[HanCinema's Drama Review] "The 8 Show" Episode 7

As was perhaps to be expected, "The 8 Show" hasn't made much of an impact in its single day of release. Neither did "Squid Game" for the record, but the pretentiousness of the 2021 program, not to mention it coming out first, gave it an urgency that can't be replicated. "The 8 Show" is mean-spirited and puerile by comparison. Which is the whole point. Its characters not people, but rather agents who voluntarily deprive themselves of their humanity to become players.

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This is how "The 8 Show" arrives with 5 (played by Moon Jeong-hee), an older, schizophrenic woman whose hallucinations led to her releasing 6 from confinement in his room with predictably disastrous results. 6, for what it's worth, has by this point decided he's had enough of the game too, and plans to end it just as soon as he figured out who ripped out of toenails, by murdering the person who ripped out his toenails. As it happens there was always an easy way to confirm this, though the implications of this discovery prove horrific.

What's disturbing about the seventh episode is less the exact nature of the new form of the torture so much as it is how remarkably blase the new overlords are about doing it. The motivation for the escalations to date has always been that watching the misery has been fun for whoever keeps giving the players money. The players in charge have always used this as a rationalization for what they're doing, and even enjoy the sadism a bit themselves.

Here though? Even 8 is horrified by what they've wrought. But the greater horror than the torture is 8's response to this sudden burst of empathy, immortalizing it as a form of art and doing nothing about trying to actually relieve the suffering. It's the sharpest critique "The 8 Show" has had yet about consciousness raising media and its general worthlessness, since the pain of others becomes so abstract its connection to the real world is equally tenuous.

Where does this leave 5? Well, if 8 is the art loving commander of a concentration camp, 5 is just a hapless employee, one who should know better than to feign helplessness, yet does so anyway as the coward's way out. This is another very dark element of the seventh episode- unlike previous regimes, this one could be very easily defeated. It remains standing mainly because none of the individual people who constitute it are even attempting to justify their actions anymore.

Written by William Schwartz

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"The 8 Show" is directed by Han Jae-rim, written by Han Jae-rim, Lee Jenny, Song Su-rin, and features Ryu Jun-yeol, Chun Woo-hee, Park Jung-min, Lee Yul-eum, Park Hae-joon, Lee Zoo-young. Broadcasting information in Korea: 2024/05/17, Fri on Netflix.