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

this season seems fine (I've watched one episode) you are all a bunch of whiners

https://i.insider.com/629699353050690018311c4b?width=1300&format=jpeg&auto=webp

Yeah season is fine and the show knows when it is being ridiculous; it is self aware, this is often intended (for example, the entire skating rink bullying and laughing at Eleven). Just try to have fun with it.

That skating rink bullying stuff and laughing at Eleven was supposed to be ... fun? Oof.

i do think the show is in a weird space (and maybe always has been) where it's not sure if the target audience is gen x people who are nostaligic for the 80's or younger people (who are now older teenagers) who want to watch people their own age, and as a result the tone of the show drifts a bit. this doesn't really bother me, but my kid (almost 16) last night was rolling their eyes at Eleven's voice over in the opening episode. I was like yes of course it is cheesy, what is the problem?

show has been in a descent ever since its apex, which was the ep where they showed up at school dressed as the Ghostbusters, and a bully walked by and yelled - "who ya gonna call? THE NERDS!"

but i will start this soon.

Meant have fun with the show despite its over the top cheese, but yeah tbh even that scene amused me with its heavy handed "so we see here, in case you aren't aware, that Eleven is struggling with bullies. We wanted to make sure that was established. Is everyone clear? No? Can we get another goon to laugh and point? Just want to make sure." Which is pretty true to actual 80s teen movies?

xxp

If nothing else, I'd think y'all would appreciate the scene where [show hidden text] literally saves a character's life.

― When the Pain That You Feel is the Bite of an Eel, That's a Moray (Old Lunch), Thursday, June 2, 2022 10:10 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

episode 4 was the clear highlight of the season, and one of the best episodes in the show's history.

Eleven bullying/end of episode 4/end of final episode: the problem with this season (I can’t remember if it was always like this?) is its just too heavy handed. It doesn’t just spell everything out for you, it forces it down your throat to make sure you don’t miss a bit of it at all. I don’t think it is self-aware about this. There was no irony in showing that tattoo at the end of the final episode, instead it felt like either the show is too eager to waste time or it does not respect the audience’s intelligence.

^^saying all that, I actually liked this season lol. Just too many instances of banging a point over my head as the viewer. Edit out 15ish% of the fat and this is probably my favourite season?

My kids told me there is some controversy over filming parts of this season in a former Nazi camp, which makes all the tattooed numbers stuff that much more icky.

xpost This season would be fine if it just moved instead of spinning gears. It's season 4, we get it, time to get going, you know?

Every character except maybe Dustin seems to be utterly lost and blank, it feels like most of them just stand there and don't even say anything? And all the drama arises from nobody saying anything they are thinking to anyone else? Will and his older brother don't ever do anything? The entire Russia subplot is comically stupid and also boring. The only good scene was when Eleven clocked her bully with a skate, but then they immediately went back to everyone standing around not doing anything.

This totally.
The Vecna reveal was actually pretty decent but it toooook soooooo looooonnnngg
The Russia stuff was SO TERRIBLE

Dustybun carries this show.
If every single one of the bullies doesn't end up in a dumpster at the end I'm quitting Netflix.

each bully is going to get their own Netflix standup special

That was Netflix's takeaway from Chappelle's last special

Based on S3 and my 20-minute peek into S4, one of the main problems--the main one, maybe--is that, unfair though it may be, some kid actors were not meant to be anything other than kid actors. Their acting is just very awkward when they get older. On the old Roseanne show, Darlene made the transition from energetic kid to brooding teenager brilliantly; D.J., on the other hand, who was so weirdly funny early on, just wasn't very good as a teenager. For me, that was the case with at least two or three of the characters on Stranger Things.

cmon name names

Dustin would be one; even worse, I thought, was Mike. (Had to check the name.) If you don't have that problem, I'm sure everything is a lot more bearable.

Huh. I feel like Dustin is one of the few having fun with this lucky role. Steve, too. Max is good as well. Now Lucas, Mike, Will, Nancy, Eleven, Jonathan (does he count as a kid? he looks like he's 30) none of them can act at all, to various degrees. The adults are all ... fine. Winona has nothing to do here (including acting). Gelman is mostly hammy. Hopper is good, though. He's surprisingly versatile for a lunk, which is why it was dumb to literally lock him in a prison this whole season. They should have locked the kids in a Russian prison instead.

Dustin does seem to be still popular. In S3, I thought he'd lost whatever it was that made him so good dancing at the prom to "Time After Time."

hope (really-)high top fades come back in style thanks to Lucas

The actor playing Eddie has big RDJ energy, Marvel should sign him up for some lame Tony Stark JR TV show.

that’s interesting, i think the real problem is that the whole hawkins crew can act circles around the california crew (except argyle, he’s a cliche but the actor is likable enough to make it work)

xps to josh

The actor playing Eddie has big RDJ energy

Yeah, another reason why sidelining him for two entire episodes (so, about six hours) made no sense. Hey, let's introduce this new livewire character with lots of energy! And then ... let's lock him away so we can focus on all the moping!

No one strikes me as a bad actor in this show but many characters strike me as pooooooooooorly written/not-fun. Agree that Hawkins Crew >>>>>>>>>> Cali Crew.

will appears to be wearing the same shirt that he did in S1, which is now small enough on him that it has fused with his own flesh

i am watching because my kids are crazy about it. “this is the best series i’ve ever seen”

first ep of new series pretty rough in terms of graphic child death, not a fan really

Just wait until they flash back to the graphic child deaths in every single episode. In case you missed those details.

I’ve just finished episode 4 (so, like five hours in) and it’s odd that it feels like the table is still being set, rather than the plot fully underway. Not much to add other than I agree with a lot of the points above: too many disconnected groups of characters, longer running times haven’t added to the show at all, and I just fast-forward through the Russian stuff. The cast is too big—I don’t think Will or Jonathan, for instance, have mattered at all to the plot so far. Writing that, I realize that I don’t care much about the main cast from the first season anymore—Mike and Eleven don’t interest me much either yet this season. If it were up to me, I’d reduce the young adult case to Robin, Steve, Dustin and one or two others. Also have noticed a lot more flashing back to things that happened only one or two episodes ago.

I'm surprised no-one has mentioned it before - is it too obvious? *has* it been mentioned? - but the new series of Stranger Things has made Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" come back into the pop charts here in jolly old blighty, at number 8:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-61685561

My initial reaction was "how does that work", and then I remembered that you can buy music over the internet. Perhaps she'll finally crack the elusive US market. Three months from now Kate Bush will get a cheque for £15.45 for all the streaming royalties. She has even acknowledged this fact (the chart placement, not the fact that you can buy music over the internet) on her website:
https://www.katebush.com/news/stranger-things

At this point my mind is pinging because I'm sure I first read about this on a forum very recently, possibly Ilxor itself. My internet search history has "stranger things baltimora" in it on 01 June, but nothing from Ilxor. Someone else must have pointed this out already. They must have.

In her message Kate Bush uses the phrase "bated breath", which she could so easily have misspelled, but she didn't because she went to grammar school. When I was a kid there was a Children's BBC TV show called Running Scared that had "Running Up That Hill" as the theme tune. Even as a kid I thought the show was punching above its weight. I learn from the internet that it also had Brian Eno and Jon Hassell on the soundtrack. I wonder if the producer picked up the phone and thought "if you don't ask, you don't get".

Stranger Things.

nice.

Based on S3 and my 20-minute peek into S4, one of the main problems--the main one, maybe--is that, unfair though it may be, some kid actors were not meant to be anything other than kid actors. Their acting is just very awkward when they get older. On the old Roseanne show, Darlene made the transition from energetic kid to brooding teenager brilliantly; D.J., on the other hand, who was so weirdly funny early on, just wasn't very good as a teenager. For me, that was the case with at least two or three of the characters on Stranger Things.

― clemenza, Saturday, June 4, 2022 10:48 AM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Malcolm in the Middle definitely had this problem with Dewey & a little bit with Reese. Malcolm himself transitioned to an overly whiny & dramatic teenager pretty well I guess but yeah it didn't surprise me his career basically ended there

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBeuBFE6yHU

(xposts) It was a few decades before I realised the song wasn’t actually called “Running Scared”

I heard "Running Up That Hill" on the radio today, so--maybe--that's why.

There was some functionally identical cover of "Running Up that Hill" I heard a bunch on a radio maybe a couple of years ago. This one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N7iVWK2W48o

Of course all the comments are still about Stranger Things. But if that's what it takes for people to hear this song, that's cool with me.

started watching this when my gf put on “the first episode of stranger things”, and it took me about 20 minutes to realize she meant first episode of the fourth season. ended up continuing to watch and despite its seriously languid pacing and kaleidoscopic direction it’s enjoyable with some serious flaws, the main thing beings there’s just too many characters with not enough to do. like much of its intended audience I am set up to tolerate a lot of the imperfections just because of what they’re going for, but I can’t say there’s much this show adds to the canon that twin peaks or buffy haven’t already. happy for kate bush tho

way behind, just watched 1st ep of new season & i really dug it

I still really like the Stephen King vibes & i think they do it so well ie using the characters as a bridge to the actual spooky bad shit but also spooky bad shit can just as easily be homelife or school

i don’t think any of the kids are any worse now than before, just some of them don’t get to do very much or arent expected to

eddie my new fave, he reminds me of a 90’s actor i cant quite place rn but the young rdj comparisons are also otm

just finished it yesterday - same, i quite like this still, overstuffed as it is. the high school/teen angst/bullying stuff is still the most tedious part of the show, but it gets better once they get deeper into the Upside Down/mystery shit. Russia plot went on for far, far too long but overall, it's good folding laundry TV.

Re some of the kids not having much to do: I was gonna say that it doesn't help that they keep adding new characters, but... I really like the new characters and prefer them to most of the original cast lol. Love Argyle and Eddie. i also thought young RDJ the first time I saw Eddie, not just his looks but his mannerisms and the way he talks as well.

Robin/Maya Hawke also a really fun presence - she really is equal parts Uma/Ethan, it's kinda fascinating to watch.

young rdj

only just realised people are talking about robert downey jr and it's not actually a typo of ronnie james dio

a young richard d. james

Was Maya Hawke's character this manic in the last season? It's so weird to see her paired with Nancy, because Nancy acts like a younger actor playing old and Hawke seems like an older actor playing young, though irl she is five years younger than Natalie Dyer. (I think Will and Mike and Dustin are the only teens that are still teens; Steve is 30, a couple of years older than Charlie Heaton, who looks 40 playing 30.)

Argyle ... I assume that is a Die Hard reference?

remindes me of a young Mr. October himself, slugger reginald duane jackson!

who unfortunately has been CANCELLED since that time he tried to assassinate the queen.

The awful wig they gave Heaton isn’t doing him any favors in terms of him trying to look like a teenager.

And with the number of hard turns it took, that VW bus should’ve flipped on its side at least 20 times now. (Unless it’s an in-jokey reference to Back To The Future, where the older VW bus also should’ve flipped a bunch of times.)

Really enjoyed this season. It's always been dumb but also a lot of fun and watching with my 14 year old daughter helped me focus on the fun side. She's also much better than me at naming all the kid actors as they've all got like 20 million followers on instagram or tik tok or whatever.

But yeah the final Vecna reveal was incredibly heavy handed, even for this show. Like, yeah we get it already. The zooming in on his wrist would have been a really cool reveal if they hadn't spent the previous 10 minutes or so clearly fucking telegraphing it.

Quite like the fact that they may have been foreshadowing Vecna in previous seasons as apparently there's a few scenes where you can hear the distorted clock chime.

I'm a bit puzzled by timeline I was thinking that 001 as orderly looked too young to be the kid who had killed half his family but I guess there's puberty aged kid in 1959 who is in the Creel led programme as an orderly in the late 70s and it's only 20 years. BUt yeah that whole origin thing seemed to be very heavy handed

BUt otherwise have somewhat enjoyed the season. Is everybody getting too old for this to continue anyway.

i'm pretty sure i am

Lol. Season 5 is the final one and mutterings that there will be a time jump because the kids are getting too old

Am I the last idiot on earth to realize that Gaten Matarazzo is the son of Dawn Weiner?