Squid Game “The Front Man”

Yeah, law enforcement isn’t saving anyone on this show, but we all knew that already, right?

This here is the penultimate and shortest episode of the run, and since a second season is now only sort of on tap depending on how you read what’s been said, it seems doubtful that Jun-ho is going to be able to save the day.  His goal, dramatically speaking, was to allow the viewer to see what was going on behind the scenes, and since he wasn’t even seen in the pilot and got a lot less screentime than, say, Gi-hun or Sang-woo, then he wasn’t the main character.  I am even inclined to think if he had somehow gotten away from these awful islands that he wouldn’t be able to do much because the men running this thing are far too wealthy and powerful to allow something as petty as local law enforcement stop them, no matter how much evidence Jun-ho had.

So, yeah, he wasn’t going to make it.

But it is the Front Man who shoots the cop, even saying he knows how many actual bullets Jun-ho has left because…wow, there’s a limit to how many actual real bullets a cop can carry in South Korea?  I did not know that.  The Front Man did.  Jun-ho probably did.

Did Jun-ho know the Front Man is also his missing brother?

Um, no.

Did he die?

Um, probably.

Is the Front Man sorry that happened?

Sure looks that way.

What does the game have on that man?

Regardless, this whole “the game is fair” thing seems wrong still.  Sae-byeok took a glass shard to the side, and she’s probably bleeding out.  Gi-hun thinks they gotta take Sang-woo out because, well, he’s far too ruthless to play against and sees no problem with the fact he killed someone in the game for taking too long.  Would Gi-hun have done the same?  He doesn’t seem to think so, and it does seem unlikely.  He wants to kill Sang-woo now since, well, the last three contestants got a nice steak dinner, and the knives were left behind, but Sae-byeok, after getting Gi-hun’s promise to watch out for her kid brother, points out he’s not a murderer.

And since she is bleeding out, he calls for help.

Hey!  He gets some!

Oh wait, she died while his back was turned because Sang-woo murdered her.

And no, Gi-hun can’t attack back because there must be one last game, and there are only two contestants left.  There must be a game.  There is no way to prevent that at this point.  Two men, two childhood friends, are going to play each other in a lethal game of some kind.

And if this game can get one brother to murder another, I don’t think that childhood friendship is going to be much of an obstacle.  That’s not the sort of game being played here.  I’d say more, but if this is a commentary of capitalism, I pretty much already have.