SNL Spoofed Squid Game With A Catchy Country Song

With Squid Game officially Netflix’s biggest series launch, it was inevitable that Saturday Night Live would make some sort of reference to the popular South Korean drama. On the Oct. 16 episode, host Rami Malek and Pete Davidson featured the show in the most musical way possible — by remixing the 2017 song “Turn Up on the Weekend” to be all about Squid Game. The SNL Squid Game country song was surprisingly catchy, and the music video captured all the iconic moments from the series, from the terrifying robot girl to Gi-hun’s questionable dye-job at the end of the series.

The skit began with Pete Davidson and guest host Rami Malek crooning about the stereotypical country song subjects: their beat-up trucks, their dogs, and the exes they’re estranged from. On top of that, “I just got laid off. Bar tab ain’t paid off,” Davidson’s character sang. Sad and dejected, he decided that there was only one thing he could do. He whipped off his cowboy hat and declared, “Yes, I’m broke and it’s a damn shame... guess I got to play the Squid Game.”

The visuals in the music video shifted from a country backdrop to the Squid Game barracks, showing Davidson and Malek dressed in the recognizable numbered teal jumpsuits. (Davidson wore Gi-hun’s number, 456, while Malek, befitting his opening villain monologue, wore Sang-woo’s 218 jumpsuit.) They sang that they’ve got “weird cards” and now “pink guards,” who they added have “symbols on their faces like the ones on PlayStation.” Also, they sang that the “main guy looks like Doctor Doom.”

They joked about the issue of inaccurate subtitles, and of course, featured the first game of “Red Light, Green Light,” with Davidson and Malek having to stop singing every time the robot’s head swiveled around. Even when blood splattered on their face they managed to keep the song going though, much to the audience’s amusement.

Malek’s character also joked that he knows that “45 billion won is a whole lot of money” but admitted “at least I think it is; I’m confused by the currency.” And at the end, Davidson’s character revealed his bright red wig, along with a whole new cowboy outfit — a mirror of how Gi-hun updates his look to reflect how he’s now going to take on the system itself in the Squid Game finale. It was a short musical skit, and yet it managed to capture the series pretty perfectly.