Netflix 0riginal (2025)

Trailer here

I think I came to this show a little backwards but in some ways it gave me a fresh look at it with perhaps a little less bias to who I wanted to succeed.

All of the people appearing in the competition show, based around a camp to replicate summer camp with challenges and a wheel of misfortune, have appeared on previous Netflix shows.

Apart from Squid Games: The Challenge though I have not watched any of the other shows the participants were from: Cheer, Too Hot To Handle, The Mole, Seeling The OC and others. Don’t get me wrong I am interested in some of them but haven’t gone down those rabbit holes yet.

With challenges varying from kayaking for flint and firestarters, throwing bean bags through holes to try knock people off poles on a wall to figuring out which plank is really safe.

Then there were punishments for nominated players, selected by the winning team, and some of these certainly seemed worse than others. Holding breath under water in an ice bath, eating bugs and walking as many steps as possible in an hour.

And yes some of these challenges and punishments were difficult on a mental or physical level for people but none of them were truly terrible and some of the reactions from contestants almost certainly lived up to what I can only refer to as reality TV acting.

I found the group dynamics incredibly interesting in how they turned against identified snakes, how they shuffled around trying to be sneaky and some of their gameplans to who they wanted to put on the wheel of misfortune to increase somebody’s chances of going home at each elimination.

But I found it even more interesting when people from certain shows either screwed their nose up at seeing another from their show, such as Trey and Lorenzo from Squid Games because of the history there, or absolute joy and a bond of solidarity between The Circle gang.

Would I watch a second season of this show or actually recommend it to somebody? I think I could only recommend it to somebody if you love all the shows the contestants are from and want to potentially see a different side to them but the show itself is not really captivating or must watch. I would actually be surprised if they bring the show back for a second season but whenever I think that they drag it on until it dies a painful death…