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

Just watched the last two eps; sooo frustrating with all the stopping the action for arguing and heart-to-hearts and singing. About 20 instances of TOO SLOW NOW EVERYONE'S DEAD

Loved Erica, the Robin "reveal" in the toilets, Elle spying on the boys. Enjoyed the Fleabag guy and Alexei. The monster was pleasingly revolting.
Disliked the kids' wild speculation about what the monster is doing and what will kill it that happens to be right; would've been much better if they shut the gate and it just carried on. Agree re lack of Eleven.

Also how did the mayor's black eyes disappear in a few hours?

Makeup

I guess; seemed a bit unnecessary and confused the timeline a bit for me

Also how did the mayor's black eyes disappear in a few hours?

An after effect of the government project must be accelerated healing, considering Jonathan gets the shit beaten out of him at the hospital and, a few scenes later, is dashing around with a slight limp at best. Maybe that's why the shift to action movies and a more physical monster don't work for me; I never expect the giant goo monster will actually kill or even seriously harm any of the kids.

I got an unintentional chuckle from them seeing a creature the size of a building stumbling down the road, then deciding a couch against the door ought to be enough to keep it out.

they had a plank on the window too!

I liked the neverending story part but it was overly performative/long. Although, I feel like every time i've seen someone sing it in a bedroom is has been overly performative and long.

Bastian had a bowl haircut too.

Makeup

― rob, Thursday, July 11, 2019 6:09 PM (yesterday)

I guess; seemed a bit unnecessary and confused the timeline a bit for me

― kinder, Thursday, July 11, 2019 6:32 PM (yesterday)

to be more specific, there was a shot during the July 4 fair sequence where you could see that the character had applied makeup around his eyes and on the bridge of his nose, which makes sense given his vanity and the importance of the event. It was uncharacteristically subtle and hard to catch

He used the word "trope" and used a My Little Pony episode that had not yet been made as a signifier of nerddom. I am starting to hate this show.

yep "trope" really stood out

"trope" stuck out, and yeah, when he started talking about My Little Pony, I was like, wait, no, that was absolutely not a nerd thing in the '80s in any way.

But I loved how Dustin and Steve's Jerry and Dean dynamic was nicely ramped up this season.

It occurred to me that some of the weird energy and tone changes of this series are attempts to copy the weird cocaine-driven energy that made up a lot of the worst of 80s Hollywood, but does so as it were merely fun creative energy.

...does so as if.. sorry for the typo, I am full of cocaine.

definitely got the feeling that the writers stopped taking it so seriously around the midway point and instead just tried to hit as many tropes & create as many memes as possible. not sure if that's better or worse than what they were doing before - I did laugh at Lucas deciding to amass large amounts of fireworks, just to set up a final mall scene that's over the top colors and explosions...I admit it, that scene was cool. but there was like...no tension in this season. you pretty much always knew what was gonna happen..."okay, lets turn the keys together!! On the count of three!! 1...…………….!!!! 2...………………….! thrOH SHIT THE BIG RUSSIAN'S BACK!!"

also feels like they left a lot unsaid, not just deliberate cliffhangers about Hopper & Eleven, but stuff like...why did the Russians want to resurrect this monster? why are the Byers' moving after everything they've been through? why doesn't Jonathan, who is definitely an adult by now, just hang back to be with Nancy?

feel like Jonathan and Nancy, having paired up, would get the fuck out of Hawkins no matter where Joyce decided to go

like, their departure from Hawkins by the end of the summer should have been established as imminent in the episode one of season three, it would give Will something to do (deal with his brother leaving) besides being a third wheel who just wants to play D&D, and gives Joyce another reason to leave town (aside from her kids almost being killed by supernatural creatures two times in two years).

Suzy's a dick, if she hadn't insisted on singing, shit would have gone down much sooner.

I think she pretty reasonably assumed Dustin was just fucking around, they both clearly have rich fantasy lives

which ties into another weird aspect to this series...do people outside Hawkins have any clue what's going on? do the people *in* the town even know? there's that post-credits sequence which implies that the whole incident turns into a weird conspiracy theory for late-night TV but that seems a bit inadequate to me...didn't the Mind Flayer gather up like 100 people, including several children who are all dead now? wasn't there a skyscraper-sized monster running around town for a few nights? did the massive Russian base under the mall just get ignored by everybody?

Zombies! Hyena people! Snyder!!

ok what makes sense to me now is that the Russians motivations were not so much about unleashing nightmare creatures as they were a way to send people from Russia to America undetected? explains how Hopper wound up in Russia I guess.

In MY country, GATE closes YOU!

oh god S4 is gonna have El rescue Hop through the gate while saying something like "keep the door 3 inches open", I just know it

gotta admit i got bored and wandered off somewhere around the TRUTH SERUM... can't really imagine coming back for more

I watched the second episode of this season

btw I should clarify, nothing bothered me about the truth serum bit. that’s just the last thing I remember lol.

was really struck by the depth of characterizations, the creative production design, the tightly plotted ratcheting up of tension, the recontextualization and reinvention of classic tropes from a new perspective

That’s supposed to be MDMA right? Was that around in 85?

MDMA has been around since the early 20th century

but I don't think it was supposed to be MDMA

finished tonight, show continues to be insanely watchable and very silly if you spend even one minute thinking about it after it's over. it looked great and a lot of the action scenes were really well done. they have an amazing cast that just keeps getting better. the steve/robin chemistry was so good.

and i won't remember a thing that happened by the time season 4 starts up.

Yeah Steve/Robin was the best thing in the series so far

Even if all the rest of these meanies are gonna pretend to ignore it, I'll admit that I noticed your pass-agg performative bitching, shakes, don't worry, we didn't forget that you hate things

shakey thank you for consistently delivering dramatic tension

I am prehistoric, but I can't help but think that the mall fight would have been more impressive looking with a non-CGI monster and actual pyrotechnics.

MDMA was definitely around in '85 and being discussed seriously as a drug used in psychotherapy. I think they just lazily invented a mixture of MDMA and sodium pentothal because the side effects of an SP overdose aren't fun.

Non-Stop Ecstastic Dancing from 1982 famously inspired and made under the influence. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non_Stop_Ecstatic_Dancing

one thing that I noticed this season is that the spooky title sequence which fit so well in S1 just feels goofy now, the series now is basically The Goldbergs + some Russians and a big ass spider

xp: so was Meat Puppets II (1984)

We just finished this last night. At this point, I've come to mostly just expect some spooks, some laughs, a dece cast that I enjoy watching, and a shitload of frothy retro pop cultural nods, all wrapped up in a sleek visual style. So I wasn't disappointed. Stuff like Hopper's letter at the end and Steve's evolving relationships (and just the evolution of Steve in general) are icing on the cake.

THAT SAID: while I contented myself last season with the likelihood that they weren't planning on stretching their supernatural wings beyond whatever's going on with the Upside Down and its monstrous inhabitants, we're now three seasons in with all those crazy goings-on but without much fleshing out of the premise. Like, cool, this particular bubble of weirdness is going to be the focus of the show, but could we maybe explore that bubble a little more? We have basically no better understanding of what this shit-crazy dimension is or why people are trying to access it or what interest its denizens have in our world than we did at the start of the series. If the next season is just about everyone running away from a hundred foot tall Demogorgon/Mindflayer hybrid, I might start turning into shakey.

It might be better not to. When mysterious fantastical things are explained they lose their magic and wonder.

Let me tell you about midi-chlorians...

yeah it's weird why would you want to learn more?

I don't need the nature of the weirdness to be explained, I'd just like the reasons for people dabbling in the weirdness or the weirdness encroaching into the real world to be a little more complex than 'because'.

Maybe they'll published a novelization where they flesh out details

well, if you found a scab on the surface of reality you would pick at it, wouldn't you?

yeah it's a bit weird they don't expand on it at all since I felt like S1 explained just enough to make it spooky but not enough that it would be bogged down in making no sense whatsoever. like...it's an opposite world or 'shadow realm' in which all our physical structures exist (there was a Castle Byers in the Upside Down right?) but the only way beings in there can effect the real world is through electrical pulses, or something? wasn't there a scene in S1 where a gorgon hand started pushing through the wall? and a random portal in a tree that Nancy got sucked into for a small while? idk I kinda feel the writers didn't exactly think about this a whole lot so maybe it's foolish to speculate too much

I am 100% okay with depictions of the inexplicable, but when there's a variety of shady parties in the narrative who seem to have gleaned something explicable about the 'inexplicable', there's only so much longer you can continue to depict the 'inexplicable' as inexplicable before it ceases to be narratively satisfying.

I kinda feel the writers didn't exactly think about this a whole lot

plenty of evidence that not a lot of thought went into this show. You want a Netflix 80s pastiche that had some thought put into it, watch GLOW.

do they explain what is ladies?

they are gorgeous QED