Squid Game kills time, not people, in a largely pointless second episode

[Editor’s note: The recap of episode three publishes December 28.]

How far can Squid Game get without the Games?

It's a question that's far from academic for "Halloween Party," an episode that turns the already slow-burn tension of the show's second-season premiere down to "positively glacial." I can, and will, argue that Squid Game is much smarter than the simplistic murder games that Netflix's own treatment of the series so frequently boils it down to. But it does need them: Needs the sense of stakes and structure they provide, the brutal cleverness, and above all the awful, rising tension of people who know they're only one mistake away from death. Without it, we get, well, this: A few engaging character moments on the margins, and a lot of guys running around in predictable fashion while we all wait for the real drama to begin.

Where "Halloween Party" works, it does so from two angles. One is the story of newcomer No-eul, who's clearly positioned in parallel to the first season's Kang Sae-byeok: Both are defectors from North Korea desperate to find people they left behind—even employing the same broker to try to find them—and both have hardened exteriors that hide a deeper kindness. (No-eul, played by Park Gyu-young, works as a costumed mascot for a theme park, and has a soft spot for the terminally ill child of a fellow employee.) But while Sae-byeok was trying to find her parents, No-eul seeks her own abandoned child, tying into a recurring interest in motherhood that "Bread And Lottery" kicked off with its glimpses of pregnant future-contestant Jun-hee. And while Sae-byeok was groomed for inclusion in the Games as a player, "Halloween Party"'s one really excellent twist reveals that former soldier No-eul is being recruited as one of the organization's masked guards. (And possibly not for the first time, if her familiarity with the procedures, and lack of surprise at being offered a card, is anything to go off of.) Squid Game hinted that it might be looking more closely at the foot soldiers of the game organizers in the premiere, with the focus on the recruiter (a former guard himself). It's a natural outgrowth of the show's interest in the ways the Game bends everyone into their service, providing endless rationales for monstrous acts, and it's a thread I'm excited to watch the show pursue.

Our other spot of light is, unsurprisingly, Seong Gi-hun, who we quickly learn has gone just a tad paramilitary in his two-year pursuit of the Games' organizers. The episode's biggest laugh—despite the sometimes irritating efforts of surviving henchman Choi Woo-seok—comes as Gi-hun takes his new team (which also includes a quickly convinced Jun-ho) through a tour of the sleazy motel-turned-Batcave, including Gi-hun's Giant Pile Of Money, his fairly massive arsenal, and the live-fire course he's made out of several unused rooms. But despite both his newfound stoicism, and his descent into obsession, Lee Jung-jae hasn't lost touch with Gi-hun's inherent humanity. We get touches of it throughout, including showing that he's served both of his fellow final contestants' memories by getting Sae-byeok's little brother to be happily adopted by Park Hae-soo's mother, doing right by each of his friends' surviving kin. And the Front Man isn't just bullshitting when he tells his opponent that he's found new eloquence in shooting down the Games' self-serving rhetoric when the two come (nearly) face-to-face at the episode's climax. But Lee's best work comes shortly before Gi-hun embarks on his (very stupid, if we're being honest) plan to try to force a confrontation with the organizers, when he calls his estranged daughter and finds himself unable to speak. For the first time since the show's return, we see the stone-faced badass persona drop away, and get a real glimpse at the scared, sweet guy it was so easy to root for in Squid Game's first, electric run.

Outside those two bright lights, though, "Halloween Party" is mostly just, well, Plot Shit: A lot of time and energy spent on a plan we know isn't going to work, all so the show can maneuver Gi-hun back into volunteering for another Game. It's interesting to contrast this episode with "Hell," the all-important second episode of the show's first season, which ends in almost exactly the same way: There, the sense of inevitability surrounding everything only contributed to the dread, as the system of the world effortlessly pushed the players back into the Games' waiting arms. But there's a weird softening of the show's world here that takes the bite out of all of this, as loan sharks and people brokers all bend over backwards to do right by Gi-hun. (It's possible this is meant as satire of how our hero is being inherently treated better by the universe now that he's rich, but we get conspicuous scenes in both this episode, and the previous one, of formerly shifty characters nobly refusing excess cash.) "Hell"'s genius was in making a seemingly genuine case that the Games were better than the outside world; sure, you had a 455/456 chance of dying, but at least you had that slim chance, supposedly arbitrated in an equitable fashion. "Halloween Party" doesn't have that hook to hold on to it, or the nasty sharpness of despair that made its characters' nihilistic decisions add up to a grim kind of sense: It just has Gi-hun's borderline suicidal need to make things right. And while I'm not immune to the heroism of his sacrifice here—or the way he invokes the tiny sliver of light the first Squid Game found for itself in its final moments—the episodes still lacks the satirical bite that this show can marshal at its best.

And, of course, it doesn't have a game—not even the makeshift ones the recruiter was playing around with last episode. "Hell" didn't have any deadly contests either, but it used that absence to make the real world feel blander and more boring, serving the episode's larger goals. That episode was the Rosetta Stone that made the rest of the series make sense; this one feels, more often than not, like it's pointlessly killing time, making us sit around before the show we all actually signed on to watch can finally begin.

Stray observations

• • Despite a rough start, the Gi-hun-Jun-ho alliance comes together surprisingly quickly—although Jun-ho is still holding back that he knows exactly who the Front Man is.
• • Although he's been throwing around money liberally in his pursuit of his vendetta, Gi-hun has barely even made a dent in his winnings.
• • Choi is mostly just kind of irritating, but he does get a good line when Gi-hun is considering teaming up with Jun-ho: "You can't trust cops."
• • Genuinely fun moment as all the costumed theme park workers instantly throw back on their heads and get into character when a kid wanders into their dressing room—contrasted with the darkness when the little girl notices No-eul's scarred wrists.
• • We got some backstory on Jun-ho and In-ho's relationship, and the way both he and his mom are still wracked by guilt over In-ho's disappearance.
• • A tiny dose of visceral horror as Gi-hun gets a tooth bloodily ripped out so he can replace it with a tracking device.
• • I refuse to care about the members of Gi-hun's goofy-ass private army until the show makes me, and the show ain't made me yet.
• • The conversation between Gi-hun and the Front Man is easily the most riveting portion of the episode, but it still gets pretty deep into Just Spelling Out The Subtext Territory at points: "The game will not end unless the world changes."
• • "Have you seen The Matrix?" is a segue I genuinely wasn't anticipating from this show.