Letter #114: The 8 Show

Good morning, Erin.

I have something for you.

Whether you choose to accept it—to accept the responsibility of it—is up to you. Many a fell bargain has been struck to attain even the hope of such a gift, souls innumerable cast into the maelstrom in fruitless pursuit of that which I now humbly proffer in all its terrifying wonder. 

For today I offer you a chance to glimpse the unknowable, to pull back the veil and, for a moment, stare into the infernal depths of the abyss—to face the incomprehensible and see. 

It is no light thing, this choice I give you. So, before you take my hand, you must be sure—of your spirit, of your resolve, of your very sense of being—for the risk of a peek at enlightenment may be the shattering of your mind.

But if you are certain…then come with me, dear Erin, for a look at how my decisions are made:

ha ha ha archer is so funny y’know what i should watch that show with seul-ki in it the pyramid something it’s about bullying or classism or wait netflix is really pushing this 8 show thing should i maybe watch that instead no it looks too artsy and pretentious and i don’t care about classism as much as artsy shows want me to wait wait wait what do you mean nj is in this new hierarchy show which is also about bullying or classism hmm that’s three shows that are vaguely about some sort of social class something something something i could watch all three trilogies feel nice nj is so pretty i’m already on netflix and the seul-ki one is extra steps to watch nj is so pretty hierarchy is out at the end of the week i guess i’ll start with 8 show good it’s only 8 episodes nj is so pretty i love her smile okay press play

I know. Truly Lovecraftian. 

So, yeah—The 8 Show was short and easily accessible. And now we’re here. Unexpectedly. Because I had not felt any interest in it at all until…well, you read the above. 

Did you see it? I bet you saw it. Which would normally mean I’d get into spoilers without much fear, but I actually don’t have too much spoiler-y stuff to discuss—because I don’t have all that many notes, if you can believe it. I mean, I assume I’m still going to go on and on for a hundred pages like I normally do, but…I mean, maybe not, this time!

1. Bottom line: onanistic nonsense…but utterly bingeable. 

1A. The show isn’t saying anything new (...or possibly anything at all), but its delivery is equal parts entertaining and missed opportunity, because its story is…well, not a story. There’s no narrative, no arc, no point beyond the moral (assuming there is one); the characters don’t learn or grow or change; and the general point is so simple and cliche that it just makes the show it’s couched in seem that much more fruitless an endeavor, because it needed to bring something new or fresh to the table to seem worth doing—and, in that sense, it fails. 

1B. HOWEVER…the aesthetic, direction, cinematography, and performances mostly even things out, making the show undeniably entertaining, regardless of whether or not it’s actually good.

1C. Or, put another way: I can’t say I liked it, but I didn’t dislike it, either—and I certainly didn’t want to put it down, once I started it. 

2. I just love the look of this show: the set, the set dressing, the outfits; the bizarre 4:3 aspect ratio sections whenever things are seen outside of the game; the speed and cleverness of the opening section of the show that’s almost echoed in the title sequence. I don’t think I’ve seen anything this deliciously stylized outside of a Wes Anderson movie. Whatever else I could say, it’s a 10/10 for art direction—and it does A LOT of the heavy lifting.

3. As I mentioned earlier, the actors deserve a lot of credit for managing to elevate a generally weak script (more on that later), and I happened to recognize some of them:

• Da-hae from The Atypical Family as Eighth Floor

• butterfly boy’s ex-girlfriend from Nevertheless as Fourth Floor

• the schoolgirl prostitute from Bargain as Second Floor

4. I recently found out that IU was originally cast as Eighth Floor, and I cannot picture that. Well, I mean, actually, I can totally picture her playing the “crazy” side of the character, maybe even venturing into the “sadistic glee” side…but I’d have probably felt very, very uncomfortable watching her steer so hard into the “psychosexual” side of the character. (Seeing her in Persona was difficult enough, and that wasn’t as, um, specific as this.) Now, I love IU, but I think they probably won out by having…having…almighty google machine, what is the name of the actress who Chun Woo-hee take over the role. The character is, like, anime-levels of ridiculous, but I think she managed to play the “crazy” much more believably, much more subtly (at least, at first) than she was written. There’s an almost innocent, airheaded quality to her performance that belies the dark intelligence that drives her, and I think it lends the character a wonderfully unsettling air of mystery. I don’t think the actress rescues the more absurd elements of her personality, but there’s only so much you can do when you’re constrained by the script. 

4A. We eventually get little glimpses of what everyone’s life was like before they agree to be part of the show, and I feel like Chun Woo-hee tried her hardest to pull from that one sliver of Eighth Floor’s background and inject it into how the character behaves throughout the series. Unfortunately, I don’t think the character is quite written with the most interesting aspect of that one brief peek we get of her life before the show as her driving force. Rather than the pathos of it (which is rich with possibility), they pull from the “she’s a weirdo” aspect, and…well. Anime-levels of ridiculous. 

4B. And, believe it or not, Eight Floor isn’t the scariest lunatic across the “class system or whatever” trilogy. Just you wait. (Or, if you’ve seen all three shows…guess!)

4C. …I’m also 80% sure Chun Woo-hee took the role just so she could make everyone stare at her body. ‘Cus there’s a lot of that. (The show’s like, “Isn’t she so sexy?” and I’m like, “Um…she’s certainly fit, I guess.” [shrug] Not a knock against her at all, just…didn’t do it for me.)

5. Now, Second Floor’s “check out how fit I am” scene…also didn’t do it for me—buuuut I did appreciate her physique in the same way I did Hot-as-Fire(fighter)’s in Sweet Home. So…there’s that.

6. Fourth Floor, on the other hand, I had a crush on. Because of her personality. Which…yeah, I don’t have any real defense of that. It’s just how I feel. (I make bad decisions, Erin; we’ve been over this.)

7. I’m not clear on what we’re supposed to get out of this show, on what—again, if anything—it’s saying about classism or the nature of human cruelty. I think there’s probably something about greed or money or (if you squint) capitalism that it thinks it’s being clever about…though it’s just as likely that these are not things it’s concerned with, that the consequential aspects of  money/greed/capitalism/class/cruelty in the story are more incidental than anything else. That is, maybe I’m just looking for a “message” when there really isn’t one—because there isn’t sufficient plot to justify making this a show, so I assume it must be more about “message.” However, what it does do—whether deliberately or incidentally or coincidentally—is give us a microcosmic highlight reel of human interaction: the futility of collectivism; the necessary inequality of fairness; the nature of power; the fragility of compromise; and the importance of a commitment to consequences. And, generally, I liked that. (I just wish this stuff had been more intrinsically tied into the plot, that it had been more structurally relevant to the “survival” aspect of the series.)

8. I thought it was interesting that, for the wonderful montage/collage that was the opening title sequence, they used the American $100 bill as the image representative of the “money” aspect of the game. Because I haven’t any idea why ol’ Ben Franklin’s face was picked over the ₩50,000 bill that features so heavily in the series. Does it mean something? Did they think it would be more internationally recognizable? I mean, I know I couldn’t specifically describe what most foreign bills looks like, but they’re all pretty recognizably, y’know, currency. So…what gives?

9. There’s a lot of “plot” repetition and (seemingly?) meaningless “theme” repetition as each new, um, incident pops up. Which means a lot of the “plot” moments tell us nothing new—neither about the characters nor the purpose of the story—and, as such, they're not terribly interesting. It was one of the things that made me wonder if this would have been better served as a movie.

10. For a series that so heavily leans into its violence, there is a remarkable lack of permanent injury for our cast. Like, even allowing for the standard “it’s a TV show” handwave, most of them should be dead. Like, thrice over. 

10A. It’s also interesting to see who is and who is not (seemingly) “allowed” to get badly hurt. That is, who the show deems okay to see getting pummeled and who it pretty much never touches.

11. At one point, one character calls another a “limousine liberal,” and I think that’s an error in translation. That is, I think the translator picked the wrong term in English: the character is being criticized for being “soft,” so I’d have thought calling him a “bleeding heart” would have been more accurate, since he wasn’t playacting at being a social activist and then retreating to the lap of luxury far away from the problems he pretends to concern himself with. There’s an element of him being put off by something he could change by actually getting his hands dirty instead of just complaining while enjoying the finer things he has available to him, but…I still don’t think “bleeding heart” is more accurate to that moment in conversation. 

12. Also: at one point, one of the men dreams about two of the women making out, and he picked the two I would have picked. Which, yes, is a totally unnecessary thing for me to point out, but I’m hoping it made you make a face at me. Did it work? Are you making a face at me, Erin? If you are, you have to tell me. Admit it—you totally made a face! 

And that’s all I have on The 8 Show. Which was a lot of not saying anything particularly positive, yes, but…well, the positives for the show were much broader than the things that maybe weren’t so positive, so there weren’t a lot of specific things to point to and talk about. But, again, flawed as it was, I was certainly entertained. Which isn’t nothing.

It was lovely out, this week. I hope you had a chance to enjoy it. 

More soon—as ever.

—Daryl