Fantastic show, placed it as my 7th favorite and it'd be higher if there were more seasons to judge it on. Spoilers ahead
1. House, M.D.
2. The Wire
3. Spongebob Squarepants
4. Lost
5. Black Mirror
6. The Mandalorian
7. Squid Game
8. The Office
9. Parks and Recreation
10. Stranger Things
I expected this to be somewhat of Saw gimmick- brutal hunger games style death games that were entertaining and worth watching for the pure crazy factor but not much in the way of plot or characters. Instead, we got that but with meaning behind every game and death with fantastic characters, story and pacing throughout. The mystery and intrigue was excellent. I do think the series took a dip towards the end- the last two episodes were by far the weaker and the plot twist the old man just wasn't very good. But everything else delivered so well that it was great overall. I've now seen 4 korean TV shows/movies and all have been disturbing dark and most of them very violent: Oldboy, Parasite, I Saw the Devil.
Character Rankings:
1. Kang Sae-Byeok (death was so sad and upsetting)
2. Seong Gi-Hun (I liked how he was very flawed with his gambling, but deep down was caring and knew he made horrible mistakes)
3. Front Man (by far the most mysterious and intriguing character, excited to see his development in further seasons)
4. Hwang Jun-Ho (Awesome storyline)
5. Cho Sang-Woo (terrible person, but well developed and interesting)
6. Ali Abdul
7. Jang Deok-Su (I would have liked to see more of him)
8. Oh Il-Nam (great until the terrible twist ruined him)
9. Han Mi-nyeo (consistently extremely annoying, couldn't care less whether she got her "revenge")
Hard to rank the episodes, 1-7 were just fantastic. 6 was soul-crushingly dark and 7 was probably the most thrilling game but the intrigue in 1-5 was excellent and I also really enjoyed the outside world of 1 and 2.
