Folks clad in inexperienced tracksuits stand nervously in a circle. They’re collaborating in a “check” on Squid Recreation: The Problem, Netflix’s new actuality competitors collection based mostly on the streamer’s hit South Korean drama Squid Recreation, however they’re actually simply enjoying a recreation of likelihood. Every participant should nominate somebody to be eradicated, after which roll a cube. In the event that they roll a six, the individual they selected is eradicated. And so, over the course of 10 lengthy minutes, they roll and roll and carry on rolling. Some inevitably roll sixes. Relieved gamers sigh; buddies of eradicated gamers cry. In the meantime, sitting on my sofa, I hover my thumb over my distant’s fast-forward button, wishing they’d hurry up.
This was not the response I needed to the unique Squid Recreation. Two years in the past, I watched from behind my fingers, gasped on the twists, teared up for the characters as they risked their lives for an opportunity to win an enormous fortune. The present’s informal hyper-violence was surprising, however its poignant relationships—the best way they fashioned and fell aside because the prize cash grew extra inside attain—elicited probably the most visceral responses.
The Problem, as a actuality program involving civilians, is a non-murderous and much tamer model of Squid Recreation. Black ink is used to signify blood, and talking-head interviews compensate for the shortage of scripted dialogue. For the gamers, there’s no precise sense of hazard—solely the concern of lacking out on the $4.56 million jackpot, reportedly the biggest in reality-TV historical past, which signifies that The Problem actively rejects Squid Recreation’s trenchant commentary on wealth inequality and the hell of dwelling in a late-capitalist society. However the collection’ willful ignorance of its guardian present’s message is the least of its issues. Like most competitors packages, it’s extremely bingeable, even addictive. But it’s too clearly packaged, its video games carelessly designed. The Problem ditches the weather that made Squid Recreation Netflix’s most-watched collection of all time—the sudden tenderness between characters, the brutality and scale of its set items—and delivers a rote actuality present.
Even the meticulously re-created units—the Escherlike staircases, the towers of bunk beds, the shadowy management room through which the “guards” observe the contestants—are foolish relatively than chilling. The Problem, with its gamers cheerfully pretending to break down after they’re eradicated and applauding when extra cash is added to the prize cash, is just too goofy to make Squid Recreation’s manufacturing design work as something greater than a well-recognized backdrop. The identical goes for the video games themselves: Many gamers, having watched the drama, know what to anticipate. Once they play Honeycomb—the sport through which they have to use a needle to extract a form from a sheet of sweet with out breaking it—most of them lick their sweet to melt the sugar, simply because the protagonist of Squid Recreation did. And since The Problem doesn’t have all the contestants take part on the identical time, the episode yields a number of tedious rounds of individuals repeatedly licking and poking their sweet. It’s excruciatingly boring to observe.
The present’s best failure, although, is its scarcity of memorable characters. In line with Squid Recreation, this system begins with 456 gamers, any of whom could possibly be eradicated at any second. With so many individuals to comply with, The Problem reduces most contestants to reality-TV archetypes: the overconfident villain, the loner not there to make buddies, the underdog with a coronary heart of gold. Although friendships type and gamers antagonize each other over time, the present doesn’t concentrate on any of the contestants lengthy sufficient to make their tales resonate. A mother-and-son pair receives extra display screen time than most, as a result of their motivation—to spend extra time with one another—is so easy.
In some methods, The Problem suffers as a result of it’s been branded a Squid Recreation spin-off. Listening to gamers say “That is wild!” and “You bought this!” again and again simply made me take into consideration how sharp the unique present’s dialogue could possibly be. The glimpses of deeper private causes for taking part in—proven briefly interviews performed earlier than the video games in “participant processing rooms”—made me miss the advanced portraits of Squid Recreation’s fictional characters. The Problem quantities to 1 episode after one other of strangers rapidly making an attempt to perform duties, greedily placing themselves forward of their competitors, and being shocked when something occurs that didn’t occur in Squid Recreation. It’s the epitome of why tv has been decreased to “content material” currently; it’s opportunistic programming capitalizing on recognizable IP and delivering one thing inconsiderate and lazy. I felt responsible watching a lot of it.
However then once more, I couldn’t cease. Each time an episode of The Problem ended, I discovered myself compelled to observe extra. The present barely scratches the floor of what Squid Recreation interrogated—what individuals are like when pushed to the sting, what they’d really sacrifice for a fortune—however The Problem is traditional actuality TV: Contestants exhibit for the cameras, play thoughts video games, interact in petty squabbles, type alliances that become as brittle as a sheet of sweet. I can’t declare to care about any of them, however I do wish to know who wins—which is why I by no means watched The Problem from behind my fingers. As an alternative, the present is the type of superficial leisure that I discover terribly onerous to look away from.
