3 years after the Squid Game, Netflix has a new Korean dystopian game-based TV show. It’s called “The 8 Show”. The directing is awful. The cinematography is laughably bad. The plot has more holes than swiss cheese. And yet, as a work of art, it has surpassed Squid Game. And no one knows about it.
The similarities between the two shows are obvious. It is easy to mock the 8 Show as a cheap knock-off. But there are some major differences. Differences that take 8 Show to a whole new level.
Winners and Losers
Let’s start off with the game-theme. Sure, both shows are game-based. People are taken away from the real world in order to play a game where they can win a ton of money. But that’s where the similarities end. In Squid Game, you win the game by … playing a series of games. Games that are zero-sum. You win at the cost of someone else losing. And when each game ends, an eerie life-sized doll shoots the losers and kills them in cold blood. It’s all pretty over the top, and even the metaphor is completely divorced from reality.
8 Show is different. Once the contest starts, there are no more games. At least none that are imposed on you. You spend your entire day hanging out in your room, or with others in the common lounge. There is a timer counting down to the end of the game. Every time you or someone else accomplishes something, the timer goes up. Once the timer hits zero, the game ends for everyone.
The longer you stay in the game, the more money you are awarded. There is no way to “win” or “lose”. You can choose to make as much money, or as little, as you want. More importantly, the game isn’t zero-sum. The longer you stay in the game, the more money you make, the more money everyone else also makes.
In this way, 8 Show is a far better reflection of life. You’re born into this world, along with everyone else around you. Everyone has to keep doing certain things, such as growing crops and fetching water, in order to keep everyone alive and maintain everyone’s quality of life. There is no “winning” or “losing” – the longer you stay alive, the more things you can do. Your success doesn’t need to come at the expense of someone else. We can all cooperate and be happy together.
And that is what makes it so maddening. The 8 Show, just like real life, isn’t the Squid Game. No vengeful god is forcing us to play sadistic games or threatening to kill us. We can all just get along, and everyone will be happier for it. And yet… we don’t. We find ways to be cruel to one another, just to make our own life a little more pleasurable at the cost of someone else’s. When we watch the way the people in 8 Show treat one another, with sadism, psychopathy, or simple indifference, it breaks your heart. It doesn’t have to be this way. And yet, just like in real life, that’s exactly what ends up happening anyway.
Biased Rules
The second big difference is in how the contestants are treated. Squid Game was a cultural phenomenon because it spoke to people’s feelings around income inequality. The ultra-wealthy elites are preying on those who are indebted and desperate, making them compete with one another in life-and-death games, purely for their own entertainment.
And yet, for all its themes around capitalism, the show was almost entirely egalitarian. You rarely see the ultra-wealthy elites who are lounging in the shadows. The main characters are the contestants – all of whom are treated equally. No favors for anyone. Watching the contestants compete on a level playing field resonates with our desperate longing to see the world as a fair one where everyone earns their success.
Not so for the 8 Show. Unlike Squid Game, 8 Show makes inequality, unfairness, and power dynamics, a central and pervasive part of the show. Everyone in the show is semi-randomly labeled from #1 to #8. Even though everyone spends the same amount of time in the game, those with higher numbers accumulate more rewards. In the time taken for #1 to accumulate one million dollars, #8 accumulates a whopping $34M. And this isn’t just money that they can enjoy at the end of the show. Even during the show, they can use that money to purchase additional luxury amenities. While #1 is sleeping on discarded newspapers in a cramped studio, #8 is splurging on designer handbags and living in a penthouse.
Most important however, is the way the hierarchy determines access to resources. In theory, there is sufficient food and water for everyone. In practice however, all food is sent to #8 first, who eats her fill and sends the remainder to #7… all the way until it finally reaches #1. This leaves everyone lower in the hierarchy at the mercy of those higher in the hierarchy.
Warning: Major spoilers up ahead. Stop reading once you decide you’d like to watch the show.
When #8 refuses to contribute her fair share, and the others complain about it, #8 responds by withholding all food and water from everyone for multiple days – starving them until they give in to her demands. It’s a mirror image of Atlas Shrugged, with a populist twist.
When this leads to simmering resentments, #8 allies herself with #6, a muscular brute. Taking advantage of everyone else’s trusting nature, #8 takes the initiative to purchase a handful of weapons for her clique, and #6 destroys everyone else’s ability to order their own weapons. With no referees around to ensure a “fair” game, and having cornered the market for deadly weapons, #8 and #6 are able to use food, water, and violence, to lord over everyone else. They eventually co-opt #7 as their bureaucrat/executive, and #4 as their sycophant. Everyone else is made to compete amongst themselves for food scraps – creating the illusion of free-market capitalism and meritocracy. While the privileged live extremely decadent and indolent lifestyles.
The real-life parallels hit you like a punch to the gut. #8 represents the oligarchs and political dynasties who rule over their society and live large, leeching off society’s resources while contributing far less in return. #6 represents their police, military, and other henchmen who swiftly eliminate all threats to their masters’ power. #7 represents the intelligent and capable upper-class professionals who manage and advance the rulers’ interests, while #4 represents the middle-class sycophants who are simply happy to bask in the glow of their superiors.
#5 represents the middle-class bourgeois who have good hearts but want to avoid rocking the boat. #3 represents the lower-class workers who are unhappy and oppressed, but are too timid to stand up to those in power. #2 represents the rough-and-tumble youths from the lower-class who pose a threat to the current order, and hence, are brutally beaten up and suppressed by the elite’s henchmen. And #1 represents the disabled, the minimum-wage workers, the completely hapless and helpless who are treated with contempt by those in power, and live miserably in a society that has more than enough to go around.
Watching Squid Game gives you the feeling that the world might be dystopian … but at least it is fair, and the meritorious will get their just rewards. Whereas 8 Show dispenses with this mirage and gives us an unflinching look at reality. For the vast majority of human history, and for the majority of humanity even today, our lives have been characterized by profound unfairness, brutality, oppression, coercion, and the ever-present threat of violence. And this is exactly what 8 Show portrays.
No Bad Deed Goes Punished
The other maddening aspect of 8 Show is the fact that the villains rarely ever get their comeuppance.
In the early episodes of the show, when #6 starts to show his colors by assaulting multiple people, he is never held accountable for it.
After the first coup, the good guys finally wrestle power away from #8 and #6 who had been mercilessly torturing them for the past week. But even then, they did nothing whatsoever to punish them for their crimes. They didn’t even spend any of the culprits’ money for living expenses, telling themselves that it would be wrong to take their money without their permission.
When the good guys discover a way to swap the hierarchy, they decide to merely downgrade #8 to 5th place, instead of last place. #8 had proven herself to be a sadistic psychopath. And yet, both #2 and #3 were content to let #8 walk away happily with more money than themselves.
At the end of the show, after another week of #8 torturing everyone in sickening ways, the good guys finally regain power once again. And yet, they still do absolutely nothing to punish #8 for committing literal war crimes. They allow #8 to walk away completely unharmed, fabulously wealthy, far better off than everyone else.
Once again, the lack of comeuppance is deeply disturbing and infuriating for the audience… but a far better reflection of reality. Nothing illustrates this better than the Japanese Unit 731 – a “covert biological and chemical warfare research and development unit of the Imperial Japanese Army that engaged in lethal human experimentation.” During WW2, they committed some of the worst war crimes imaginable on Chinese civilians, such as injecting a pregnant woman with syphilis and dissecting her baby as soon as it was born. Only to be granted full immunity at the end of the war by American General MacArthur.
The idea that evil people always get their deserved punishments, is a nothing more than wishful fantasy. More often than not, we are simply told that “two wrongs don’t make a right”, “we shouldn’t sink to their level”, and that we should “be the bigger person” by “turning the other cheek”. Our history books are filled with “Great Men” who did abominable things and died happily at a ripe old age.
It is also interesting to note the difference between how #6 and #8 are treated after the successful coups. After the first coup, #1 takes revenge on #4 and #6 by pulling out their tooth and toenails respectively. And after the second coup, #5 takes revenge on #6 by castrating him. But in both cases, even though #8 was completely vulnerable and arguably the most evil of them all, nobody lays a finger on her.
Once again, this is completely irrational behavior that mimics real life. #4 and #6 are the evil henchmen. They represent the in-your-face evil that everyone sees and interacts with. And hence, to the limited extent that punishment is finally meted out, it is meted out to them. Whereas #8, the most evil of them all, is more of an unseen systemic evil. The man behind the curtain who is pulling all the strings. And because of this layer of indirection, they escape everyone’s visceral wrath.
It is no coincidence that white-collar crimes and political crimes are treated with far more mercy and leniency, even when they harm vastly more people. We are perfectly content to direct our anger at the highly visible henchmen, while giving a free pass to the masterminds behind this system of injustice.
Human Stupidity
But beyond all of the above, the most maddening thing about watching 8 Show is that the characters act in ways that don’t make sense. They make decisions that are monumentally stupid.
When #8 withholds food and water from everyone else, almost killing them, they could have used false promises to lure her out, after which they could have bound her and taken away the power that she wielded with malice. And yet, they didn’t. They simply gave in to #8’s demands and accepted her as their lord.
After their original coup, they could have permanently handicapped #6, the sadistic and violent torturer who was also their biggest future threat. Handicapping him in some way would have guaranteed their future freedom. But they didn’t. And sure enough, he eventually escaped and enslaved them all over again.
When the game was almost brought to an end, #1 could have simply told his friends why he wanted to extend it a little longer. But he didn’t. He acted covertly to keep the game going. This drove a deep fissure and mistrust through their alliance.
#2 could have simply been patient and collaboratively tried to find a solution. But she didn’t. She decided to temporarily imprison almost all her allies.
If #2 truly didn’t trust anyone else, she should have imprisoned literally everyone. And yet, she allowed #5 to go free. Despite #5 being the most weak-willed and gullible of them all.
#5 could have exercised the slightest bit of common sense and not freed #6. And yet, she did. Resulting in everyone being enslaved all over again.
Once #8 started sadistically torturing everyone once more, #4 could have ended it at any time simply by grabbing the gun while #8 was having a bath. Or smacking her with a golf club while caddying for her. Or any number of other opportunities where #8 was completely alone and defenseless. And yet, she did none of the above, choosing instead to wait endlessly for others to form needlessly complex plans.
And at the very end of the game, when the most sympathetic person of all was dying, all his friends are trying desperately to end the game so they can save his life. All they had to do was shoot #8 and the game would have immediately ended. After all the sadistic torture she had inflicted on everyone, she hadn’t received a single punishment and deserved nothing less. And yet, everyone ran around like chickens with their heads cut off, trying the most outlandish schemes conceivable, while their dear friend lay dying.
Watching them do all of the above made me want to pull my hair out. Surely no one in the real world is dumb enough to act like this, right? And yet, that is the most frustrating thing of all. This is exactly what we see happen in the real world as well.
Donald Trump staged an insurrection on Jan 6th. He let loose a bloodthirsty mob that stormed the capitol building, and sought to lynch various political leaders such as Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi. Kevin McCarthy, cowering in the basement and hiding from the bloodthirsty mob, called Trump from his phone and pleaded for him to call off his mob. Only to be rejected by the man who was supposed to be his close ally. After many hours of gleefully watching the mob on television, Trump finally went on television and told the mob to turn back, telling them that “we love you, you’re very special.”
The nation recoiled. For a brief moment, everyone came together to decry the violence and stand up for democracy. But in the immediate aftermath, the motion to impeach Trump failed along party lines. The criminal case against Trump dragged on and on in legal bureaucracy. All of which allowed Trump to run for President once again and win the nomination. At the time of this writing, a mere 3 months before the election, the man who unleashed a bloodthirsty mob on his political rivals is a coin-flip away from winning the Presidency, and has the support of the very same people whose lives he endangered just a few years earlier.
Tell me again, how unrealistically stupid are 8 Show’s characters?
Ignorance Is Bliss
This is not a show with a happy ending. There is no main character who emerges triumphant as the winner. The absolute worst person on the show walks away from the game completely unscathed, fabulously wealthy, delighted with how everything turned out. All this after administering the most sadistic tortures imaginable to everyone else. The most sympathetic person on the entire show ends up being burnt alive. The one ace in the sleeve for the good guys, the promise of social mobility, and the ascent of the virtuous to the top of the hierarchy, turns out to be nothing more than a mirage. The main protagonist does nothing of consequence, and turns out to be a mere helpless observer of events beyond his control… just like you and me.
As #7 says in the final episode, 8 Show was never intended to be fun. It was never intended to lift our spirits. It was intended to open our eyes to reality, and the societal structures people have long accepted. Because anything else would be “an insult to the audience.” But it turns out that #7’s friend was right. People would rather be insulted than watch a show that hits too close to home. Ignorance is bliss, and 8 Show is not a blissful show.
I’ve watched many horror movies and dystopian shows. Yes, it can be scary to watch a knife-wielding psychopath chase after young girls. But there is something different about 8 Show. Midway through the season, I had to take a two-week hiatus, because it was tugging at my sanity. It is deeply disturbing at a psychological level. Not because it portrays things that are other-worldly. But because every single thing it portrays is ever-present in human society. At some point, it stopped feeling like a fictional dystopia, and started feeling more like a dramatized documentary.
Outlook Zen 