The point of Beast Games is laid out with chilling starkness in the first 60 seconds of its premiere. A thousand people are competing for a $5 million grand prize that, we’re told, is the “largest in entertainment history.” But its host, 26-year-old Jimmy Donaldson, better known as the massively successful YouTuber styled “MrBeast,” refers to this pile of money in another way: “generational wealth.” This might sound like an oddly academic way of describing a jackpot, but only if you were unfamiliar with Mr. Beast’s defining quality: his desire to test exactly what people are willing to do for cash.

The next thing viewers hear on Beast Games is the contestants describing their motivations for competing on the show. The first is a Black woman who says that she grew up homeless and that she would use the money to help other homeless kids. The second is a young white guy who says, “If I win $5 million, I could use that to make passive income for the rest of my life.”

Beast Games, whose first four episodes are now streaming on Amazon Prime, knows what it is doing when it shows you one contestant presumably worthy of the prize and another presented as far more sinister by comparison. It knows what it is doing when it shows you a millennial with pink hair crying hysterically because they knocked over a tower of blocks, or any other instance of grown adults acting like toddlers. It knows that it has taken Squid Game, a show about how, actually, our glee at watching poor people debase themselves for money might be a bad thing, and drawn the exact opposite conclusion.

Beast Games exists to make you hate it and other people, and for you to keep watching regardless. In this, it’s an extraordinary success.

The gist is that 1,000 people wearing tracksuits compete in challenges to win the prize over the course of 10 episodes. They start the contest in a giant warehouse before moving to “Beast City,” which looks like a life-size Brio train set, then onto “Beast Island,” a private $1.8 million Panamanian island. Future episodes move those remaining to the Allegiant Stadium in Las Vegas. Despite reportedly costing more than $100 million to make, it’s marked by nonsensical writing, ugly graphic design, and frequent........

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