Squid Game: The Challenge feels more like a Netflix theme-park commercial than a competition show, but the James Bond series 007: Road to a Million is great.
Squid Game: The Challenge, the new reality show spinoff of Netflix’s popular post-apocalyptic series, requires way too much buy-in. Which is surprising: Squid Game was watched by millions of people, becoming the most popular show on Netflix ever. And yet, The Challenge takes it for granted that viewers and contestants alike are the biggest Squid Game fans in the world, but never really succeeds in making a case for itself beyond the IP it’s basically an extended commercial for.
The Challenge (much like the fictional competition in Squid Game) pits 456 people against each other in a series of elimination games and challenges. The last one standing wins $4.56 million. As for the competitions themselves, early in the show almost all of them are pulled directly from the original series, like Red Light Green Light or Ppopgi. As concepts, these games are exciting and they can certainly be tense — as the original series proves.
But none of that tension actually gets communicated to the viewer during the show. The Challenge’s rhythm is all off. It takes the easiest parts of the competitions painfully slow, then speeds through the eliminations and the struggle, blowing by the moments of intensity that should feel naturally built during each episode.
In the Ppopgi game, The Challenge spends a ridiculous amount of time building up the difficulty of contestants choosing which shape they’ll have to cut out, then the easiest shapes get the most screen time as every contestant breezes through the task. When we finally reach the dreaded umbrella, the one that knocks out nearly every contestant is forced to attempt it, the show barely seems to care.
