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

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?

Watched all of season one today its good it references many things and all the actors look like other actors from other things it made me feel good it's good

Like idk if you guys heard about this

I would have read the thread but -and I love the guy you know I do- tuomas takes are just so so bad and there was a few right off the bat and I couldnt

maybe it's cuz I don't watch a whole lot of TV but the whole John Hughes-meets-Alien vibe of this feels pretty unique in that it succeeds in both counts. thought it was cool that the last ep of the 2nd series could just kick the paranormal shit for a while and still be really watchable

It's really more of a two Stephens vibe tbh

I mean....really really

i was mega-stoke for S2 after finishing S1 but have not been able to muster up ANY enthusiasm for it now that it's here. been trying to pin down why this is and haven't really cracked it

felt the same about the first two seasons of the Homecoming podcast

you should watch it, it's really good.

dmac u shld watch s2 u mite like it

season 2 is solidly meh

That's ok life is solidly meh but it's worth catching once

I thought S1 was better if only because you really didn't know how far they were going to take it - if you don't know there's going to be a second season it makes you feel like everything's on the table. The ending of the first season is so extreme that it's hard to imagine a second one even existing. I kinda felt the same way...like why even watch this, what's left to do. S2 had some unnecessary parts (That One Episode with Eleven, Max's older brother, probably Max herself), and I thought the subplot with Dart was kinda dumb, because characters developing weird obsessions that cause them to lie to everyone and endanger their safety is one of my least favorite tropes. But as a whole it was very good. I love how Steve transforms from an unlikeable jerk to arguably the show's best character by the end.

u cant compare everything to yr first time frogs

itll never be the same

My older kid binged it on night one, but my wife and younger one have been catching up on season 2. Me, I've been popping in and out, but boy does this season seem like a few episodes of story padded out to whatever this runs. So much filler, scenes that go on twice as long as they should, and so on.

Same for the first season, I thought! For me it only cohered in the last 2-3 episodes. I haven’t seen the 2nd yet.

Ugh, just saw the ultra campy Chicago episode. And the melodrama across the board, it's just killing me. Plus these dum-dums are all acting like none of this shit has happened before. So much "Will!?!? Will!?!?! What's wrong, Will!?!?" Dudes (and mom), you remember he was abducted into another dimension and tormented by some evil creature, right?

My favorite half-assery might have been when they laid the meat lure for the demon dogs but then had to clearly wait for night - and the fog to roll in - to disguise the special effects. The biggest surprise for me in season 2 has been Steve, who is portrayed as a dude who would hate this show and resents being stuck in it. "Aliens" references through the roof in this one, too, but the execution is largely "Critters" level.

LOL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXyju7zFwyE

Hot Dog on a Stick? That's a California thing.

It’s delicious tbh

Is that the same as a corn dog?