Official Trailer:

Here, the players get to play a fair game under the same conditions. These people suffered with inequality and discrimination out in the world

How do you take a simple children’s game and turn in to a game for adults with deadly consequence? If you win the series of games, you get to win and keep billions of dollars. The setup is designed by rich people to have fun at the expense of poor people buried in debt. They have been picked from the society with their full consent. Few players get eliminated with each game and last two standing fight it out in the final game. It is a dangerous environment, but it is more democratic and provides a fairer and equal chance to every player with no discrimination than the real world where people suffer with inequality and discrimination and don’t stand even a 1% chance to win. Like one of the characters says in the series, what someone with no money has in common with someone with too much money? Living is no fun for them. The first episode pulls us in and as the game progresses, the series takes the required time to provide character arc for all key players and we are fully invested in them. Like the participants, viewers are also kept in the dark about what is in for them. As the game progresses, stakes get higher and survival instincts kick in. One can’t win these games just with brutal strength, intelligence and strategy are required to survive.

In the hands of a good writer the setup provides an ample scope to play around with concepts of trust, betrayal, guilt, strong, weak, sacrifice. Add to it the ingredient of prior knowledge. Series writer, Hwang Dong-hyuk, have done a brilliant job with full of inventiveness and creativity. There are beautiful dialogues throughout the series. I am sure original Korean version would be much more insightful than the English version. But didn’t feel a loss in translation. This one though, Good Rain Knows The Best Time To Fall, sounds so cool and profound but still couldn’t figure out what this means beyond the literal inference 🤔 Hwang Dong-hyuk has also directed the series with impressive skill and craft. Production values are top notch too and all departments have come together to give us a not just an excellent entertainer, they also leave us with lots of moral questions about our society.

Even though every game is intense with a twist (second episode takes a swipe at democracy in real world), personally, fourth game Kkanbu from episode six disturbed me a lot. To me this is one of the best episodes in the series. By the time we come to this episode we know most of the characters, what is unique to them, and what drives them. That information makes it hard to watch this game. Players must pair off for this fourth game, Kkanbu. When they chose their partner, they didn’t know what the game is about. We don’t have a clue too. They make assumptions while choosing the partner. As the intent of the game is revealed, not only them we are in a shock too and disbelief. This is one hour of an intense drama and is heartbreaking. Brings out contrasting shades of human behavior. There are cold blooded betrayals. There is good human spirit that moves you to tears. There is hopelessness. There are hearts torn apart. We are put on an emotional roller-coaster ride. By the time episode finished, I was broken to pieces emotionally and was left with the thought how I will behave in that situation? No, I don’t want to know.