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

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

Had a thought that Billy was an anarchronistic dirtbag by Midwest standards, but maybe not Californian. That would explain why he had Metallica in 1984 as opposed to more trad classic/stadium rock as mentioned above.

thought this was fine, not as good as season one but still a lot of fun. the pile-on of 5000 word think pieces overanalysing every scene, and explaining to me how this season is the worst thing in human history is pretty hilarious, but then i guess if you're trying to convince yourself that writing about TV was the correct career choice then you need to dress things up a bit

Did a two evening binge on S2 and enjoyed it.

A minor gripe, I feel that they don't need to be quite as explicit with the references, watching Winona banging the table in front of the doctors had me replaying the same "who are you people!!!' scene from CEOT3K and it's more distracting than pleasing. S2 felt more loaded with specifics like this.

croce choice just seemed totally in character to me, and also - shades of billy joel thread here - I really got the "kid loves music and loves that parent figure is sharing it with them" vibe. sharing music having been an important theme to the jonathan/will thing last season, it was a nice variation this time around.

i still wish the kids had more interests btw. last time i wanted to see some passing reference to things besides d&d, x-men and star wars. now it's only d&d. do they read? have hobbies?

Who needs hobbies when you have demodogs?

Billy needed a wig, Rob did not
https://assets-auto.rbl.ms/05d78a3577c079e5e6bc09e6ce1ccfeab543f4163175e132df8390015a7d02e3

I had a brief debate with my friend who was claiming Steve's haircut was a mullet when it surely was not

the douchebag stepbrother had a mullet for sure

yeah Steve’s is way too long on top & sides to be a mullet.
i dunno what it’s called, medium-length feathered?

mullet’s got to be short at the sides, even if there’s a bit of length (spikes, curls) on top

the defining mullet feature is that the back has to be longer than the rest of the haircut imo

yeah that too

I watched a couple of those 'beyond' shows (just a couple, too much shouting) and Steve's hair is just about as foofy irl.

it’s pretty majestic

i'll read the thread later but just finished this and found this season to be a massive step up over the first one. the plotting in episodes 6/8/9 was roughly as good as anything in their long list of influences.

Doc Casino hit my feelings on this season almost exactly. Most importantly, I thought the cast got too big for them to give everybody time. Max seemed cool but was underdeveloped. Mike, ostensibly the main character in S1, was barely given anything this season. The El episode was an interesting idea that ended up being quite boring. Again, underdeveloped supporting characters

But there was lots to like as well. Liked the storylines for Dustin and Lucas and Will. Liked the intensity of the last two episodes and the Ball scene. Hope that poor Will is not the victim next season - we've barely seen what his real personality is

i liked this but agree it wasn't as good as s1. the chicago stuff was stupid and boring.

one scene i found hilarious even tho it was sort of frivolous and unnecessary was the douche stepbrother calling around to mike's house and the mom getting out of the bath, with donna summer soundtracking it. there was something brilliant about that scene even if it wasn't at home with the rest of the show.

also whoever said he turns good next season is so otm. setting up the evil dad etc is a clear sign of that. i was surprised he didn't turn good this season by helping them fight something, i thought it was all set up for that.

am i the only one disappointed we didn't really see the huge tentacled monster? like apart from in dream sequences and for a split-second at the end. felt a bit strange it didn't feature in any battle at all.

i was disappointed! seemed kinda weird actually. i thought it would try to claw its way out of the gate. meanwhile, what do Lovecraft fans think of this show?

nah that was a cool variation imo, much more interesting as a malevolent shadowy presence trying to push through the gate than as whatever flower-faced thing it would have turned out to be in full sunlight.

Just your periodic reminder that humans are a plague!

https://www.the-pool.com/news-views/opinion/2017/45/amy-jones-on-the-sexualisation-of-stranger-things

ugh, that's depressing.

:(

Just finished Season 2. I agree with most of y'all that it didn't quite have the tension nor intrigue of the first series, which I guess is to be expected, since there are certain bits from S1 that just can't be replicated. Like when Barb gets pulled under and winds up in a swimming pool, which gives the first hint of there being an evil parallel dimension, or when Joyce and Hopper walk through the Byers house in the Upside Down, causing the lights to flicker as they pass through, which makes a bunch of scenes from earlier on make more sense. But more than that I think S1 had that mystery of how far the writers were willing to go, not knowing if this was a one-off series or if it was something that would be brought back. You don't know what's off the table. Watching Season 2, you already know Season 3's in development, so when say Hopper goes underground and gets choked out by hell vines, you know that someone's going to come by and rescue him just in the nick of time. It also kinda kills the tension in a plot device that gets telegraphed early on, which is the potential necessity of sacrificing Will to defeat a greater evil (it was a little odd how none of the characters recognize this until the very end) - at no point does it really feel like that's a possibility. I guess killing off Bob was sort of an act of good faith, though even that seems a bit obvious in retrospect - he had no real backstory, it wasn't really clear how him and Joyce hooked up, and he has no relation with anyone else, besides maybe being sort of a future version of the kids, though the AV Club guy already plays that role. (Plus, you kind of figure Joyce and Hopper are getting together somehow)

That said I still thought it was pretty great. I wasn't huge on the California kids, though Billy had that great scene with Mike & Nancy's Mom which made his character worthwhile. Thought it was a lot funnier and more self-aware, for better or worse - love Dustin telling Mike's Dad that he's completely worthless, though Max going on about how the plot had "no originality" felt a little too on-the-nose, I was afraid she was going to start referencing the specific movies the show borrowed from. All in all pretty good, though a bit disappointed that the climax of the final episode was, once again, El yelling at something until it went away, it's like deus ex machina twice in a row now.

I like how this season actually gives Steve both a proper arc and something to do. He’s Brand from the Goonies now*.

*even tho Billy is the shitty older sibling shown lifting weights on a home bench and is distracted by what his adolescent family member is getting up to

btw how did Bob know that the monster dogs would be repelled by water? lucky guess er what?

He remembered that that tunnels avoided bodies of water -- recognizing that helped him figure out that the drawings were a map of the town.

Nancy sure wears a lot of layers this season.

Eleven dressed in Dave Vanian from The Damned cosplay was pretty funny

I'm about five episodes into this and weirdly lacking the compulsion to continue. There's this really frustrating habit that US TV series have of hooking all their characters into a pattern of doing basically nothing for the first few episodes of every season.

Yes, it's very annoying, especially if you are starting a new series and want to know if it's going to be worth your time or not.

The narrative structure is def the worst thing about this season

Just watched this. Liked it a lot. Worth it for the kids + el, the mum, nancy and jonathan and hopper imo. Tunnels/dungeon! Smoke monster. Demodogs.

Chicago punk gang scenes ... did not work for me. I get that they were going for: The Warriors, 80s movie punks, Akira; not sure why we needed a reference to Barbelith and King Mob though and the acting was not good. In my mind an 80s street gang should sort of resemble that Billy character; loads of mullets and hairspray and open shirts, not actual mohawks? Living in a warehouse and standing around a burning trashcan fair enough.

I guess the stylistic and narrative break just wasn't very well handled

Possibly something to do with Hawkins, like Twin Peaks, being not quite a 'location' as we would normally mean the term but ... something else?