A thread for Stranger Things, the "Goonies meets X-Files" new Netflix series (with SPOILERS!)

Really pointless teaser - episode titles don't seem v important in this show.

leading with what they do best ie opening title sequences

I've just finished the series thus far, and I'm ambivalent: it's well acted (especially the parts of Eleven and the D&D kids), entertaining, and tightly constructed, but it seems kind of neat and safe next to most of the films it mines for material. (Maybe I want something more like classic Carpenter or Cronenburg than like classic Spielberg.) I guess I just don't understand why you'd collage together so many 80s media tropes without apparently having much to say about 1980s cultural politics or the present moment beyond "the Cold War was used to justify various abuses of state power" and "misfits are cool and should stick together." I'll look forward to the second season, but I hope the series can develop into something gayer, messier, and more troubling.

I basically agree with Emily Yoshida, in other words: "I just don't know why you'd do a retro genre nostalgia pastiche without making it either a) more morally complex b) grosser c) female"

a.) ugh, no b.) who wants that? c.) what? this series was hugely female.

lol @ being horrified by moral complexity/grossness in the sf/horror genre

I mean, there's an abundance of both available.

This show was morally complex? Good/bad divides were p clear and static imo

i think you're misreading the comment

On c), I like Will's mother, Nancy, and especially Eleven as characters (Barb drops out of the series almost immediately, and Nancy's mother doesn't have much to do), but I don't know that that translates into a "hugely female" series so far, since the first two characters' role in the narrative is so heavily determined by the search for Will, and Eleven's self-sacrifice for her friends lets the writers get out of dealing with recovery from trauma in much more detail. (I hope she's developed further in the second season, given the hints that she survived her disappearance.)

c.) what? this series was hugely female.

It never really went beyond basic competence in terms of representing women, if that, and very little interaction between two or more women in the show which made the treatment of Barb extra sucky. Could've been a lot worse of course.

I basically agree with Emily Yoshida, in other words: "I just don't know why you'd do a retro genre nostalgia pastiche without making it either a) more morally complex b) grosser c) female"

― one way street, Wednesday, August 31, 2016 2:43 PM (forty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

because you don't have any particular political commitments

On the female representation, I'd go for "it had just enough". Yeah, there were strong female characters, no, they didn't feel sidelined, but as others have said, there wasn't a huge amount of interaction between them, and it probably wasn't even 50% female in terms of leads. The D&D boys obviously skewed that, and I can see reasons why they wanted that group to be all boys, but still...

This show was morally complex? Good/bad divides were p clear and static imo

tbf one of the "good guys" straight up killed a whole lot of people, plus made a little boy piss his pants in public then broke his arm in half. Bully or not, that's pretty harsh.

http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/31/stranger-things-season-2-details-duffer-brothers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JLBG50uAhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JLBG50uA&feature=youtu.be&t=12

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nR4JLBG50uA

I think there's a weird tendency to sneer at or disregard women in domestic roles (e.g. Winona in this show) as if they're inferior, invisible or immaterial to the story. That seems especially strange with this show when it has three really awesome, active central female characters (Winona, 11, Nancy), with only one in a traditional domestic role. Hopefully more for Faye Miller next season tho?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fbqiN9hHyJo

Was sightly thrown by Eleven's english accent there, for some reason.

She has an American accent in the show

That might be it

Thanks.

lol

Is this the worst thread on ilx or are the ones for tv shows I don't watch worse?

might i suggest the Community thread to help you get a baseline reading

the lost threads should be stapled to the barbed wire when we finally abandon this place for good

lol

ilx ruins everything I enjoy, tbrh. I stopped reading ilm years ago because of.

how exactly does ilx ruin the things you love?

yes let's have this convo now

https://media.giphy.com/media/KOEc8ca7DELmw/giphy.gif

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AQt9tM3fWsY

omg at Eleven rapping

finally got around to watching this last week. did 3 episodes on Wednesday, 5 on Friday. first time my girlfriend and i have binge-watched a show, fucking draining experience, very much like overindulging in drugs. at least on the second night. anyway, loved this show, but two things really bugging me that haven't been extensively discussed here:

1) Fuck Steve. To whoever said upthread that Steve is "basically more or less reasonable 80-90% of the time" - are you high? Steve is not only an idiot, he's an aggressive asshole, up through the end (when he tries to bust into the Byers house, sees Nancy's hand, then looks at Jonathan and screams "DID HE DO THIS TO YOU??????" He's a Grade A asshole in every scene, and while I appreciate the show avoiding annoying cliches and tropes, I'm shocked that so many people are basically OK with Steve. What the fuck? I hope he gets gored in season 2.

2) I have a hard time believing the town going back to normal so quickly, although as someone else pointed out, the ending takes place during Xmas, so they were probably just putting on a brave face. The bodies at the school could've been cleaned up quick, but what about the architectural damage?

3) No one cares about Barb and her mom only shows up once. Before I watched the show, I saw soooooooo many memes about Barb and how awesome she was/how much she sucked. She's a pretty distinctive type, and I think her sudden absence was intentional, to start some Internet hysteria...

Steve might be my favourite character.

And I think he is morally complex! If you see him as a Biff Tannen-type bully jock, I think you're missing a lot.

But he's really, really dumb and a raging asshole. At no point does he redeem himself - the whole "need a hand?" thing with the marquee was just nauseating.

he tries to bust into the Byers house, sees Nancy's hand, then looks at Jonathan and screams "DID HE DO THIS TO YOU??????"

I just rewatched this scene. He really doesn't scream that line. I don't think it's a wildly unreasonable thing to wonder of a woman who is visibly injured and making weak excuses for it when you know she has been spending time with a weird stalker-ish guy. Forcing his way into the house might be beyond the pale. The circumstances were pretty exceptional, though, and it's not exactly the worst thing someone did in the series.

Not to keep the discourse churning, but I like this article's take on the series's gender politics, and it seems relevant to the question of Barb's (probably unintended) appeal:

People like Barb, because she’s the nerd girl, the point of access for a part of the audience neglected by this Boys’ Own Show. She is at least the beginnings of a character we could be happily attached to, the possibility of a show that honored female friendship as much as male friendship, and as much as heterosexual romance. People like Barb in defiance of what Stranger Things says is important, in defiance of her cut short existence and her lack of development. Liking Barb is the finding/making our place that fans do, attaching ourselves to characters who are underserved by the narrative, that resonate for we parts of the audience that are underserved by the narrative. Liking Barb, or Eleven, or Joyce, or Nancy is about making Stranger Things better than it sets out to be.

http://womenwriteaboutcomics.com/2016/09/01/the-cool-girls-missing-girls-of-stranger-things/

I liked Barb as on-the-nose visual shorthand of a very particular nerdy '80s type. She didn't have the opportunity to be much of a character though so, yeah, I think the hype is a little overblown.

The actress is going to be playing Ethel on the forthcoming Riverdale show, FYI.

http://images1.fanpop.com/images/image_uploads/Square-Pegs-cast-square-pegs-1268226_285_290.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLdQc53Glbw

hey but like

what about the funeral, and will's "body"

and the pathologist from "state" who presumably submitted an autopsy report?

and dr brenner?

and the trashed school?

how did the town process any of this information??

It was all over the papers at least.

http://i.imgur.com/Gsc1die.png

Kinda sad the show was set up as yet another guys-in-suits-walking-slowly conspiracy type series, let alone that there will be another season. It probably would have worked better as a stand-alone mini-series type event, not least because it is so redolent of "It" and "Firestarter" and other adapted (and equally erratic) Stephen King works.

Would have been a funny ET callback if instead of Modine they cast Peter Coyote. Maybe too old, I guess.

Don't fret: they're planning to replace all of the guns with flashlights for the home video release.

I think it would be awesome if shows like this quietly retroactively altered or replaced things in past episodes, just to mess with people and/or reward anyone rematching. Like, in season 3 have someone say "whatever happened to my lucky octopus," and then you go back and rewatch an episode from the first season and they've inserted a scene with a lucky octopus. Just to mess with nitpickers and also, you know, space/time continuum/alternate dimension. Or even sneak in a stand-alone episode under a different name, somewhere on Netflix, that is just a humming "stream" of the parallel dimension, where every once in a while a creature or kid wanders by.

Your first idea sounds like stuff that didn't work well when George Lucas did it. Second idea kinda neat.

kinda like the futurama dvd set that has a full-length episode of everybody loves hypnotoad

I was thinking subtle on the former, just little retroactive Easter eggs.