Squid Game Returns

Season two of the South Korean thriller-series delivers.

Dec 31, 2024

Hi everyone.

I hope you had a Merry Christmas, and that you’re enjoying the holiday season. I had hoped to get a couple more Daly Grind newsletters out between Thanksgiving and now, but life threw me a few more curves in the final days of 2024.

The good news is that I got to spend some quality time with my wife and kids over the last week and a half, which is one of the few things (especially at Christmas time) I don’t mind missing writing for. We got up to Estes Park for dinner at The Stanley and a walk through the Christmas lights downtown. We played games, binge-watched season two of Squid Game (more on that in a second), and of course exchanged and opened presents. Though both of my kids are now adults, it’s still fun to watch the child-like excitement in their eyes when they unwrap gifts.

Anyway, let’s talk about dystopian survival thrillers…

As I mentioned above, Squid Game season two dropped on Netflix last week, and I’m guessing a crap-load of people have already finished watching the latest addictive installment. It’s still crazy to me how much attention the first season garnished back in 2021. Everybody was talking about it, including lots of people who hadn’t even seen it. Part of the reason was that there was a fair amount confusion over what the series actually was.

Check out John's books!

It had somehow gotten into a lot of people’s heads that the South Korean series was an actual game show rather than a fictional television series about a game show.

I’m pretty sure, unlike The Blair Witch Project 25 years ago, there wasn’t a deliberate effort by the producers (or Netflix) to pass Squid Game off as something it wasn’t. Anyone could have figured out that it was a made-up story (a Hollywood-style production with a premise similar to 1987’s The Running Man) just by Googling the title.

Still, at least one of my friends bought into the faux narrative. She was absolutely incensed on Facebook that game-show contestants, somewhere in Asia, were competing in children’s games at gunpoint and literally being executed if they lost. She declared it a sign of our societal decay, and remained fired up about the show even after I cleared things up for her, denouncing the creative minds behind it for even coming up with such an unsettling idea.

It made me wonder what she must have thought about my novels.

Or course, those of us who’ve seen Squid Game understand that it’s not some mindless slasher flick. Creator, writer, and director Hwang Dong-hyuk has produced a psychologically complex story the tackles themes of desperation, fear, greed, conscience, hardship, and free will. More broadly the show is about humanity, just unconventionally presented as an effective action-thriller.

The first season was extremely well done, from the story, to the acting, to the unpredictability, to the imagery. It even touched me on an emotional level (my daughter still gives me a hard time for shedding a rare tear over a particular character’s death).

To the surprise of just about everyone, the show went on to become Netflix’s most watched series ever, beating out even Stranger Things.

It would have been nearly impossible for the second season of Squid Game to exceed the first, but in all honesty, it came pretty close (which is a real achievement). I even noticed some likely unintentional political parallels this time around that added an extra layer to the story.

The season finale, as many have commented on, was a bit abrupt. Thankfully fans won’t have to wait another three years to get their next Squid Game fix, since the third and final season has already been filmed and will drop sometime in 2025.

I for one can’t wait.

Have you seen Squid Game (one or both seasons)? Let me know your favorite character in an email or in the comment section below.

The Hullabaloo

I took a bit of a hiatus from the Daly Express podcast during the holidays (it’ll be back in early January), but a couple weeks ago I talked to writer, lawyer, and investigator, Clifford Smith about the rationalization of violence in the name of grievance, the “Deep State”, the Iranian government’s influence within the United States, and more.

Here’s a preview:

You can watch the full video episodes on BernardGoldberg.com, or listen to the full audio podcasts on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

Random Thought

Obligatory Dog Shot

Our littlest dog's name is Squiggy, and I thought my wife would get a kick out of this. She concluded that I had too much time on my hands, and gave me a list of things to do around the house.

Catch Up on the Sean Coleman Thrillers

All of my Sean Coleman Thriller novels can be purchased through Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Books-A-Million, and wherever else books are sold.

Featured Vinyl

As a child, I loved watching reruns of the 1960s satirical secret-agent sitcom, Get Smart. The show’s star, comedian Don Adams (additionally known as the voice of Inspector Gadget), always made me laugh. So, when I saw this spoken-word album at a Fort Collins record store a few weeks ago, I figured I’d pick it up. What I didn’t know when I bought it is that it actually predates Get Smart, and Adams’ iconic Maxwell Smart character, by a few years.

Adams performs comedic bits where he’s “interviewed” as various characters (including a bank robber, movie star, and a plan-crash survivor) as a “reporter.” It’s classic Adams, and funny stuff.

That’s all for now. Thanks for reading today’s Daly Grind.

Want to drop me a line? You can email me at johndalybooks@hotmail.com, and also follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, and now Bluesky! If you haven’t subscribed to this newsletter yet, please click on the “Subscribe now” button below. Doing so will get these posts emailed directly to you.

Also, if you’re not caught up on my Sean Coleman Thrillers, you can pick the entire series up at a great price on Amazon. And if you’re interested in signed, personalized copies of my books, you can order them directly from my website.

Take care. And I’ll talk to you soon!