The 8 Show

It's a good idea / concept that starts really strong, but falls flat unless you drink the kool aid.

It attempts to provide some criticism and mockery of social hierarchy, along with some very "squid game" style presentation and theatrics.

But where it falls flat, is in the action of the characters themselves, you really need to have a strong suspension of disbelief to buy in to what the characters do, the way they act and their emotional responses.

All of them behave as cartoon characters, don't follow logic or reason and just do whatever the plot requires of them. The actors don't do a bad job, but are just given horrible dialogues and the script hurts them.

I was fine up until characters had to be incredibly stupid, morons just for the plot to go in certain directions. They also don't do certain things, logical decisions, because then it wouldn't be "entertaining".

The premise is not bad, a lot of things could have been done with this ideea, but they had to have some lunatics and idiots to drive the story.

There are to many concepts, to many things stuffed in just to impress, to shock. It tries, for no reason at all, to be artistic, but only manages to be very annoying and a cheap attempt.

The 7th episode is a test, it wants to know how much nonsense you can handle.

This drama blends the gameplay and brutality of the Korean show Squid Game, the Japanese series Kaiji, and the Spanish movie Platform. While Some Korean dramas have become somewhat predictable, often ending in forced emotional climaxes that evoke tears, I still found this show quite entertaining. It offers numerous lessons, delving into human psychology and nature, as well as philosophical ideas like democracy, communism, socialism, dictatorship, and utilitarianism. The watchers monitoring through CCTV cameras in the drama could represent the elite globalists at the top of the capitalist pyramid, or they could symbolize us. After all, most of us likely enjoyed the show as mere spectators rather than feeling disturbed by it. Still, I always like and want to support this style of drama. That's why I believe it deserves at least an 8 out of 10. This drama had too many of his monologues and it was a bit annoying, so I deducted 1 star.

P. S. While watching Squid Game, I couldn't help but notice the irony that the creators and investors of "The 8 Show," including Netflix, are likely not members of the ordinary working class. Yet, they seem to be fans of George Orwell's Animal Farm. They seem to know us very well, understanding that instead of resisting upon learning the truth, we tend to accept reality and even strive to climb higher within the system's pyramid.

Let's start strong, if you like dystopian and bleak set up for stories, you could defintely like this series, but there are many unfortunate situations due to poor screenplay that waste all the potential of the premise.

Even if good portions of the setting is stolen from here and there, the overall situation is enough unique and brings to the table many things to keep you interested and intrigued, but for some reason, many of the problems about our society that this series seems to want to emphasize, get actually nowhere, cause the plot gets progressively more unreasonable, episode by episode.

I don't want to spoil anything, but I suggest to come prepared, this series seems way better than it actually is at first glance, but many times you can't really relate with what happens because it's just way to unbelievable.

Not sure what the other reviews saying it's not similar to Squid Game are referring to. It's definitely not similar in quality , but its message and theme are identical. The game makers have essentially preyed upon people in difficult life circumstances to play a game for their amusement. Just like Squid Game it was inevitable that would involve strategic deception between the characters and violence.

Many of the ideas used with the games within the show are interesting , but ultimately end up feeling underwhelming. Further, while you do end up feeling some connection to the characters by the end of the series it pales in comparison to those in Squid Game.

If another season was made I'd probably still watch it, but also won't be spending any time hoping for a season 2.