Squid Game, the South Korean dystopian thriller series released in 2021, was a global hit because of its unique concept and intense storytelling that captivated viewers around the world. It became the first Korean drama to top Netflix’s weekly most-watched TV charts worldwide, reaching number one in 94 countries, including the U.S. and U.K. In just 28 days, it racked up over 1.56 billion viewing hours, making it the most-watched show of its time.
Netflix’s internal reports revealed that Squid Game was incredibly profitable. It generated $900 million while costing only $21.4 million to produce. Critics and audiences alike praised the show, earning it a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and 8.2/10 on Google. Unsurprisingly, its success led creator Hwang Dong-hyuk to develop a highly anticipated second season.
However, season two, released late last year, has failed to live up to the original’s standards, with too many sub-plots that drag out the show. After three years of waiting, many fans feel the creators ruined what made the show special – its originality, brutality and gripping tension. Instead, the new season leans heavily into unnecessary woke elements, attempting to deliver messages of inclusivity, such as casting a male actor (who identifies as ‘cisgender’) to portray Hyun-ju, a transgender ‘woman’.
The creator explained that including a trans character was a bold effort to raise awareness about the challenges and prejudices faced by gender minorities in South Korea. Clearly, Hyun-ju serves as a mouthpiece for Hwang’s feelings about the LGBTQ+ community, aiming to push for its greater acceptance and visibility in society.
Unfortunately, Hyun-ju’s character feels forced into the spotlight. He gets almost as much screen time as the protagonist and his interactions with other characters slow the pace of the show. Many of these conversations seem designed to deliver didactic social messages. For example, an older character initially criticises him, only to later apologise and launch into a monologue about tolerance and regret.
Hyun-ju’s backstory is explored in endless depth, revealing that his reason for joining the deadly competition at the centre of the drama is to pay for a sex change operation. One scene even depicts his discomfort with his own body, asking others to look away because he still has a penis. This moment feels like a clear attempt to advocate such surgeries, despite the real-life risks associated with procedures like penectomy, which can lead to serious complications like cancer and infections.
Unsurprisingly, backlash has followed. Season two’s ratings have dropped significantly from the first season. On Rotten Tomatoes, its score slipped from 95% to 86%, and audience approval plummeted from 84% to 62%. Even though the debut shattered records, fans complained about the wasted potential, the weak side plots and a shift away from the original’s nail-biting tension. There’s far less game-time now, stripping away the edge-of-your-seat appeal that made millions binge-watch.
It’s likely that the ratings decline is linked to the show’s woke turn and heavy-handed didacticism, with one Reddit user lamenting: “The magic is gone – there’s too much preaching and not enough tension.” For comparison, look at the recent success of The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a non-woke film that skyrocketed to the top of global box office charts.
Squid Game’s decision to embrace radical progressive ideology seems to have backfired – once again proving that when a show goes woke, it goes broke.
Jack Watson is a 16 year-old schoolboy in Year 11. You can read his Substack about following Hull City FC here. Follow him on X here.
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Leitch needs launching from the battlements of Edinburgh Castle. Preferably with useless Yousaf tied to him at the ankles.
A highly appropriate denouement for the pantomime that is the SNP.
Thank you.
Leich is a dentist! “Professor” my ar*e!
“Jamie Dawson KC, Counsel to the inquiry, challenged Prof. Leitch that he was advising Mr Yousaf how to avoid the SNP Government’s own rules using a “workaround”.
He asked: “If the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Social Care didn’t understand the rules, what chance did anybody else have?””
As usual, missing point (probably deliberately). The question from the “secretary” wasn’t an attempt to find out what he should be doing to stay safe, it was just an attempt to establish how he could get away with normal human behaviour and still claim he was within the law. Not the same thing at all, and the KC bloody well knows this.
All theatre, just like “covid”.
What happened to “there was no pandemic”?
If the governments own senior medical adviser says it was legitimate to not wear a mask due to a “social occasion”, the KC should have been asking what sort of virus would understand that.
The very existence of these nonsensical rules shows in itself there was nothing as deadly as the government claimed. If there was something genuinely that deadly, people wouldn’t have been concerned with socialising.
The Scottish inquiry is probably more to do with getting the SNP ousted from government.
If the inquiry gets the SNP ousted from government then some good will of come from it.
…have come from it.
I’m usually holding a drink whenever I’m in the pub. It’s good to know that this means I’m safe from COVID. Does this count as beneficial health effect?
As long as “food and drink was being served” you would have been exempt as would have everyone else in a pub, restaurant, cafe.
That isn’t in any legislation and venues seemed to be enforcing a stricter policy but that was the official response from the Scottish Government to a maskless First Minister violating a pensioners territorial bubble shown here:
https://www.glasgowtimes.co.uk/news/scottish-news/20074393.lulu-nicola-sturgeon-spotted-book-launch-glasgow/
“violating a pensioners territorial bubble shown here:”
Brilliant.
I also never found out if a Scotch Egg will keep you safe from Covid!
A pickled onion possibly but not sure about the Ova Scotia!
The recurring theme in “Scotch Egg: The Musical” is essentially the future BBC reporter’s search for an answer to that, based on reviewing documentation, media clips and an interview with “Boris Johnson” (and all the other survivors), reminiscing about what fun they had running The Lockdown some twenty years previously. The budget for the musical was far smaller than these inquiries, much faster-paced and more entertaining! Here is part of the musical item “The laws are set in stone”.
(2 min 56 s)
Football is safe//The virus just knows//
But it’s deadly as hell in the aisles of Waitrose//
When you walk to your table you risk dropping dead//
but sit down ……and it sails overhead//
‘Cuz the laws are set in stone//
Keep the people sheeple//Make them stay at home.
Terrific
It depended on whether or not the scotch egg self identified as a substantial meal. If it did then pubs could serve one, stay open and you’d be safe from covid.
I remember a big discussion wether or not a scotch egg was substantial meal or only someone’s trans-substantial meal and wether or not this mattered. The outcome was that trans-substantial meals are obviously substantial meals.
Must say it’s depressing being reminded of all this and having memories of all the nonsense – pubs with some sort of plastic alleyway you could only follow one way to get a drink and each table with plastic sheets between it and the rest and surly landlords getting to tell you what to do and to put your mask on even when going to the loo. Restaurants, as mentioned, where you were safe if you sat down but unsafe in a queue like a psychopathic game of musical chairs. These shysters have a lot to answer for. I hope they get put on trial one day and get put away for a long, long time, far from doing any harm to anyone ever again.
And being turned away from a half empty Pub, great for business. I went out in summer 2020, dragged out by colleagues. It was an unpleasant experience. Taking people’s Mobile numbers to buy a drink, that is a red flag and breached data protection.
It was a wonderful time to play with names and numbers…
The one occasion during the ‘pandemic’ when most Brits did the right thing and showed some guts: half the men’s names on those lists were James Bond.
I actually credit that resistance with finishing off this particular farce pretty quickly, in contrast to other countries.
Oh yes. I had a fabulous mobile number which consisted of sixes and the title of a book written by George somebody or other. It provided a chuckle.
Back in 2021 I visited England when all this crap was still going on. I went to a pub. I walked in the ‘out door’ and walked to the bar. Told I shouldn’t have done that – tough. Anyway i was asked for my phone number which I duly gave – it was an overseas number and needless to say I altered one digit. The staff just smiled and served me my drink. I had already told them I only had cash but they wanted a debit card. Somehow they were not impressed when I habded over my bangkok bank card.
The upshot was I had a lovely face mask free natter with the landlady and paid cash. I left by the indoor. A smirk of satisfaction on my face.
The depressing bit was that this was so obviously nonsensical but nobody of the supposedly civil, ie non-government enforcers, ever had a “Hold-a-sec, this is ridiculous and I’m not going to do it!” moment.
I discarded my face mask I had worn due to the “It’s just a mask!” rethoric despite it was oftentimes driving me near nuts with panic attacks about running out of air in supermarket queues I bravely overcame every time and because it usually doesn’t pay to draw attention to yourself (autists learn this thoroughly because this attention is usually violent and they’re always blamed for it) the day after the Michie interview where she admitted that masking was just something she had seen on holiday in Japan and badly wanted to introduce in England forever, but not specifically because of COVID. I was – as usual – standing masked in a supermarket queue, feeling the flashes of minor pain indicating lack of oxygen all over my body and worrying how I’ll get through this. Then, I remembered the interview and suddenly, the sky cleared up. I thought “Am I crazy? Why am I hurting myself just because this stupid old witch wants that?”, pulled the darned thing away and left determined to never wear it again.
Fast-forward to November 2021, when the fastest impregnating jellymop of the West made them mandatory again. At first, I was just angry and desparate. And then, I decided that I wouldn’t wear it again unless under the influence of direct force. I’m a small guy (5’6″, 10 stone, 12lb) and hence, forcing me to wear it wouldn’t have been difficult for most people. Next day in the supermarket, door guard was a nervous and aggressive rather small guy (still taller than me) very much in love with masks (he kept his for a long time after the mandate had been abolished). He tried to intercept me to mask me but I just sidestepped him, angrily half-shouted “No, no, no, no!” and made it absolutely clear that without getting violent, he wouldn’t score. He chased me a few steps and then gave up. Next day, there was a tall guy who just looked at me and said “You’ve told me you’re exempt, right?” I hadn’t and didn’t react to that and that was the end of it.
I’m pretty certain that many people wouldn’t be able to get through this and they shouldn’t have to try.
Nice long story. Here’s mine: I never wore a mask.
In the pub, it was mask on when standing, off when sitting.
In the chambers of the Houses of Commons and Lords, it was mask off when standing and on when sitting.
TheScience™
If you were perching in the pub on a barstool (i.e. head at standing elevation but bearing most of your weight with your butt cheeks), you imploded into a singularity and sucked the pub with everyone in it into a black hole – regardless of whether you had a mask on or off. God knows what happened in the House of Commons bar. Perhaps it just teleported to Mars. Here’s hoping eh.
My grandchildren will think I am insane. I hope I get at least one. Things are promising so far, my little 11 year old lad can’t stop talking about the little French girls in his little French school
You get my vote, Marcus, for making me burst out laughing!
‘I never wore a mask.’
Sir Christopher Chope.
The only MP who saw through this charade and this illegal attack on bodily sovereignty.
“I never wore a mask.”
Neither did I so Chope was in good company.
Nor I, cheers!
Well, there was that one time when the pilot spoke so loudly down the tannoy that all the speakers crackled like empty crisp packets and distorted the words “I WILL NOT LEAVE THE RUNWAY UNTIL EVERYONE HAS A MASK OVER THEIR MOUTHS AND NOSES”
I started to look around for the oxygen mask and attempted to find the lifejacket from under my seat but the very very very vicious Portuguese air hostess left me in no doubt about the seriousness of the situation.
She had to lend me hers.
“Prof. Leitch became a household name in Scotland during the {“pandemic”} There fixed that!
When anybody mentions The Pandemic, I quietly correct them: “The Pandemic? Oh, you mean The Lockdown.” However, the opportunity doesn’t arise much, since “Karen” (the fastest aisle vigilante in the West and the most rainbowed and loudest saucepan-banger in our street) is surprisingly quiet when we talk about What We Did In 2020.
You are on a roll.
Oh I do that religiously. Cheers!
Didn’t work for me. Threatened with arrest for drinking from a water bottle after cycling 30 miles to Birmingham International Station.
Almost nobody apart from 2 transport police in the carriage.
Still angry 3 years later,although I sipped it continuously to Euston.
“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
So all we have thought and often said, these people were superior to us.
Better pigs. They stink.
Ironically his Face is one that benefits wearing a mask !
Deleting messages will have happened across the political class. I do not believe the security services cannot get them back and they should do so becuae lyingto the courts and to the public is a serious issue.
Poe’s Law strikes again. The hypocrisy is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
It’s almost as if they knew their own rules were nonsense, and perhaps even that masks don’t work.
A typical elongated Telegraph article which repeats the message several times but with turning the words around.
Who’s the brainless twerp who has been downticking? Go and read the Guardian!