Pyramid Game Episode 1 Review—Definitely Unlike Squid Game

Pyramid Game is definitely unlike Netflix’s Squid Game. I was curious whether it would live up to one of the best streaming shows of 2021. So upon finishing the first episode, I found it’s a different type of scenario. Instead of a sadistic competition game revolving around children’s games, it’s a twisted version of a popularity contest that happens once a month. So let’s see how this show starts.

Episode one begins with Seong-Su Ji’s (Kim-Ji Yeon) first day at Baekyeon Girls’ High School looking for a fresh start. Everything seems fine until she witnesses a student being bullied in the sports shed. The bullied girl, Meyong Ja-eun (Ryu Da-Bin) looks like she’d seen better days and urges Su Ji to return to class.

She discovers the classes’ sinister machinations in the form of the “pyramid game”, which allows students to vote for popular students and receive special treatment in the A through E ranks. The goal is to not be in the F-rank, where the higher-rank kids subjugate the F-rank student(s) for three months of constant tormenting violence until the next voting period. Su-ji unfortunately was voted into the same rank as Ja-eun, which is the start of the most traumatizing three months she will endure.

It’s been a weird yet gripping introduction to the series. Where Squid Game was strange and gut-wrenching in a shocking way, Pyramid Game is odd and disturbing. Bullying in any setting should not be tolerated, but at this fictional school, it is a regular occurrence. When bad stuff happens to Su Ji every day, the audience hopes she somehow finds a way to get through the day.

It is a sledgehammer way to open a series on such an ominous tone. It’s not Squid Game, but it is a show about how the pyramid game is a comparable allegory to how the upper-class societies treat the lower ones as inferior. So it is fascinating in that aspect, and I’m itching to see how Su-ji will end the game as the series continues.