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

Well, of course she'll be back. She's a real find. I'd love to see her get pulled into the group on some level.

she'll somehow save their asses without learning anything about the supernatural crap, and call them all nerds, and it will be beautiful

First post here, too hard to read all previous comments.

I would of liked to see Max be more annoying to justify Mike’s reaction.

I liked that the conspiracy nut didnt’t die but came out on the top in the end because that was totally unexpected.

Super happy ending was nice (especially because Dustin). 10 minutes without supernatural stuff was nice.

8th episode made me cry. I wanted to cry. I was alone in my room with the lights off, had watched 4.5 episodes already that day, and was sleepy. The perfect storm.

I think Mike's reaction being unjustified is the point.

i just figured max's presence made him miss 11 and he resented max for being some sort of replacement for 11. which is kinda irrational, but understandable if you hang around human beings long enough.

Most characters seemed to think Max is annoying as well but maybe I’m reading too much into that. I like the scenes where the boys act stupid (“tubular”...) because it shows their age and makes the show real. That’s why I wanted to see more of Max being kinda annoying in particular. The last episodes seemed to fill Max with nothing more than one-liners and bad-assery; I wanted to see her flipside for balance’s sake. Basically I’m griping and wishing over minor details because the series is really good.

Max was just underdeveloped in general, they needed a female character but gave her a few generic qualities ie is good at video games & skateboards & then she just kinda was there, no personality or depth

well it was sad that she was obviously tormented/abused by her stepbrother. which is a little depth into her character. and her defensiveness/badassness.

I like the scenes where the boys act stupid (“tubular”...) because it shows their age and makes the show real.

See for example Dustin taking way too much time to explain his demodog nomenclature at a really urgent moment.

here comes my tl;dr hate train, so choogle on or skip across the tracks before the gates come down!

was the sound in the first season so constantly active and jarring? regardless of context, jump scares can and will at any moment, at a rate of at least 2 per minute, for 50 minute straight. dustin is reaching for a glass of milk but **JUMP--**what is thing moving in the background?!?! oh it's just his demogorgan creature, etc. i feel like whoever did the final sound saw the kudos received for the first season's sound design and responded by multiplying everything they had done before by 20. imagine watching this show without any music at all. it's like imagining the generator room at a huge industrial plant going totally dead. is it better this way, or just completely unthinkable given the BOOM!!!**--SCARE!!!**
(^seriously, i feel any video or audio pieces that discuss this show should be required by federal law to include dozens of sound transitions, and at a minimum 2 of those must be throat-seizing string stabs, interspersed throughout the rest of audio)

the chicago aspect of this show is like GoT's Dorne for me. seems like a totally different and worse show, and then when they go back to the usual world and characters you can't imagine the universe that contains them both.

i should say something positive here. my favorite parts of the show were generally the things that didn't involve the upside-down or eleven's crazy trip into town - i still really enjoy watching dustin and lucas and mike and find lots of relatable things about their characters, and i like the addition of max. i like how they kind of made generations of anger and dealing with that a theme with this season. i liked most of the slightly older kids storylines, too, although i wanted to scream at nancy and jonathan to run away from the isolated cabin of a guy in an open robe who keeps plying you with more alcohol than you know you should have (and realizing this even as a _teenager_, which suggests the quantities were extreme) and then initiates a conversation about sex. that was fucking weird and i felt like the parting comment the guy made after giving them a gift of more alcohol, something like "and never come visit me again!" was a last minute addition to the script, generated by lots of awkwardness about what they had filmed in the prior scene and trying to dispel any thoughts that they would ever see him again. anyway. steve became totally likable this year. good for steve! max's older brother is one of the worst characters i have seen on tv, both in general concept and also how underdeveloped he is. the actor actually did about as well he could, i think. max's older brother would fit it on a bad show. i don't understand what he's doing here (same with characters in Dorne, except the actors were not only poorly conceived but poorly acted).

i'm not really enjoying the upside-down storyline anymore, but i understand why it has to be there, and also can understand others who like it. for me the compelling part of the show is watching the characters interact with a persistent undertone of trauma, and seeing how they all respond to it. i don't find the upside-down/gov/secret stuff compelling, but at least it serves the function of giving the characters something in common to react against. i just wish that the horror, or allusions to its possibility, didn't jump in and out of each scene so frequently this season.

the last 20 minutes of the final episode were great. dit was almost a reward after everything else - bonus footage of these characters you like getting to talk for a few minutes without someone interrupting with a whoopee cushion (unless it's Dustin, because that sounds like something he would do).

https://i.imgur.com/WZ69Ol6.jpg

(same with characters in Dorne, except the actors were not only poorly conceived but poorly acted).

sorry, here i was using Dorne and Chicago as synonyms

just finished last night

https://i.imgur.com/tyAjtHu.gif

i was actually kinda surprised that the Chicago gang didn't show up at the last minute to help out. with lots of wide-eyed "who are THESE guys?" looks.

of course there are flaws but i just enjoyed the world and the characters as much as ever .

KM, I feel you 100% re: the lost weekend at Brett Gelman's place but I think the fact that it was Brett Gelman made me feel like they were ultimately safe. But then Brett Gelman kind of has that thing where he likes to lull you into a false sense of complacency and then drop the most fucked-up shit ever in your lap so maybe my instincts are off re: Brett Gelman.

Kali's Dream Warriors is the point where the show jarringly jumped from playful pastiche to something almost like Kung Fury-level parody, imo.

OL, stay away from Brett Gelman's house, i don't care what he told you or what tv shows films he has appeared in!

it did feel a little The Last Dragon but that ok xp

I appreciate this show much more when I keep in mind that the primary demo it's geared toward is probably kids around the ages of its main protagonists.

davey mentioned this upthread, and it mostly works until you remember some of the legitimately horrific and gruesome scenes, like the fate of rudy. sean astin will always be rudy to me.

the parting comment the guy made after giving them a gift of more alcohol, something like "and never come visit me again!"

Otm, weird lonely Brett Gelman seemed pretty eager for them to hang out and drink and sleep over the night before. But apparently it was all a ridiculous plot mechanic for them to hook up, so.

xp

hopper yelling at 11 in the cabin was the most uncomfortable moment for me. even though i know HE'S a nice guy. it was still kinda scary and claustrophobic. the psycho-drama element. it's not even his kid after all. it was like a drunken fight with a girlfriend.

despite that, i liked hopper's character a lot this season. and last season. he and winona tend to elevate every scene they're in

Joyce improved this season too. We knew she was strong but allowing herself to have a boyfriend and the way she cranked the heat on Will made her stronger. Also, because she had a boyfriend we got to see scenes with her being happy.

Yes - both seasons they were great

i like hopper and i understood the pressure of keeping someone hidden and fed for a year(!!), the yelling was just kinda scary to me. like, stop yelling at her, idiot! but it made tons of plot happen so mission accomplished.

i found myself irrationally distracted by worrying about eleven would be able to "clean up" all the broken windows in the cabin, and if hopper had to do it, if he would know how to fix them himself or would need to call in some repair workers.

Jim Croce scene was ace.

that's because it's the best song ever.

There’s a lot going on w that hopper/11 fight because let’s be real Hopper doesn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell against a truly angry 11 and he knows it. 11 knows he cares about her. It’s really a parent and child fighting where one isn’t actually trying to hurt the other

parents just getting angry and yelling at kids, even good parents, wasn’t the cultural taboo in the 80s it is now. or I just knew a few angry parents.

i think it was more about her past trauma at the hands of a powerful man that made me feel that way. she had lived her entire life indoors, no? i really just wanted her to get out of that cabin.

the motivations were real, totally. the acting was special imo

season two: liked, didn't love, substantial step down and i think there were some basically wrong-headed early decisions about how to structure it, what it should be about, and how much it should try to repeat the first one's beats. but i like the characters and i like the cast and the design work/production values are actually a good bit better than last time around, and that carried me past a number of awkward problems which i will be bullet-pointing below amidst other thoughts.

the major problem/difference is that in season one you're watching a mystery get untangled. different characters have different clues and are working on different assumptions and with different methods. when hopper first sneaks inside the spooky lab, we're really curious what he'll find and what will happen. then as unlikely teams form, they compare notes, it all comes together. there's not really anything like that here - everybody already knows each other, and a lot of the time we in the audience have cottoned to what's going on and we're watching the cast slowly catch up with us. meanwhile since there's no one clear obstacle they all need to get over that's driving the plot, New Threats and New Goals get thrown in to keep everybody freaked out and moving around as much as possible. okay, now back to the house! quick, back to the field with the hole in the ground! come in, come in, we need you back at the lab! ....by nature it's going to be more episodic and herky-jerky this way.

* from the moment paul reiser shows up it's like "okay either they're going to just repeat the first season with them starting the evil experiments over again, or the twist is paul reiser, unlike his aliens character, is actually a good guy." for the period where they're trying to make you think the former might happen, it's reeeeal boring. seen it.

* in general i think it would have been smart to make more of a left-turn sequel, get us into a totally different situation, away from the evil government building. i think they were TRYING to do an alien -> aliens shift, but the tone and pacing are way too similar from 1 to 2 for that to work... it's still the same genre, same vibe, same pacing, same soundtrack. the ending of the last one, and the opening scenes of this, had me thinking we'd be getting out of hawkins more, hopper helping the government track down #001-010... i'm just kinda tired of the school and the lab and winona ryder's house.

* "dark knight rises" problem: starting ONE YEAR LATER so the first couple episodes are just laboring to establish a weird new status quo, that's then just going to be undone anyway. telling the el-hopper story in flashback drags this out further. see also jonathan and nancy struggling to convey to us where exactly their friendship ended up in the intervening time. i did ultimately like the hopper/eleven material and it seemed written and acted as a more complex relationship than a lot of the other ones.

* shouldn't jonathan like, get a job or something?

* the new characters were all fine i guess. the kiefer sutherland brother character was SO over the top though. i was into the ridiculousness of that but he's off in his own more cartoonish show. actually there seemed to be more of a struggle with tone and keeping everybody at the same level of realness. and SO much time devoted to building up his thing with steve, just so he can show up and have that one fight and get defeated immediately? reminiscent in a bad way of the all-foreshadow, no-payoff evil husband in It.

* cast is too big and max gets shortchanged. there's a lot of time put into sort of stock scenes of her and mike not getting along and eleven resenting her, but neither of those threads gets a payoff really. no "i change my vote - you're in the party" moment or anything! cut for time? her and lucas worked i guess.

* agreed with all of you, jonathan not recognizing the siouxsie sioux costume is dumb and out of character. he should have been the one person at the party who DID get her costume!

* "kid thinks he's in ET but really he's in Gremlins" is already the plot of Gremlins so the whole Dart thing was kinda dumb imo. cool that dustin got his own thing to do and we saw the kids all working alone for a while and NOT in constant radio communication for once.

* couldn't hopper at least take el on the occasional hike around the cabin? that would have been cute to see. a little more friendly father-child bonding that's not just riding the Eggo gag would have helped.

* el's solo episode doesn't work. really points up how much the show otherwise relies on jumping from thing to thing. you get bored with a single plot like this because it's obvious how it's going to end. and yeah the Invisibles gang members were bad. her sis was cool but seemed way more interesting in the tease at the beginning of the season. turned out to be pretty one-dimensional NO YOU HAVE TO KILL HIM BE EVIL! lame. the stuff with el and her mother worked better. wish we'd gotten more of her and hopper talking through this experience at the end. "oh and i joined a murderous gang!" el is just less interesting when she's dealing with these other characters. it's in-character that she's reticent and blunt, but that doesn't always make for crackling dialogue scenes.

* el closing the gate was awwwwwesome. whole last two eps were great imo.

* haaaaaated the conspiracy-theorist side story. like james skipping town in twin peaks. lot of time burned to accomplish.... what? shoehorning jonathan and nancy back together and getting them out of the way of the overstuffed main plot, i guess. could have been done many other ways.

* the 80s musical cues were much more glaring and embarrasing this time, and certain other things felt especially winky, like the point of a given shot (buono in the bathtub) was to paint an 80s tableau and not to create something that felt like a real lived-in situation. that said, some of the other 'period' stuff rang true for me in the good way. the different families having their different cameras was nice. the kids being pissed at dragon's lair as "overpriced bullshit" was cool.

* i don't understand why the whole school would have stopped wearing costumes? i get the ~feeling~ they're going for of being a kid and not getting the memo but... huh?

* was modine CGI?? he looked terrible and weird and they avoided closeups. it was weird they even used him tbh.

* they should keep casting former child actors. astin was fine and more importantly, if you do have this huge cast of kids, keep putting in people who've been there. have to imagine winona would be a good mentor/pal to the kids she actually shares scenes with.

* not gonna lie - got huge goosebumps when el and mike were reunited, and teary-eyed at the dance ;_;

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I also teared up at the dance. Some of the best parts of the show are when it’s like freaks and geeks

I feel like no one else but me thinks Murray isn't Paul Giamotti but rather Richard Dreyfuss in Jaws...

Everyone in the production and Gelman himself think of him as a Dreyfuss character (based on what was said in the aftershows).

ok not crazy ty

Finished s2 & found it really enjoyable - lots more genuinely emotional moments in this, and I will admit i cried as soon as they started playing Time After Time at the Snow Ball and didnt stop ;_; <3

i think for me i just loved the detail of seeing how far these characters would go for each other, what they’re willing to sacrifice for family, friendship or love - it was fuckin beautiful maaaan

I didn’t love Eleven’s city sister, she had a lot of boring clunky dialogue & not much personality

Max’s mullet brother looked like Clayne Crawford from Rectify, it weirded me out. Kinda hot too but not quite

I was mostly ok with music & references etc except for one moment:
both Mr Veg and I were like “WHOA pump the brakes” when Mullet Bro is getting ready to “Four Horsemen” with a Kill Em All flat on his wall.
Dude was not NEARLY dirtbaggy enough for Metallica. He needed a strict camaro rock diet of Styx/Van Halen/Thin Lizzy/Loverboy etc. If he’s down with Metallica he’s on foot. And he’s DEF not putting cologne on his crotch. LOL

His hair looked weird - i wonder if the longer mullet part was a weave or something?

also re: billy i was like

"we need someone who looks like christian slater playing Buffalo Bill"

"I KNOW THIS PERSON"

Yeah, he was wearing a piece. (The "Beyond Stranger Things" episodes are semi-enlightening, but also a lot of killing time.) xp

my wigdar was going bonkers lol

Dude was not NEARLY dirtbaggy enough for Metallica. He needed a strict camaro rock diet of Styx/Van Halen/Thin Lizzy/Loverboy etc. If he’s down with Metallica he’s on foot.

so funny to see/hear billy in the aftershow interview and he is dreamy brit boy band jared leto without the wig.

billy will totally strike back against his evil dad and turn into nice steve in season 3. another ally.

i didn't know jonathan was a brit too. brits really do make the best americans. #rickgrimes4president

another good scene: nancy's drunken "bullshit!" exchange with steve. well-written and well-acted, really felt like one of those arguments where one person's drunker than the other and is basically operating at a different speed, arguing with things that got said two minutes ago or not at all, etc. steve's dickish teenage response also 100% in character.

yeah that was good

as someone who was a teenager when Dragon's Lair came out, I appreciated that dis and it was accurate

Trying watching some of the EPK “after show” eps but it seemed pointless fluff and more sub-Entertainment Tonight-y than anything I would have expected Jim Rash to be involved with.

just want to join the love for the jim croce scene. that was really sweet. and the kind of depiction of bonding between hopper and el that I'd have loved more of. tho it still beats S1's thing of never showing you winona and will together so you only know their relationship as her freaking out while he's gone.

i groaned audibly when Hopper fired that up lol