointed everyone last time. We made our second round of mead in the house. Okay. Incredible. As I mentioned to you, the last batch we did, it was named Luke and Leia because we had like a sort of a plain one and then like a sparkling passion fruit one, Luke and Leia. Yeah.

This time we have like a berry, a berry concentrate one, and then like an apple spiced one. And we have named them, I have named them Berrymere and Faramir are the two meat names.

um, of this most recent batch that I had no hand in making, but I did sit there for many hours and watch it get made and, and, and, uh, contributed, uh, love and laughter. Um, so there you go. What a thing to contribute. Yeah. How delightful. Uh,

Flavor profiles sound fantastic. Why is this only the second batch? Why is this not a regular thing? Oh, it takes a while. You have to let me- For how long? A couple months. So is batch three already in the early nascent stages? Oh, no. Are we parallel pathing? You're right. We should ramp up production, but we're not here to turn a profit. We're here to have fun. Okay.

We made our, we started our first batch in January and then we didn't, we didn't bottle it until I came back from LA. Okay. You know, so a couple months and then

you know, we just started batch two last night by we, I mean, they, and I watched. And they're actually like in that closet right now, just sort of burbling away and they'll be there for a couple months. And then we will, you know, there's like a second fermenting and there's all this other stuff. So yeah. Anyway, Barry mirror, fair mirror. I was quite pleased. And that's, that's the latest mean news. Shall we talk about good game? Let's do it.

Season three, episodes four, five, and six, two, two, two, circle, triangle, square, a.k.a. the signature shapes and the shape of the squid game. Deeply impressed with you putting this in our notes, Doc. Thank you. You really explored that widget menu, like, to the best of your ability. When humans are. You know, this was just an old copy-paste job. An old copy-paste. Less impressive. Yeah.

to match the font size of the rest of the document, of course, because my OCD won't allow anything else. But so it goes. It's actually driving me crazy that the triangle is not turned sideways to match the actual shape of the game. It's like giving me palpitations. And the triangle is slightly larger than the circle and the square? It's very tough. It's very tough. I'm going to scroll down and look elsewhere.

I can soothe myself by thinking about the meat again. Okay. We have, as we did for our Season 3 Part 1 pod, a number of squid suppositions that we're going to hit today to just talk about these three episodes, Season 3, and the show overall. Before we get to our squid supposition prompts for the day...

Let's briefly return to a couple of our opening snapshot talking points from the first pod. We're going to keep this quick because a lot of the things that we would mention here are going to be the things we then immediately talk about again. But now that we are able to freely speak about everything that happens in the third season up to the end of the show, anything else that you would like to circle back to from the Tuesday pod, from the season three part one pod, in terms of

we couldn't have talked about this at the first spot, how you felt about the back half of season three as a little table setter here. And then anything else you want to say more broadly about how you felt about seasons two and three as a stealth split season, how you feel about and are feeling about Squid Game as a show and franchise overall now that we have completed this, at least this phase of the journey. And then anything

that you wanted to circle back to about the discussion we were having about like the fan response, the audience reception, which I think we both felt like had a lot to do with some back half of the season aspects that we were not able to get into quite as freely a couple days ago. So, worry on this. I did check right before we hit record that the percentage on the old popcorn meter is still 66. So, the needle is not moving very much over there. But,

okay, I'm just going to be really very quite honest and say, I think this is a complete failure of the IP, uh, in this season. I thought two had some bumps to it. Um, but I was like hopeful that we would come to a satisfying conclusion. And I, my biggest frustration was with two was because it felt like they split the season in a cynical way that frustrated me with the pacing and the pacing problems continued in this chapter. We talked about that, uh,

earlier in the week when we talked about episodes one through three, really felt it in these final three where, you know, as I mentioned in the earlier pod this week, we killed off a bunch of characters that I care about and then we have four, essentially, three plus more episodes to go of a conflict that, you know, we're going to get into the specifics of it, but like a conflict that doesn't actually feel very conflicted at the end of the day. And...

really let us down, I think, in two key encounters, which is Gi-hun finding out that the frontman is In-ho in their conversation, which I rewatched right before we recorded just to make sure that my disappointment with that was justified, and I still stand by that. And then

the brothers sort of really inertly see each other from across a chasm and not really having like any kind of real resolution. I, I,

I've been trying to gauge why people, other people are so down on this season. And again, from the limited, my limited ability to gauge that, what I've seen people say is more they were frustrated that Gi-hun sacrificed himself and died. They're frustrated that the front man lived. They're frustrated that the VIPs lived. Yeah.

None of that stuff actually really bothers me. I don't mind a sort of more cynical ending to this show. I don't mind... And in fact, I felt very certain that Gi-hun was going to sacrifice himself, so that didn't bother me. It doesn't bother me that evil rich people will continue to do evil rich people things. So none of that really bothers me. But I just think this drawn-out section...

Full of characters I did not care too much about at all. A real failure of the side plots to bolster up the main confrontation happening inside of the game. Yeah, just really let me down. Inside of an IP that has so much promise, inside of a creator that I think is very thoughtful. Definitely. And inside of a lot of dynamics that were set up that were very juicy that you and I were really interested to see how they would play out. And then it just really...

Just kind of all really let me down. So that's where I... I mean, like... And I touched upon this in the previous batch, but for...

One female character to hang herself and then another female character to jump off the side of a cliff, like, you know, within minutes, basically, of a binge. Like, I continue to have a lot of questions about the way in which, you know, women are used in the show. We'll get to, like, some of the things that the creator said about why he introduced the baby. It really does feel to me that, like, Jin-hee just exists as a way to get a baby in the game, and that is...

irritating to me and then we get like various ghost girls here at the end in these final three episodes to sort of like motivate and innervate the men that are left battling over this baby I just like that also really disappointed me so I can't wait I'm excited to talk to you about it but I cannot say I would recommend this as a viewing experience for people how do you how are you feeling

Yeah, I'm also, I'm looking forward to the discussion. I think there are a lot of interesting aspects of the conclusion here to parse and assess a little bit more. I'm, I'm,

Without question, the final three episodes of the third season, my least favorite part of the series by a considerable margin. I think the beginning of season three, like we talked about a couple days ago, had some stuff in it that I really liked. I thought that the second episode, the hide-and-seek episode, was really gripping. But I think in season two, which I...

you know, had notes on, but broadly enjoyed the dip when it starts to dip is in that final third, like quarter really. Yeah. Um,

you know, where we're devoting like an entire episode to the hallway shootout, et cetera. Right. And so like, then if you kind of think about it as a, um, the, the, the stealth split season, a really one, uh, one joint story, then yeah, overall, like the, it's, it's, it's largely a descent after kind of the high of like everything that happens with the recruiter at the beginning of season two, et cetera. So, um, in some ways, um,

It's actually heightened my appreciation for season one, which I already thought was really extraordinary. But revisiting and revisiting so close to rewatching season two and watching season three, it's like, man, this was good. This was dynamite. And I think I'm finding myself in an interesting spot with my...

desire for the franchise to continue in different ways because on the one hand i think that you know again we already showed our spoiler warning so we'll talk about this more later but like when we get to the cape planchette cameo at the end and um you know we'll share some of the the creators quotes about the prospect of a u.s set spinoff etc um

I'm like, I'm in. I want it. I'm in. I'm so intrigued by that. I've, since the beginning of the series, wondered about the global footprint of the game and the VIPs and the organization and how many places is something like this happening and what's a shared aspect of that horror, what is really distinct regionally to a given culture or society, et cetera. So I would like to keep...

story set in the Squid Game universe. I think there is an undeniable, and this obviously like

Part of this is about the continuation of this particular story with these particular characters over subsequent two seasons. And then some of it is like thinking, panning back even further and thinking about the like... You know, we've talked about this before and plenty of other people have as well. The kind of like, wait, did we all miss the lesson of Squid Game, you know, commodification of like the reality game competition aspect of all that? Where it's sort of just like, at a certain point, you're not just diluting the...

impact of the original thing by returning in subsequent seasons, it's like, I don't want to lose what made Squid Game special in the first place. And I think like,

There obviously is, like, not to be too dramatic about it, but there is kind of, I think, an undeniable, like, meta aspect to that with, like, the, you know, studio greed and desire to keep cashing in on, like, profitable IP that is not specific at all to Squid Game or Netflix. That's just, like, where we are in the streaming wars IP era where we've talked about that, you know, talked about this with a million of the things we cover. It's, like, at a certain point, if you keep... I'm a glutton, and, like, I love to spend time in the worlds I love, and I think...

often my disposition is like more of the character, more time with the characters I'm interested in, more time in the world I like to play in. But like, you know,

We've seen time and again that when you go back too soon or too often, or most importantly, as we always say, it's more about execution than just kind of core. Without a reason to or a good idea to. Other than just doing it. Yeah. Then the quality is going to dip. And then when the quality dips and we're in this era of saturation, people are like, I have other choices and I have other things to watch. And then the thing that felt special about it in the first place isn't just

The vibrancy of that idea and the specificity of the examination of those ideas, which was undeniable in season one, but also like something...

exceedingly rare in modern media, which is just like animated as like, it felt like a shared experience. Yeah. You start to lose that too. So yeah, I'll be fascinated to track this moving forward and like see what they do. It is really kind of like an interesting thing to observe. The moment I remember quite clearly, you and I weren't talking a lot about, like the end of last year was absolutely bananas and you and I weren't talking that much about Squid Game, but I remember like,

when I told Rob Mahoney that there was a squid game Yule log option on Netflix, I was like, we have lost the plot. Like, what do you mean cozy up around the squid game branded fire? What are you talking about? That being said, so, I mean, Cate Blanchett in a suit is undeniable. That's its own thing. It's very powerful. Yeah. I,

I'm actually even more interested in this idea of David Fincher being interested in doing squid game because American squid game just in and of itself, American remake of a, uh, an international thing that I loved. I'm largely uninterested in, but Fincher is not a creator who goes into something without having his own like big ideas about it. I feel that way about even like his,

alien movie, which people think is unsuccessful, but I quite like, you know? And so I think that, especially since I really love Fincher's movie, The Game, with Michael Douglas and Sean Penn, a great San Francisco set movie, but that, there's so much Squid Game in the game. And so, like, if he can take that and, like, he has had a successful movie

relatively successful partnership with Netflix. I love Mindhunter. Same. And so... Still waiting. Yeah. For more. That's disappointing. But like, I know we're like, Amazon is canceling shows, but the fourth one will be fine. Amazon canceled Fincher's Mindhunter, but his good game will be fine. Like, Hope Springs Eternal. But like, I do think that like Fincher, who takes something like

Gone Girl and Turn... You know, like, he's just really good with taking pop ideas and really sinking them down into something almost, like, primal and visceral and cerebral at the same time. Yes, definitely. And so, like, that...

actually is quite animating and interesting to me. That would be great. You know, and so, yeah, I feel dumb anytime I get on this podcast. I'm like, didn't like this, can't wait for the next season. But that does happen to me a lot. It's a human experience. I'm just like, maybe they'll figure it out. Yeah. Hope springs eternal, Joanna. Truly, it does.

Let's get to some of our squid suppositions for the final three episodes of the final, for now, season of Squid Game. Let's start at the end. Not the very end. We'll come back to that. Let's start with the final game. Was Sky Squid Game?

which is Squid Game set in the sky, a captivating enough sixth and final game for you? Or was this a letdown after OG Squid Game from the first season? OG Squid Game is really hard to beat because you've got this childhood history between these two characters. You've got so much history and you're able to sort of visually cut...

to a different time in their lives and stuff like that. I think the trouble here is that anyone who has ever seen any of Squid Game or any other show before...

knows who the final three are going to be at the end of this journey, right? It has to be the baby, the baby's father, and Gi-hun. And we have to be like, and we have to be in a place, once again, with this like tragedy math that Squid Game is so good at, be in a place where we're like, oh, oh no, someone we care about is going to have to go over in order for the people to win this game. Right.

surrounded by so much chaff here. And I really love these evil dudes, actually. Like, we've already talked about Player 100, but I will say that, like, hold on, I wrote down, it's 203, right? 203 is... Yeah. He's a maniac.

And Geeman, like, had a late emergence as, like, a real favorite for me. Like, I really, really liked him. So, like, I liked the evil dudes, but I'm just, like, I'm just impatiently waiting for all of these evil dudes to go off the sides because they have to so we can get to this, like, you know...

final three showdown yeah and then um i want to read an interesting email we got from our listener jenny about the final uh what happens to our guy myunggi uh here at at the end um she says myunggi gave off huge anakin at the end of revenge of the sith vibes going full evil roiling with self-hatred and paranoia convinced the guy who's trying to help him got with his ex and

But by evil, I don't mean cartoonishly evil. It was heartbreaking in Revenge of the Sith, and then it's heartbreaking here. He finally lost his battle with himself. And then she says, unrelated to Star Wars, people are mad that nobody stepped on the last button, but I think then it would have made the climax be Gi-Hoon struggle with Young-Gi rather than Gi-Hoon struggle with himself. We already got Gi-Hoon battling a similar and more important character in Sang-Woo at the end of season one, Gi-Hoon wrestling with himself and ultimately doing the right thing. It's really the heart of the show, and I'm glad it culminated with that. So...

I love the Anakin comp. I rewatched that last section with the Anakin. I don't know why I didn't think of it when I saw it the first time, but like, it's right there. And I think that performance is very, very good. But there's just a series of baffling decisions and like weird calculate. I mean, not to say you would be the most rational person. Yeah. But I was just like, we could have figured this out, guys. Like we could have been like, you know, and like, yeah.

Gi-hun offers to be the sacrifice so early, but...

you know, uh, he's like tragedy of like not being able to trust him, but then also going from like defending his baby to dangling his baby over the, like, it just like, we were just like zinging around inside of motivations so quickly that I, I, and then, and then I found it deeply unsatisfying that the end of all of this, it's a ripped jacket and not like an active decision that someone makes, um,

that ended that character's life that he didn't sacrifice himself by going over fine but that did he didn't like lunge and miss and fall over it was just this like weird protracted maybe if the cloth had held he wouldn't have fallen moment that i that felt like not as active uh a result in his death as i would have liked so i might have veered off of your question here but um

Like, really mixed. I thought the performance for the actor who's playing Myung-gi was, like, really phenomenal. Yeah, he was incredible. I thought he was really, really good. MC1, I think, is his name. And so, like, I thought he was incredible. But, like, there was just a lot...

not functioning for me here in this final game. How about you? Yeah, I'm excited to talk more about Myung-gi, who I also love and thought the performance was incredible and have a lot of questions and notes about the...

seesawing inside of a short span of time here. Great email. Bad baby's rule as always. I don't agree on the button, though. We'll come back to the button. I was really, really bugged by that. I think in terms of Sky Squid Game just more broadly as the choice for the end, I was underwhelmed by this both compared to the...

use of squid game in the first season as the the final game but honestly also just like compared to some of the other games in seasons two and three like it wasn't as exciting and shocking and horrifying as mingle or hide and seek i don't think and like it it feels like a version of what we've talked about um a decent amount already over these two pods like

Conceptually, I get it and actually I'm intrigued. I think that the idea of taking the Season 1 template but amplifying the stakes, the horror, the interpersonal math, the fact that there are more players overall, more elimination strategy comes into play, decisions, mistakes, etc. It's a potentially really potent brew. But then I think when some of the stuff you've already highlighted happens inside of that brew, when...

Some of the mistakes are rooted in like the human experience. And then some of them are like, am I supposed to believe that? Like, I don't know. It's just, it's Chekhov's button coming into play that heavily was first of all, so inevitable from the second that we see it. But also it's just like, I think there's a difference between high stakes stress and everybody being very focused on an urgent matter. And like that moment,

And making that final conflict so inert because you know where it's going. You know no one pressed the button, and so whatever happens, it doesn't... It's not that it doesn't matter, but it kind of doesn't matter because whoever's left is going to have to make another decision anyway. It reminded me a little bit of... It reminded me a little bit of the conversation around Gladiator 2. Like the Gladiator 2 effect of...

You're building and you're exploring and that's what expanded universe storytelling is. But also, when do you maybe tip into something starting to feel a little bit like it's a Xerox but on shinier paper and with brighter colors? Yeah. You know? This is like the 3D version. Yeah, 3D version of Squid Game with more bad dudes involved and yet still not. Yeah. The button thing. Yeah.

I was rewatching and I was like, there's two options here. One is have someone trying to start the button. And like the fight, you know, like if Gi-hun is trying to hit the button to start and he is just like attacking him and no one's getting to it. Then it's very sad. Yeah, then it's sad. Yeah. Or if there's a way that they could do it, calibrate it a little differently where...

You're like, oh, it's over. And then there's a realization, oh, nobody pressed the button. You hear the announcer be like, the game hasn't started or whatever. I don't know exactly how you do that. Just make the button set up more subtle or I don't know what... I don't have the answer to that. But surely we've experienced that inside of storytelling where we're just sort of like, we did it, we did it. And then it's like, oh, no, they didn't do this one thing. That means it's not over. But they...

I was rewatching the button reveal, which like to your point, you and I both were like, well, no one's pressed the button. So we know, we know whatever. But he, Gi-hun is sitting there and he, and the baby's across the platform and he looks at the button and he realizes that the button hasn't been, but we don't even see his reaction. We just see him look at blankly at the button. We see the button. Then we cut.

to the boat or something else. Like we're kind of way too different plot line. And I'm like, I don't even have his like devastation of like now, you know, it's just, it was just bizarre to me. And it's just sapped all the tension out of something. This is the death of a major, you know, franchise character. This should be so huge. Yeah. Um,

And here we are. I also, I do really agree with what you were saying about the overall mix of characters that we're left with. And I think especially because Sky Squid Game stretches across huge swaths of two episodes. Yes. It's so much time with, you know, the blue circle six. Like...

I really like the way that Myung-gi moves in and out of that and watching before the like, okay, I'm making this really passionate. And again, we'll talk about him more in some of the triggers for the switch in his decision, which I think were interesting. But like that earlier phase of watching his eyes, like knowing, feeling confident that he's going to wait to try to outsmart these people

greedy dipshits and then he does like that was interesting but you know and player 100 we've been invested but like two of three while I agree he's a strong runner at the end my response to that is kind of like then make him more present earlier in the show if he's going to be such a big deal at the end and 336 353 and 39

These are not people that we have opinions on or have spent more than a couple seconds with. And so for the lunchbox thing, this is a crucial moment in the end of the series and the fate of our protagonist. I don't know who that dude is. That's weird. And when he's like, I'm not going to be your lunchbox, I'm just like, okay. Also, when we start that game, in theory, we're invested in

A bit in Min Su. But like the once again, the drug is just like, were you happy to see your beloved Thanos again, though?

Yes. When you saw the Infinity Stone nails on the edge, you're like, he's back. He's back. Yeah, your question about do drugs work this way is more applicable here than ever before. Like that, I don't, I can't, I don't. We had the setup from Thanos in season two of like, you guys wouldn't be able to handle this. Like, this is like the shit. But like, Minsu took two, I believe two pills, right? Because that's all that was left of the cross when he scooped it up.

I don't know. I don't want to speak recklessly, but would that level of withdrawal set in after two pills? Exactly. I don't understand it at all. And then also, Gi-hun...

What was our plan? He's just constantly cowering with the baby at the edge of a platform. Not with any... He's not trying to outsmart anyone. He's not trying to, like... We're watching Myung-gi, like, do all the work to protect the baby, which is interesting to me. I was like, he's ruthless and he's killing people.

killing people and that's horrible. He's like a tactician. But he's, like, trying. And Gi-hun is just sort of like, this is wrong. Not this way. We'll draw lots. This is wrong. And I'm like, just be fucking smart. If your promise is to protect that baby, be smarter than any decision you make across this entire three-platform journey. I just... I was so frustrated by it. Especially because, like, there are some moments, like, when he...

tries to effectively, ultimately, like, prey upon the self-interest when they've made the bridge, the rope from the jackets and, like, are kind of doing the we'll draw lots fake out. And he's like, they're, like, plotting behind your back. And if you lose your patience here and you knock us both over, like, you're next. Yeah.

I'm like, yeah, more of that. Yeah. Right? Like, just, it doesn't even, it doesn't even have to be the same level necessarily of, like, active, I'm running a con here. I'm a mastermind that we got out of Myung Gi. But, yeah, I think what, I definitely felt what you're, what you're identifying, the level of, like, I'm going to hang out and, and wait here. What's the plan? Yeah, it's, it's, and in some ways, you know, that's,

I guess to be fair, in some ways that's where we find him in different respects across the entire season, right? And it's like a much more passive, you know, post everything that happens at the end of season two. He's like in these various repressed states and then kind of has to work his way back out of them. So, you know, maybe in some ways like a hyperactive, aggressive surge at the end would have felt slightly like...

The calibration might have felt slightly off from where we found him. But yeah, I was like, my guy, let's... What's the plan? What is the plan? What's the plan? We can't just hang out right at the edge for no reason. There was, like, so much room to not be literally standing right at the edge of every platform before we did this. And then, like, I just...

He, once again, he offers to sacrifice himself. He's like, I will jump off so you and your baby can make it out of here. Yes. Talk about Myung-gi not believing him. That's fine. But, like, that lets us know he's ready to die for this baby. Yep. Well before we watch him make that decision. So I'm just sort of like, okay, that's what's going to happen. I don't, you know, like, I don't know. I just...

It's so much wasted potential. And it's almost frustrating because there are such good elements to it. Again, Myung Gi, I actually have, other than some tracking where his moral compass is at any given moment, some questions, but performance-wise and just sort of actively engaged-wise, fascinating to watch. Maybe that's our spinoff, the MG coin. Yeah.

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They even offer same-day pickup in many cities. Save your time, score some cash, and sell your car the convenient way to... Carvana! Pickup times vary. Fees may apply. Before we talk a little bit more about Gi-Hoon and Frontman and the conclusion of that relationship, I am curious to ask you, do you think that Sea Squid Game and Flame Squid Game are also...

Like, how many other versions of Squid Game are there? Do you think that Frontman was like, I really... Okay, Gihoon's back. Player 4, 5, 6 is back. So I got to figure out another version of Squid Game and this is the one? Or do you think there are all sorts of Squid Games in the mix? For every...

Every one of the four nations, there is a Squid Game, and season one was Earth, and season two is Air, and then we're going to get Water and Fire. You know, we've never had, as the VIPs hopefully remind us, we've never had a due time winner, and folks, we're not going to. Listen, 20 years from now, when Netflix is just like really desperate to get that baby back in there. Player 2-2-2. We don't even know. We can do like 18. 18-year-old 2-2-2 enters the game. Yeah.

To avenge his mother. I'd watch, honestly. Let's chat a little bit more about Gi-hun and Ho, the front man.

Was there a death that hit you harder, actually, than Gi-hun's, given some of the notes on how this all unfolded? Or is that still the most impactful of this stretch? Gi-hun didn't even really hit. I'm sorry. It's just like, it sucks that I was watching this show. And I really love Lee Jung-jae, as we've talked about. Oh, yeah. All the same. The acolyte, et cetera, et cetera. Like, I'm a big fan of this performer, and I was very invested in this character before.

As the sort of Myung-gi of season one of like, will he do the right thing or not watching his moral growth? Other than the dip we get in episode two in the hide and seek game, this is an arc that isn't really arcing, you know? And so I wasn't that invested in him this season in that way.

And then the only other option really is Jun-hee, but I was just like actually mad at that point. You can pick Min-soo if you want. I can't pick Min-soo. Player 100? No? Okay. Maybe it's 203. I was like, 203, you had so much more to give me this season than just this one episode. He went out fighting. Yeah. He's like, let's have a knife brawl. He's great. I'm not waiting around. Great. Um...

you, you, you hinted at this question among viewers of like, is the ending too cynical? Is there actually a lot of like affirmation and hope inside of what might be perceived as a cynicism? Um, does this broadly, this aspect of just inside of this core relationship, Gi-Hoon and the front man, Gi-Hoon sacrificing himself, not making it out, not living and front man, like, um,

cruising in a fancy car in my suit in LA. I've made it out of this. Feel right to you? Is that what you anticipated, that Gi-hun would not make it out and Frontman would? Where are you sitting just with that aspect in terms of their shared history? And as a related part of that, you mentioned already your feeling about the long-awaited reveal of Frontman's face and Gi-hun seeing that. How did you feel about the

The test. The test that the front man presented to Gi-hun, giving him the knife. The mini games have been a part of the series the whole time. But this, like, I'm giving you a path to save yourself, to save the baby, and it's to kill everybody else. Yeah. Full of food and drink. While they sleep, they'll never know. And we get this edited sequence where we flashback finally to something people were anticipating. Yeah.

in Ho's time as a player, and we see that he made that choice. When the knife goes into a neck, it's him. He has slaughtered everybody around him. Yeah, that panned out to, like, everyone dead in their bed. That was intense. We were watching the first one. We were watching the last one. No. And you know that when he says to Gi-Hoon, like, they won't even know. He's speaking from experience, right? And so, you know, not only is this a key bit of...

fleshing out of his history. Like we knew he won, but understanding more about how, what it took, what it looked like, how ugly it was. And then this aspect of like, you know, from the limo ride at the end to the infiltration as player one, the small sacrifices conversation, the trash, the horses, all of these exchanges, do you still have faith in people as this kind of like final note here, this, this,

I'm going to give you a path out, but in order to take it, you're going to have to prove that you're... You've sunk to the same depth that I have, and you're just... You're not better than me, actually. And then, of course, Gi-Hoon proving that in multiple ways he is. How did that part work for you? So, I think...

Lee Boon Hyun, who plays In Ho, is, as we already discussed, one of the most compelling, maybe the most compelling performer on the show. He's so good. Never pass up an opportunity to see him in formal wear, so thank you so much for that. Even spattered in blood, thank you so much for that opportunity. I quite agree. Um...

I simply do not understand, given the pace of the season, given that we were spreading this out over... Why we didn't get an entire Inho flashback episode. Like an entire, like, Luthan-esque, here we are at the end of all things, let's just spend the whole hour with Inho in the game. I would have loved that. Watch him... Because...

Watch him at that crucial decision is interesting, though we already knew. We already knew that he had not only sold out part of his soul, but sold it out to the extent that he is now willing to run the game. That's how hard he sold out his soul in order to win the game. Okay. But how did we get... I would have almost taken an entire season of peril because it's not enough to watch him do it, which was...

because of that reveal of the whole room and his hysteria as he just succumbs to this choice. Yeah.

But what did we lose? Can we see who he... We know a little bit from his mom and his brother and stuff like that, but can we see him in the game? Was he trying to be a better person? Was he the protector? And he fell. Who was he before he made this choice? I would have loved to have seen that. And...

And so I liked this taste, but it almost, because it wasn't the full meal, I was almost more disappointed. And I thought that the showdown between them should have been the best scene in the series. This entire series. No question. Should have been the pinnacle. But his reveal, the reaction to the reveal, that is the best choice you can make right now. Like,

I just needed the writing to be better. The performances were fine. I needed the writing to be better. I wanted to linger there longer. This should have been a long conversation. Like, I understand that Gi-hun is, like, so overwhelmed by the betrayal and the frustration. But, like, don't we want people having conversations in rooms? Like, have a...

Have a moral conversation. Have a philosophical conversation. Like, what does it mean to survive? What does it mean to be a person in this world? Rather than just, like, giving us buzz phrases like, humans aren't horses or whatever it is, which is just, like, something we heard since the end of season one, you know, repeated throughout. It's just...

I wanted so much more from that. And so the potential, because those performers are so good, because this dynamic is so juicy, because they did a great job with Inho undercover and all of those interactions, this just felt like such a swing and a miss for me. I don't mind that Gi-hun survived. And it also feels like the message is he survived and is like,

has had his mind change about humanity having seen gihun sacrifice self that in who you know is like in delivering the baby to his brother and in delivering the money uh to gihun's daughter um that he has is and the island is burned so like at least on that island they're not gonna squid game again um

That he has been changed by this. That's not uninteresting to me at the end of the day, you know? Yeah, I think that the level of, like, dissonance that he is, has been experiencing, because we talked about that, that one of the, you know, gripping parts of season two was, like, wondering...

wait, how tempted is he by a different path or how real is this connection with the person that he is like nominally opposed to and then ultimately actively challenging, et cetera. I think that the, it's another, it is another example, I think, of where the season struggled a little bit to clear, clearly, unmistakably delineate between a conflict in the human heart, not

Not sure if you've heard it's the only thing worth writing about, which, like, you know, we love. A conflicted character is super interesting to watch. Absolutely. And that conflict's not always – and the resolution of that conflict is not always linear. So moving in and out of different states of existence or relationships to your own morality, I'm fine with. But, like, telling –

Inho telling Captain Park to kill everyone, including the detective, outright saying that. His brother. His brother. When he had shot him in the shoulder so that he didn't die, and then as we learn explicitly here, like, said to Captain Park, no matter what, keep him alive. And then you're like, oh, fuck. Okay. Yeah. Kill him too. That is how far he has sunk. And then, like, radios him to say, like, if you keep doing this, you're going to die. So, like, there's a desire to save him. And then he's back at the end to, like, I think there's something nice about...

I've left this baby with you. I've given you this golden debit card with the full player 2-2-2's full winnings here to say to you a couple things. One, I trust you. I trust you to care for this person and make the right decisions. Two, to the best extent that I'm capable of saying it, I'm sorry. And three, I'm alive. Like, I'm here. There's only one person this could have come from. Right.

That's interesting, but there were a few too many moments from like, wait, where is he with, is he willing to kill his brother or not for that to like land as powerfully? And then, you know, another version of that for me with Inho was, I'm curious if you agree with this or if this feels like not totally valid, but I was, and this fits what you were just saying about wouldn't it have been great to like really fully explore his history made me think of this because

I really bumped, and yes, I understand that we are talking about the primary antagonist of the show. I get that. He has done, he has overseen, directly done horrible things. I'm not like deluding myself that the front man is a good guy. However, him saying, let's put the baby in the game, and here's why this will be the right decision,

It's going to make the next vote and the rest of the game more interesting, I promise. And then, yes, granted, the gambit with Gi-hun hinges on him saying in part, this is the path out. And so maybe that's the moral math he's done with himself. It's like, I'll do it, but I'll give him a test so that it can be okay. And bonus, in order for it to be okay, he has to engage in the same level of depravity that I have. But his...

What do we know, to your point, about the formative things in his life, his origin, his history? His wife got sick and she was pregnant. And this question about what would happen with the baby and the way that that was all tied, entwined with their fates, that sent him to the game in the first place, that took him away from the rest of his family and life back in society, like...

You could convince me that there's a version. You could easily convince me, I think, actually, that there's a version of that where you could say that has warped his view, then, of the sanctity of life and what that baby is meant to represent to Gi-hun and to us as viewers, this powerful symbol of innocence and what you need to fight to protect and preserve and a future that is still worth saving and

that he can no longer see that. And that, I think, is there in the text and is powerful, but I don't totally understand how it connects to his core traumatic, inciting events. His decisions feel in conflict in that way. Once again, it's probably not my job to tell the person who made one of the most successful TV shows of the last decade how to do his job. However...

Like, isn't there a version of this story where Inho continues to battle with himself, having met Gi-hun and having spent time back in the game with these other people, battles with himself, but

is trying to save the baby. The VIPs are like, put the baby in the game and he feels like he has no choice. Why isn't he registering more disgust with the VIPs? Like, you know, the people who put him in the game in the first place. Like, shouldn't that be something that he is dealing with in some way? Like, make it an erosion. Make it a process so that when we see him, you know,

the end of the game and save the baby and give that baby all the money and give the baby to his brother. It's like the culmination of like a slow arc towards something rather than like, I guess this is how this ends. Totally. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. And I think that would further heighten the parallel too is like, when is it a diversion and when is it a parallel? You see them both cradling this little, this little,

Yeah. Bundle and like, yeah, I just was like when the VIPs had to be the ones to say to him, explain what you mean. I was like, this feels a little off to me. Right. Have the depraved VIPs who we don't give a shit about and who are bad characters, you know, be like, put the baby in the game. And like, maybe I'm trying to turn. Which I had already done. So then like just have them keep doing it. Maybe I'm trying to turn the front man into like Jamie Lannister and that's not who the front man is. We have a type. It's true. But that's who I wanted him to be. So that's right. We have a type. Yeah.

In terms of, we're talking a lot about how inside of these episodes, inside of the final game and the final stretch here, it felt clear that we were going to watch Gi-Hoon sacrifice himself. It's been interesting to read some of the interviews and some of the press around the end because that was not always the plan. That was not always the intention. So here's a quote from an interview in Variety.

Originally, when I was planning for seasons two and three, I had no intention of having Gi-hun die.

The idea that I had in mind was that Gi-hun would make it out alive in one way or another. He may become the winner, and he would go back to see his daughter. But in the writing process and looking around at what was happening in the world, I realized that's not how the story could end. That kind of unhappy ending and seeing what was happening around the world and seeing Gi-hun's journey and his destination, I think it just didn't line up for me. I thought that a better fitting story and a closure to the story of Gi-hun's journey would be for him to sacrifice himself for the future generations.

So I had the baby in the story and created the ending with Gi-hun sacrificing himself. So two things. Number one, like, so I had the baby in the story and created the ending with Gi-hun sacrificing himself. Again, once again, it just felt like there were so many machinations just to give Gi-hun a baby. That's like, without making it feel like actual character choices around all these things that got the baby into Gi-hun's hands. So like...

Again, that's my critique of like Jun-hee as a non-character and all these other things. On this quote front, do you feel like maybe there might have been like a slight translation issue? Because like when he says that kind of unhappy ending and seeing what was happening around the world and seeing Gi-hun's journey and his destination, I think it didn't line up for me. This makes much more sense if he says that kind of happy ending and seeing what was happening around the world and seeing Gi-hun's journey and his destination. Because if he's like, a happy ending is Gi-hun survives the game and gets to reunite with his daughter. Right.

the world feels kind of bleak to me that didn't really seem like the ending that I wanted to do. So I, I made a, a sadder ending. Um, that makes more sense to me sort of. So I wonder if that was just like a slight, like transcription error or something like that. But, um,

I don't mind having an unhappy ending to this story. This is a bleak setup. And I don't mind, you know, Gi-hun, for the moment that Gi-hun doesn't like stay away at the end of season one, like just when I thought I was out and my hair was magenta and my life was bright. I was going to say the red hair.

They pulled me back in. Like, you're probably not going to survive that, you know? You take one toe over the threshold of the hide-and-seek door, and then you go back. You're not going to make it back through that door. So, like, I'm not surprised, and I'm not upset by that. I agree. I think it fits the world of Squid Game. I think deeply, dismayingly, it fits the world. Yeah.

And I also think that, again, I do see a lot of, like, victory and affirmation inside of the Gi-Hoon died and the front man lived because I think I don't want to spoil anything from another show and, you know, even invoking it in a context of heavily critiquing this might feel odd because it's a show that we loved. But I will just say, like, you know, we talked a lot in Andor about sometimes the death comes before the death, right? A thing you say to a person, how you make them feel, like...

Gi-hun sacrificed himself, but he won. There's no question that he won. The moral victory, yeah. And I think that it's also more complicated than that. And it's true that nobody wins. And that's part of the commentary. Like, front man says it. If you kill me right now...

someone else takes my place tomorrow. And that is, we had no reason to doubt that that would be true. Right. But also certainly seeing game plan chance American recruiter really confirms it. And it's like, there is simultaneously the fact that Gi-hoon and Jun-ho are

in this moment and in this place, like, Chekhov's stairwell bomb went off. No one stepped on Chekhov's button, but Chekhov's stairwell bomb went off. When I was doing my rewatch to prep for this, and I had completely forgotten about that, but then when I got to that part in season one, I was like, I guess

And the island's going to blow up. Like, why else would we be lingering on that so heavily? You know, they made an impact. They made an impact on that baby's life. And I think, you know, we'll talk a little bit later in some of our other questions about... Because we leave the island, we say goodbye to Gi-hun about 30 minutes into the final episode. There's like a...

18 to 20 minutes of story after where we're with multiple characters, obviously most meaningfully our guy, Choi, who's like, I have a business plan that I would like to reveal. Well, actually, I'm in. But, I mean, we haven't talked about this. Yep. There's dog murder in this show, Mel and Ruben. That was horrible. Absolutely horrible. Yeah, I did not, I did not enjoy that at all. Horrible. And I thought it was,

While I really fucking loved when Troy, when the officer's questioning him and they're like, he's showing the picture of the recruiter with Captain Park. And the officer's like, who is it? Name, address. And Troy's just like, is that your fucking job to tell me? That was great. When Troy grabs his phone and runs for it.

Great stuff. High comedy that cuts to Park. A dog murderer. Back on the boat, and he's like, I can just really clearly hear everything he's saying. That was pretty amusing. But yeah, I did think it was, while I love Choi, appropriate that the officer, when he was going through his rap sheet, was like, and I'm going to add dog murder to this list. So that's a demerit for our guy, Choi, undoubtedly. But...

In that stretch at the end where we spent some time with our characters who have made it out alive, you know, the other thing is, like, beyond the game, you feel Gi-hun's ongoing impact, right? Like, the reunion, the reunited family at the airport. Obviously, like, we have multiple ways in which we're tying back to Sae-byeok from season one, right?

You alluded to the ghostly apparition. Ghost woman. Ghost woman. Ghost woman from season one. This isn't you. This isn't you. Don't do this. This isn't you. When he was considering killing Sang-woo with the knife. But...

You know, to see that her mother was finally there and was with her brother and that Sang-woo's mother, who had been acting as this grandma, this adoptive figure in that young boy's life, and cared for him and nurtured him like that, that family was back together, that only happens because of Gi-hun. So the fact that people's lives are improving still because of him, I thought was a really affirming note. I don't... I think that...

it's to me more, more of a complex brew than like overt cynicism at the end. But I think the cynical aspects feel like appropriate to me. Yeah, no, no, it's not. I don't think it's an unhappy bleak ending. There's a lot of like, you know, this baby's going to be okay. And like, um, you know, but, and then the game goes ever on is part of it too. Um, yeah. Uh,

I don't know. Anyway, sorry. Do you want to talk more about the CGI baby? Let's talk more about the CGI baby. This is just like... First of all, let's talk about the CGI of the CGI baby. But I am curious if you think... Not to ask you to speak on behalf of every person who watched Squid Game, but do you think that this...

Do you think that this was genuinely too much for people? Like, and I don't mean just that we had a CGI baby as, like, maybe the second lead of the third season of the show in terms of the prominence of the runtime and the centrality to the plot. But, and I say this as somebody who thinks...

The Red Wedding, which in the television version, spoiler, included a pregnant woman being stabbed in the stomach, is, you know, peak TV. And I say this as someone who, with you on a podcast, we both were like, blood and cheese in TV land? That was kind of tame. We're no strangers to seeing...

children imperiled in the shows we watch and love. I don't know, like the level of, and obviously it's intentional, the commentary, everything that is being parsed when these, the blue circle six is like, we won't ask you to kill us or just hang the baby on the pole, please. Like this is the, you know, they're, they're doing what they want to do with like, Hey, these guys are going to move from every time you say blue circle six, I'm like, that's just,

Absolutely exquisite. Thank you. I thought the shift from like, the baby doesn't deserve the money, the baby didn't work for the money, into the baby's an easy target, into we're going to pretend that we're actually doing the right thing because the baby won't survive. All of that commentary was actually effective, but I don't know, just seeing our beloved...

young key tangle his own kid over the edge of sky squid game. I was like, this is like, I think a lot for people to, to have to watch his performance. So it was really, he was amazing. A friend of mine was texting me about the show and she's like, she's like, do you think they're going to start selling those like good game branded formula bottles? Like the bottle warmer that we get pure luxury. Honestly. Um, uh,

I just was, I just never thought they were going to kill a baby on the show. So I don't know why. I just never thought they were like, they killed so many people. I never thought they were going to kill that baby. So I just kept doing survivor math. I was like, you know, and before I, I was like still on, I think episode four. And I was like, I was like either Noel or, or, uh, you know, June Ho are going to save that baby. Like, you know, even if it's not Gi-Hoon, like someone's going to save that baby, that baby is going to make it out. And so then it would just became like,

which is fine because it doesn't, you can know something's going to happen and still feel tension around like the decisions around it and stuff like that. But I just like, also the CGI was quite bad. Our, our producer Carlos was like, I saw a clip of it and I thought it was fake. Uh,

And yeah, it wasn't quite like, yeah, Renesmee Twilight level, but that was a bad CGI baby. And I just simply would have refrained from showing the baby's face that often if that were the CGI available to me. Yeah, but probably was too much for some people. I mean, like, you know, also just like Jinhui dropping herself off the side of, you know, the game and...

a lot of brain splatter in these last... Tons of skull chips and brains. Tons. Yeah. It's like... Even by the standard of Squid Game, it's just pretty... Yeah, pretty robust brain.

brain matter stretch um player 100 dying with the the the lots kind of like beautiful yeah yeah and the angle like whoever was in charge of limb arranging really these really good top tier stuff genuinely really good

Joanna, what else, if anything, would you like to say about our problematic fave, Myung-gi, MGCoin333? We've talked about him a bit. Is there anything else that we haven't gotten to that you would like to, either from the final moments or just in general, everything we saw in the last couple seasons and in this stretch of episodes, the final conversation between Joon-hee and Myung-gi in Hide and Seek? Anything else that you want to hit?

Um, I will say I can definitely fix him. I just don't understand why. Isn't it more fitting with like the lies that he was telling himself? Why wouldn't he do everything he could to try to make the outcome? It's him and his baby. He gets to keep all that money anyway. So like, why wouldn't he figure out a better, he just like, I don't know. The journey to hanging the baby over the side is,

happened in a way that I didn't really understand. But again, I can fix him and he'll be fine. But he was at the end of the day, one of, and I said this back when Rob and I were covering season two, like one of the most interesting characters to track in terms of like, will he? And in the end he didn't. And in the end he didn't. And that's interesting to me. Agreed. And a lot of his machinations leading up to that, but like,

There are things that happened where like he's talking to Janine. He's like, come on, let me get you across. Yep. And then he just like leaves her there in a way that like, I don't mind that he makes bad, selfish decisions, but like, I need more like desperation. The clock's ringing out like something, something, something. And then he's just like, God, I have no choice. I got to go and leave you here. I don't, I don't know. Anyway, uh, mix, mix, pause on our guy, but like a really interesting setup, uh,

of a character and like I said a really great performance I thought so yeah yeah I'm really looking forward to seeing this actor again I thought he was like exceptional I thought that he's on that scene the conversation with Junhee the pitch during hide and seek

I, I, I actually, I think you're, you're, I agree with you that like in that final, I wanted him to like look back and beg once more, I think. Um, but inside of the conversation, I, I actually like, I liked that scene. I thought that, um, her, you know, because like we talked about last pod, she, um,

Also has these, like, kind of push-pull moments. I'm repelled. I've talked myself into it again. And, you know, that the high of, like, my friend. Like, he made it out and he's going to come help me during hide-and-seek. Into just her abject disgust here. Staring his undeniable greed in the face. Like, when she says to him...

for the money. That person saved me and the baby and you killed her with the knife I gave you. And his face, he's like, you know, he's in this initial phase of kind of desperation, like trying to explain, trying to convince her. I didn't know. I did it so we could get out of here. I did it for you. I did it for the baby. I did it so we could start a life to get together. I'll help you. And then like the look on his face, I thought a good kind of encapsulation of his

desire to help her and the baby and to try to be better and then total self-interest was like captured when he saw her ankle. Yeah. Because he's so crestfallen because he knows that like they're not going to make it across. That means that if he does go with

or he's not going to make it, and that's not what he wants, as we will see in an even more heightened circumstance with the baby. And then when she says to him, like, that baby is mine, that baby has nothing to do with trash like you, we never want to see you again, not even in our dreams, and he's, like, sobbing. Nothing that anybody, Junhee, Gihoon, anyone says to him,

justifies the decision that he makes at the end, ultimately. Obviously. Oh. But we're not just saying baby dangling today. That's not okay. What a stance, Mallory. That's not okay. We're going to say it right now. No dog killing, no baby dangling. And, you know, because the story of our relationship watching this character is like,

I've talked myself in once again to believing that he's going to make the right decision to have something so undeniable happen at the end where it's like there is absolutely no path back from saying, no, I am aware of what this means. I am aware of what I'm about to do. That is the decision I have made. I thought was...

I think the speed and haste of the seesawing that you've tracked is right. I thought overall as an arc, that was like a really interesting and satisfying end game. And like we already talked about, I really did enjoy watching him handle and maneuver his way around the... The six. The six or the five, I guess, since he's a part of the six. Like that was just kind of like amazing. And I thought that the... In terms of the...

The lunchbox fiasco. The stretch where everything just falls apart. Right? Because he has, like, shouted move at Gi-hun, charged with the pole. Also, he's the one who figures out what the pole is there for. I thought everybody else was very slow on the uptake. I was like, guys, but there's only so many things to try to grab. Okay. You got some pole commentary? When he pulled the pole out, I was like, that never would have occurred to me. Oh. I was like...

I would have been going for, like, paint, like, a sharp paint chip that I could have, like, slit a jugular with. You have to touch everything there to try. I think we've already established you could win Squid Game in, like, game one, but you are...

I don't think that I'm getting very far in Squid Game or Survivor, as previously discussed. You have these instincts that I don't possess. And I would just be like, that's a nice pole. And you're like, that's to shove you off a building. It's a jousting lance. It's not a jousting lance. It's a pole. It's a pole. And I thought it was anchored.

to hold on to. Like, they're trying to push me off. I hold on to this pole. Like, probably I would have wrapped my body around the pole. Yeah, to try to like stay anchored. Yeah. And then, Yoongi would have just been like, cool, the pole comes out. And I'm like, god damn it. And then I go over the side and we move on to the next platform. That's probably what happens. How are your limbs arranged? That's so

And like a real sort of like windmill pattern, I think. Yeah. That's nice. Beautiful. And then the blood will seep out of my head and people will freeze frame and look really closely and they're like, is that a wolf? Is that a dragon? My favorite moment on the internet. That's a game of thrusters reference books. You're the best. Oh, man. Great stuff. The number one M.S.P. outline.

MS Paint. Dude. See, it's a wolf, man. Clearly. Anyway. That was a good time in the fandom. Genuinely, it was. We had a time. With Myung-gi and Gi-hun, because as you noted, Gi-hun is like, I will be the eliminated player, right? And Myung-gi is like,

You're trying to trick me. I don't believe you. I don't trust you. What's up? What was up with you and Junhee? Is something going on? It seems weird. He's jealous of that relationship. Anakin, Obi-Wan, Padme. Exactly. He's jealous of the fact that she has entrusted

Gi-hun to nurture and protect and care for her baby. And she says to him, I don't even want to see you in our dreams. So again, I would like to be clear, none of this justifies what he does or the choices that he makes. But, you know, to think about like the...

He has chosen to justify his behavior to himself by saying, look at where this rejection has led me. And then the way that the greed aspect manifests of like, player 100, fight until the end. Gotta say, he never quit. Fight until the end. He pitches, lunchbox again. Don't worry. Yeah.

A couple more players just died. We had some scraps. 203. Goodbye. 203 stabbed. But we packed the lunchbox. We packed the lunchbox. He's still here. I just need 10. I will give you. 11.4. Here's another 1.4 billion. 1.4 billion. And then the look on Gi-hoon's face when Myung-gi said, 15.2 billion, though, if you're gone. Yeah. And he's just like, okay. He literally says it, right? He's like, it can't be you. You can't win. Yeah.

It's the kind of level of greed that has driven this whole thing he's trying to tear down. But he's also like, I can't leave the baby with you. And so I thought all of that was interesting. And I think it feels representative and reflective of what you were saying earlier, where there's enough kind of potent stuff happening here that if we rework some of it and switch and change and tweak, there's something kind of like really scintillating happening here. Four more passes, and I think we're there. Yeah.

Oh, man. The baby plays another key role, which is that Noelle, after everything that happens with her and...

There are various boat-related plots happening all at once. We leave, we're back. Yes. And then Noelle versus the officer. Sure. Which I thought I felt, like, extremely flat because we just don't know nearly enough about their history together. Obviously, we know they have, like, that he brought her into the game, et cetera. But, like, the fact that he gets this big speech of, like, the reason I thought you were special and, like, I lost the person, too, and, like...

We just didn't have nearly enough investment in that relationship and those characters. But, like, the baby, to your, would she save the baby? The baby kind of saved her, right? She, like, and we have these parallels, obviously, with, like, her and Gi-Hoon and the child and, like, this, in different ways, obviously, like, regret and loss and this absence. And then this, like, reminder in another form of a different path forward. Yeah.

I was trying to figure out why the Noelle stuff did not work for me. And I think it's because, so we start strong, I think, with her at the beginning of season two, like watching her interact with player 246's kid. I will say my heart melted when she came back at the end.

The kid. The kid is so cute. The kid is just gangbusters. I was like, oh my God. Incredible kid. And the bunny again. But I think the problem is that Noelle had no other character to talk to about who she is and what she was feeling the whole season. And so without another person for her to like, we're just not inside of her head. She's a stoic character. Again, stoicism is fine, but like,

I need Brianne to have a pod. Like, I need that character to have someone that they can talk to. If she and 246 have been able to, like, have conversations outside of just the logistics of how do we get out of here, then I think it could have sunk deeper into, like,

their connection or you know who she is as a person all of a sudden instead it's just like I was like I don't I feel like she's gonna save him whether or not she makes it out I wasn't sure but like she's gonna save him he's gonna get back to his kid his kid's gonna be fine so it just feels like this real drawn out boat shenanigans to get us there um

And I just was deeply uninterested. I'm sorry. She's in that record room for so long. The archive room for a while. Why? It was when she saw the picture of her family. That was quite sad. And then the fact that she has it, like the chart edges hanging in her car at the end. That was touching. But yeah, to the point about like not...

She is shut off and closed off, and obviously that's intentional in the story design. But it was interesting when the broker calls her in the finale with news of her daughter. She doesn't even recognize the voice or who it is. It kind of reminded you of how long it had been without her interacting with other people other than, yeah, keep going north through the fog. Very kind of practical, tactile. I thought on the officer front, first of all, I know obviously we're moving up to

The front man's floor, and that's his, but we did briefly get to see the officer's quarters. They've done a nice job with some of the interior decorating here at Squid Game HQ. And, you know, always a nice glass of whiskey available, which I appreciate. On the... There's a difference between characters making mistakes, which is interesting, and characters being dumb, which is bad storytelling front. Yeah.

I'm sorry, but the officer forgetting that the gun was in the elevator was nuts. Nuts! It had to possibly be a thing that happened. He's like, you're boasting. You're not going to make it. It's not about her making it. The machine gun is in there. She's going to kill you with it. All of us at home knew the gun was in the elevator. Yeah, yeah. That was very strange. Yeah.

Speaking of boats, all the various boat plots, what else, if anything, we've already talked a little bit about, about Junho and Inho and how that plot concluded. Is there anything we haven't hit there that you want to? No, I'm just, I am glad that Junho made it and I'm glad that he's got a bunch of money and a cute baby to raise. Like that sounds like a great life for him. And, and you know, I'm excited for Choi and his hotel plans. I really liked when Choi was like briefly trying to convince him to try money lending. That was amazing. That was good. Like I'm,

I'm glad he made it. But I wish that he and his brother had had, like, a more meaningful, you know, confrontation at the end of everything. I don't mind that it was unresolved because I think the lack of closure in some ways can be effective. But there's a difference between that being the place we land and, like, without... I think without question, the second biggest driver of the entire three seasons of Squid Game after Gi-Hoon's experience is...

Jun-ho trying to figure out what's going on in the island. Jun-ho is the second build on this show, and I don't care enough about him. And I wish I did. Like a 13-second exchange was just not enough. Not enough. That was very strange. Do you think he'll be spending any of that money on himself? Is he saving it all for...

Player two, two, two. I think he's going to like, he's going to keep working. Yeah. But he's going to make sure that they have like, like they'll go on vacations together. He might use some of her money to like, let's go on a nice vacation. And it's enriching for you. I also get to be there. I'll be there, but we'll be there. And, but like most of it in her like college fund and trust and all that sort of stuff like that, but like raise her in a, in a, in a nice sort of like lifestyle. Yeah. That sounds great. Um,

Do you believe, what's your headcanon here? Like, is he still searching for his brother? No. I think this allows him to let it go. Yeah. Okay. Okay. What else on that front, however big or small, like, did you have a favorite series-long payoff? I like that we came back to Gi-hun's daughter. Me too. Not just, like, she has the money now, but...

Like, her just being like, fuck my dad. I thought that was really sad and in a very effective way. Like, really good. Like, she's like, he – we're watching him do this, like, incredibly brave, heroic thing. And she's like, if he doesn't give a shit about me, fuck him. And that was sad. Yeah. But he was like – and it tied really nicely back to that sterile conversation that you and I really liked where he's like, you know, the most enriching thing in my life was watching her after she was born grow up. But –

We remember, you especially since you just did a rewatch of season one, remember how we met him. Yeah. And what a fucking absolute dipshit he was. Yeah. And a shitty dad he was. He gave her a gun lighter for her birthday that he had to...

a kid at the arcade to use the claw machine to get for him because he blew the money that he was supposed to use to buy her a nice dinner. Not great. No. Not great. The money that he got from his mom to do that. So I think that...

her being like, fuck him. You know? And like, yeah, she'll have his money, but I... And maybe she'll be like... But she doesn't know why... I know. She's got the bloody jacket. Okay, here's my note for our beloved frontman in Ho. I thought...

And I thought he has such an expressive face and, like, he's such a great performer, as we've talked about. And, you know, like, obviously when we've covered, like, Mandalorian, you have a character in a mask. You're like, I think he's, like, so magnetic that even when he was wearing Frontman's mask, you can, like, feel him.

It was just the level of like emotion that he was on set. Exactly. That he is conveying just in like all of the scenes. It was such a highlight of the series. And the despair, you know, the tears in his eyes when he watches Gi-hun decide not to stab everybody in their sleep. The look in his eyes when he sees Cate Blanchett's American recruiter and he's like,

And we'll get to that more in a second, but he's like, this is like... It almost doesn't matter where I am with it and what I think and what I feel. This is sprawling and uncontainable and like the rot has creeped into every corner. Yeah.

I do not think he should have handed a bloody jacket without any information to Yoon's daughter. That feels like a bit of a mistake. I think him giving the money to her was lovely, though. He gives the money. He's like, your father was hero, actually, or something like that. But instead, he's like, here's a bloody jacket that means nothing to you and a debit card. Um...

I... Resoundingly, the feedback I've seen from people is like, we wanted a Frontman spinoff or we want a Frontman origin story or whatever it is. He's my favorite character by a mile. Yeah, they did a great job with him. I just wish... He was...

pretty absent in the back in this entire season I would say just frustratingly so after we got to like feast on his presence in season two so even like just the logistics at the end and you know it was active it was propulsive but like the Coast Guard's on the way like we're on the clock and he has to kind of move into like exit mode and I sort of just wanted to I would have been happy to sit there and just linger on the tears in his eyes like it

It's maybe two seconds when he walks into Sky Squid Game Arena to go get the baby. And he looks down at Gi-Hoon like, I feel like that should have been like nine minutes of just him staring at him, right? Noelle had to be in the record room for that entire... They needed that run time for the record room fire, I guess. It's true. Let's talk briefly before we go about the...

The Cate Blanchett cameo. You've already mentioned the Fincher possibility, like all of these rumors and whispers. We've talked about that a little bit. Anything else on this front that we haven't gotten to that you want to say either about this cameo and how it happened, what it might represent about the future of Squid Game or anything else? So like naturally when you see Cate Blanchett show up at the end of this, and once again, when I... You're like the VIPs should be better actors. They can get anyone. It's funny. When I...

Once again, annoyingly tweeted out about the VIPs. Someone was like, well, maybe they blew their whole budget on that Academy Award winning cameo. And I actually had not finished the season yet. So I was like, okay, I can't wait to see what that is. Who's showing up? And I was like, wow, Cate Blanchett in a suit. She looks amazing. But like, and she, I thought it was, she was really fun, but like, I don't know. It's kind of annoying because it's,

The creator said like, no, this isn't part of a plan for a spinoff. It has nothing to do with what Fincher has planned. There is no plan to do like a Cate Blanchett centric thing. So it's just like, I mean, yeah, sure. I would happily take it, but I was just like,

So then it's just there to burn some... Spend that money on the CGI baby, you know, is what I have to say. That's where I would put that. Hire some better... Hire Cate Blanchett to play the baby? Hire Cate Blanchett to play the baby in every single VIP. Just let them keep the mask on, but they're all Cate Blanchett. It's like that when she shows up in Hot Fuzz and she just keeps the mask on, but it's Cate Blanchett. Oh, man. But... Like, fun, but... Yeah.

Also felt like, you know, Charlize Theron showing up at the end of a Doctor Strange movie and you're just being like, I'm never going to see them again. Harry Styles, what are you doing here? I'll never see you again. So, yeah, I don't know. I feel it was fun and fine, but ultimately like not that additive, I guess, at the end of the day. How about you? Okay, here's, I loved it. I was in. I mean, it was fun. Part because it was like fun. It was bold. I, you know, ever since there was that moment, I,

in season one, when the VIPs arrive and they're like, I'm, I'm paraphrasing. I don't have the exact, the exact phrasing in front of me, which is actually probably pretty important for the point of thought. One of the VIPs is like, yeah, it's always fun, but like, there's nothing like seeing it in Korea. And I've always wondered, was that meant to imply, oh,

seeing it in person versus watching it on my monitor? Or was that meant to hint at the game here in Korea is better than... The past Squid Game suck. Yeah, exactly. Like, exactly. And so it's always been interesting to think about the idea of the global spread of Squid Game. And so I did really like that we got that kind of like... Whether it's bigger than you think. Yeah, exactly. And then with Frontman, you have that moment where you're initially like...

Because he pulls up. Or the car stops, actually. And then they make eye contact and she smiles. And it's like, oh, do they... Is that a smile of recognition? Is he involved? Or is it like what we were talking about earlier? Like, he's like, oh, fuck. Like, this is just... Boy, there's no containing it. That was all sort of interesting to me. And then, you know, I think this is my version of doing the thing that we were critiquing Netflix for, like, an hour ago. Which is immediately going into, like...

What should the games in Squid Game US be? But I kind of couldn't help it. You're like, should the Squid Game Ulog next year just have Cate Blanchett and Sue sitting next to it? I think that's a great idea, and they should probably get on developing it immediately. The holidays are still a few months away. What feel like the...

These are the games that define the American childhood experience. They would absolutely be in the six games of season one of Squid Game. There was a clear, I think there were like, obviously like 50 candidates. I thought the number one was Capture the Flag. Capture the Flag is really good.

And feels very American. Musical Chairs. Musical Chairs is a great one. Is a really good one. Duck, Duck, Goose. Duck, Duck, Goose. Simon Says. Yeah. Simon Says is on my list too. Red Rover. Red Rover. That's a good one. My two favorites. I could endlessly...

play sardines. I love sardines. That would be a fun one. Yeah. Because it's like you can't hide with, you know, like get out of here. You know what I mean? There's just like a deadly version of that. And then I also used to play almost every weekend at my best friend's house.

There was like a pole sort of like in the middle, not a pole you could remove and shove people off a cliff with, but like a pillar in the middle, the dead center of her dad's house. A metal pole? No. This reminds me of the moment on the fantasy football show where Craig Horlbeck was talking about the handcuffs that his dad kept in the side table. Oh, no. And Heidi Fitz and DK were like, why did you do that?

That's a table crack. Carlos knows what I'm talking about as the producer of that podcast. This is not a stripper pole. This is just sort of like an architectural feature. It was like a sizable sort of... One could not... Anyway, all right. We play a version of hide and go seek. Okay. Where you would hide and then someone was a seeker and the way his house was set up, it was kind of like open. But you had to get to that pole first.

Okay. Before the seeker found you and tagged you. Okay. Do you know what I mean? So it was like hide and go seek plus like a tag of some kind.

That's great. I could play that endlessly. It was like her, her brother, and me. It was three of us. And we could like play it endlessly. And then Floor is Lava. Floor is Lava is just like an absolute. That will be in season one, probably. What about Hangman, you know? Oh. Going from drawing it to making an actual game that feels... Oh my God. Your teammate sort of just like hangs lower and lower on the noose as you... Tough, tough stuff. Fuck up.

Tough stuff. Or your opponent as you achieve. Yep. You can see how it would work. I don't know what the...

I don't know what the equivalent of Squid Game is as like the clear finale choice, the one that feels like the right game to build toward. But all of these feel like they could be games in U.S., Squid Game or Squid Game Cold in U.S. Yeah, Captain Flag is very quintessentially, feels quintessentially American to me. Now, HobbsandDragons and Gmail.com, if you're like, actually... Yeah. Captain Flag was invented in the Czech Republic. Whatever. Like,

Let me know. Entirely possible. Yeah. Cate Blanchett, David Fincher, Floor is Lava, who says no? I say yes. Her as the recruiter. Yeah. Also, I just want to compliment her slap technique. It was great. She was just like a full body spin into the slap. It was pretty phenomenal. She was rocking a fit.

And she looked great. Slapping the shit out of the person that she was recruiting into the game. It was a very effective couple minutes of television. Did you think of Five Hands Roski Rules when the Blue Circle Six was all playing Rock, Paper, Scissors together? No, but now I am, and I love you. Oh, God. All right, any final thoughts on anything? Any part of Squid Game, the VIPs or otherwise, before we leave today? Oh, I had one more question for you I'm just remembering.

How present in your nightmares will the wax figurines, question mark, player one, the original host be? That was freaky. I had to rewind that. I was like, what am I looking at? I was like, I had a moment where I was like, is he alive? Is he an android? Yeah. Have they like uploaded his consciousness into a robotic body? Somehow. Thank you for reminding me of that. Oh, God. I was like, scary. What is that? Yeah, scary. Okay, we did it.

We sure did. We're done. I'll see you next week. After the holiday. Time travel stuff since the year 2000. Film and television. Hobbitsanddragons.gmail.com if you have any thoughts about that. Fantastic. Got the 4K.

disc for Back to the Future. Did you already have it? Did you already have it? Or were you like, Adam, here's an excuse to buy the 4K Back to the Future? He doesn't need excuses, but he was like, I've been tracking this one. Excellent. And what day does it need to be here by? That's Adam. He's obsessed with you, as you know. I loved getting to see the physical media collection.

Adam's physical media collection was tremendous. I've never had the pleasure of seeing Sean Fennessey's, but... His is... Extensive, I'm sure. Ample. I'm sure. But I was actually just mesmerized by...

the organization, like how your collection was organized. And also like I was looking at your Mission Impossible discs and then Adam's like, oh yeah, there's like a little tear in the bottom corner. This drives me crazy. And I was like, I didn't even see that. I respect the attention to detail in this collection. Great stuff. Okay. Keep me posted on the Mead. Keep the bad babies posted on the Mead. I will keep you posted on my Chicken Tender intake and we will be back together reunited.

on Tuesday. Thank you to our crew today, Carlos Chiriboga, who, listen, tomorrow is moving across the country, but is still here with us today. Carlos, the best. Unbelievable. We'll be in LA and Angeleno soon. He's heading west to us. Incredible. What a thrill. Yeah. John Richter, Arjuna Ramgopal, Jomia Deneron, Killer Crew, as always, happy 4th of July.

to everyone and we will see you next week for back to the future at 40 slash timey-wimey best of the century so far inception at 15 and then before you know it superman superman superman bye