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Squid Game on SNL: Pete Davidson and Rami Malek deliver a deadly parody

Squid Game is a hit on Netflix, but Saturday Night Live twangs it up with a country-music video twist.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Gael Cooper
2 min read

Squid Game, the Netflix hit about a deadly tournament of kids' games, has spawned memes and Halloween costumes galore. Now it's spawned a country music video. Over the weekend, Saturday Night Live ran a scarily realistic Squid Game sketch starring host Rami Malek and Pete Davidson as rural guys who find themselves in need of cash, so they decide to sign up for the Squid Game.

All the elements from the show are there -- the green numbered track suits worn by contestants, the red guard suits with black masks, the creepy Red Light, Green Light robot, the contestant egg meal, the cookie challenge, the glass bridge. There's even a great version of Player 212 (Han Mi-nyeo), who looks just as murderous as ever. 

The song may sound familiar to some. It uses the tune of Turn Up On The Weekend, by the duo Branchez & Big Wet. (Watch the real thing below.)

Will there be a second season of Squid Game? Maybe, and we have some plot and character thoughts.

In SNL's version, both Malek and Davidson sing about the realities of the tournament as they move through the familiar sets and games. 

"They got symbols on their faces like the ones on PlayStations, and the mean guy looks like Dr. Doom," Davidson sings about the guards and the iconic Front Man. And in the Red Light, Green Light game, Davidson successfully hides behind cast member Chris Redd, which doesn't end well for Redd, who ends up in the organ transplant room. But as the catchy song goes, "That's what happens in the Squid Game."