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

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

Just starting the third season (intentionally avoided this thread the last few weeks). I liked the Fast Times at Ridgemont High inversion but not a whole lot else in the first episode. I remember the sheriff was starting to grate on me towards the end of the second season, and he now seems to have officially taken over from the early Lucas (he got better) as the show's most annoying malcontent. Winona Ryder's still good.

After finishing S3 i really like Billy, and Steve & Robin. At least those characters were the most memorable for me. Billy’s “Moving In Stereo” scene was so great

https://media.giphy.com/media/uTBMqJFIrLU8BuWHnc/giphy.gif

When the two girls are in the mall and poke their heads around a corner in the second episode, where's that image taken from? Is it Desperately Seeking Susan?

...they repeat the image next episode with Dustin and the ex-boyfriend. Driving me crazy trying to place it.

I would watch a show of Steve and Robin working in a video store and solving mysteries.

I am putting in my formal request for them to do a series arc that is an homage to Electric Dreams (keeping up with the Giorgio Moroder).

I feel like the evolution of Steve can largely be chalked up to the realization that they made a huge mistake in casting Joe Keery in the role of an unlikeable jerk.

I would watch a show of Steve and Robin working in a video store and solving mysteries.

Yes, except I would like them to somehow continue wearing the sailor uniforms.

Bloodhound Gang remake. Erica in it too obv.

Saw some of the new season at a friend's, having skipped s2. They sure leaned into making Hopper incredibly brash and annoying, huh

I think he was just overacting.

talk about not learning anything from your parents

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/films/news/uma-thurman-daughter-tarantino-film-cast-maya-hawke-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood-a8504081.html

"American Pie" was close to great...I've progressively lost interest in the monster (in all its various incarnations), otherwise I wouldn't equivocate.

Winona looks so much like Harry Dean Stanton in her Russian uniform. I can’t unsee it.

Leave Winona alone

Obviously I’m very sorry

love this season, all the Steve and Robin stuff was A+, I loved how he deftly turned the "reveal" into a friendly debate about the hotness of her crush

not so keen on the "Russians as villains" arc that they seem to be setting up for S4

the monster was better when it was a creepy gooey crawling pile of partly dissolved rats and flesh, once it gained a form it was a cartoon

dusty and steve spin off when

Rewatching ssn 3 with my wife
It is so apparent that the ice cream shop storyline is the golden one

Not much to add, was at least as fun to watch as any of the other seasons, A+ top marks for fashion game. It was also kind of a mess. Pushing further out in both tonal directions at the same time made it harder and harder to get that Flayerhunters and Scoops Crew are in the same show: "Scooby-Doo meets Cronenberg" is more difficult to land than "Goonies meets X-Files".

I think this was the most fun season

I stopped after three episodes of the third season (will resume) to go back and rewatch the first for something I'm working on. The contrast was stark. The first season is really tense most of the way; again, only based on three episodes of the third, but they seem to have completely lost that part of the show, try as they might to keep it alive.

a My Little Pony episode that had not yet been made

Good news. 'Nerd tropes' discussion notwithstanding,that episode was from 1984. And now, the Sea Ponies!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P4TedkQP_hM

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

I don't know if cool would be the right word for it, but basically.

DUSTIN CAN SEE INTO THE FUTURE MY GOD THIS SHOW IS ACTUALLY BRILLIANT.

THE WRITERS ARE HAVING A BIT OF FUN THIS SHOW IS ACTUALLY TERRIBLE!

FIREWORKS SALES WERE NOT LEGAL IN INDIANA UNTIL 2006 WHAT WERE THEY THINKING?

Sales were legal before 2006, setting them off instate was not. Indiana's fireworks laws are and were an amusing mess.

^ This. It was the dumbest shit ever, and so completely unenforced. I don't know how many times as a minor in IN me and my little friends bought fireworks, requested free packs of matches from convenience stores, and set shit off in clandestine places we really shouldn't have, but it was a lot.

I'll have to bring this up with the editors of IMDB's "goofs" section.

It's funny/horrifying to think about now. The ethics of selling fireworks to children aside, they were only able to sell them on the tacit promise that they would be fired off in another state. But where the hell is a ten-year-old gonna go to shoot off bottle rockets, really (if you said 'a city park restroom' you are correct).

Although if it had occurred to us, we would've happily gone with 'from the balcony of a mall'.

Are there age restrictions of fireworks in the US?

reminds me of the slot machines in bars long ago with "DOES NOT PAY CASH. ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY" written all over them

I feel like there must be stricter regulations these days, but, well, y'know. The past is in so many ways like the wild west compared to today. We used to fuck around with my grandparents' contraband jarts, too.

misread that as jorts

Hot dog on a stick doesn’t exist west of the Barstow iirc

if you only heard of this show through the ads/clips they've been running on FB you'd have no idea there was any horror or sci-fi element to it whatsoever

thought that the plot and pacing and visuals and sounds were all great this third season, but aside from steve and robin the other characters really were in the way of the above as opposed to either being accepted as established or actually developing them in a non- annoying way.

hopper and joyce in particular became sitcom characters, a real step back from previous

also, im not seeking hyper realism, but they went from two seasons of intradimensional madness, govt all over it, we know theres something goin on here to:

everyone fuckin disbelieving and clueless that strange things are happening, and the same scooby doo troupe left to handle it bar one phonecall to the cia switch?

also, didnt even *try* to pretend hopper had actually been ~spoilered~

ramping up the horror was good tho

8/10 will watch season 4