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

Forgive the thread spam, but I wanted to note that this show's 2019 season is nominated in the 2019 ILX TV poll:

ILX's Best Television of 2019 Poll / VOTING AND CAMPAIGNING THREAD / Voting Ends January 31

If you like this show and you'd like to see it have a good showing in the poll (running in February) all you need to do is submit a ballot including it and your other favorites (4 minimum, 25 maximum, organized by your favorite to least favorite) to forksclovetofu at gmail by end of day today. It'll take five minutes; get to it!

From Russia with love… pic.twitter.com/ZWEMgy63Et

— Stranger Things (@Stranger_Things) February 14, 2020

glad they're not even pretending that he might have died

Yeah, that could have been excruciatingly bad. The Russians did overtly mention "the American" at the very end of last season, and if that had been misdirection and it was someone other than Hopper, I definitely would have lost fucks for the series.

Was he not in the final shot? Or am I imagining that?

Last shot I remember is the Russian prisoner being fed to a demogorgon.

i'm gonna turn into the shakey mo of this thread. show lost me completely early in season 3 and i joyfully dngaf

unless shakey is already the shakey of this thread. not going back to check lol.

you rang

the main kid in this goes to a school in my old neighborhood and it's very odd to see this global star trudging along the street in his school uniform with his backpack and headphones on like an average moody teen

looking forward to the breathless introduction of compact discs in season 4, but which character will be the one to do it?

hahaha

2. Jonathan saying how cool Miyazaki is, somehow having seen Laputa: Castle in the Sky screened in rural Indiana
3. Reporting on Chernobyl, cut to "Where's the beef?" Wendy's ad
4. Cameo by digitally-deracisted Morrissey, torn apart by demo-dogs

looking forward to the breathless introduction of compact discs in season 4, but which character will be the one to do it?

There's no way this won't be Steve Harrington.

4. Cameo by digitally-deracisted Morrissey, torn apart by demo-dogs

"Stranger Things, There I Go"

I dunno how that railroad will ever get built with bullshit halfassed hammering like that

That's exactly what Hopper was about to say in the trailer before it ended. Maybe he'll get a promotion!

My kids have been nagging me to watch the third season for months now, not getting the hint that if I thought the first season was just OK and the second a dud that maybe I might not be that into the third one, or the show as a whole. Anyway, they've made me watch I think three of them so far, and they're ok but kinda padded, and the acting (esp. the kids) is pretty bad/annoying. I'm sure things pick up, but as I told one of them, the one who complains the most about sitting through movies I pick, at least most movies manage to introduce characters and tell a story from scratch in a little more than two hours. The three episodes of "Stranger Things 3" I've seen come close to three hours, but it feels like what's been introduced and conveyed could have been done in half that, at most. The exception seems to be the Mall Crew, who at least have some chemistry and deserve their own show. Which, at least at this stage in the show, they sort of do. Russian spies in the mall! That I can get behind. But more teen melodrama, and more portentous intimations of the return of evil inter-dimensional beings, that I have less time for, because, duh, this is the third season and we get the idea so get on with it, even if the characters themselves are inexplicably slow to pick up that something that has happened twice before, recently, could very well be on the verge of happening again. As I told one of my kids, if one summer you are attacked by a werewolf and somehow manage to kill the werewolf, that's great, but now you've got the rest of your life ahead of you knowing that werewolves are real. That would really fuck you up, and even if you never saw another werewolf, you'd probably become a full-time werewolf preppier.

a prepare-wolf, surely

(throws you a milkbone)

This show is a one season wonder to me, but a great one.

I recently watched S1 again with my 12yr old and it's really good. I'd forgotten the emotional wallop of Hopper's story - he holds the whole thing together, I think.

Things I only just realised: David Harbour is married to Lily Allen.

^very recently! i saw the wedding photos a few weeks back and was surprised too - didn't know they were a thing.

Yeah this show has just been diminishing returns for me, I don't anticipate watching the next season unless everyone says it's greatly improved. I liked that they went for a new locale and a different tone in S3, but ultimately it was still pretty bland

they need some different baddies and they need to kill one of the kids

i know exactly which one too

S3 was definitely better than S2, but I think it had more to do with the change in locale and the additions to the cast. Keeping the same big bad was annoying.

OH WTF NETFLIX: https://io9.gizmodo.com/dark-crystal-age-of-resistance-has-been-canceled-by-ne-1845132612

Sorry, wrong thread!

i just started S3 with my kids and a few things are rubbing me the wrong way

- hopper had some issues before but now he's just a fuckhead? weird flex for the moral center of your show
- the extremely distasteful stepbrother/MILF scenes
- the SAW overtones with the possessed stepbro
- all the kissy couples shit. these are basically middle schoolers, it's dumb
- eleven buying girl clothes at the mall like it's the key to being a real person. where's the badass eleven i loved??

also something different about the color grading - feels more contrasty/vivid/blown out than previous seasons

in any case it feels kind of... curdled now somehow

on the other hand, every single scene with steve, dustin and the ice cream girl is absolute solid gold and could watch forever, so...

the extremely distasteful stepbrother/MILF scenes

Which did, though (I thought), produce the sublime inversion of a very famous Fast Times at Ridgemont High scene. Other than that and Ice Cream Girl, I don't remember liking much else from S3.

where's the badass eleven i loved??

We try not to think about that episode anymore

Eleven, are you listening? pic.twitter.com/sluiUvrSZN

— Netflix Geeked (@NetflixGeeked) May 6, 2021

Still no date?

I have my calendar circled for Nope

New big bad is named Vecna, apparently after the lich from D&D. Cowards wouldn't go with the gelatinous cube.

https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/stranger-things-big-bad-vecna-dungeons-dragons/

Yeah, I saw the picture of the lich on twitter yesterday and got pretty bummed that they spoiled that for us. I'll remove bookmark from this thread as well, for now.

Oh shit, sorry! I figured since it was so prominent in all these articles and they released the name they weren't even trying to keep it secret, so I didn't even consider it a spoiler.

well, YOU didn't spoil it. I just think it would have been cooler if the dork-asses at Netflix would have saved the big bad reveal for the show. I dunno though, I'm on new medications this week, so possibly twitchy about things that don't really matter.

I'm not even deeply emotionally invested in Stranger Things anymore. It has been a while since the previous installment. But I'm still looking forward to it, in a ritual sense.

Also, my daughter's playing DnD with her friends now, so there's a nonzero possibility that one or more of them will influence her to get interested in it. I am holding out hope for that because it would mean that she is watching a tv show with a story/plot rather than just Five Nights at Freddy's/SIMS/Minecraft YouTubers yelling at the screen, etc.

(I did show her the S1 opening D&D scene when she first started playing, but she wasn't interested beyond that)

I’ll keep watching out of a sense of completism.

Yeah the only reason I'm remotely interested in S4 is that we've been watching (most, there has been some judicious scene skipping - but more often to do with the weird Billy/Mrs. Wheeler subplot than scares) it with our son and he's super excited for it.

I haven't really liked this show since S1 and I should just jump ship. If it was the final season, I might watch for completism - e.g. I plan to finish Killing Eve despite it following a similar track to Stranger Things quality-wise

This sounds ridiculous:

You’ll find awesome merch and photo ops, as well as realistic Hawkins hotspots like the palace arcade, the beloved Scoops Ahoy, and even the Bayers’ living room to name a few. And once night falls, you better “hold onto your butts muchachos!”

the final episode of this season is two and a half hours long lol

i have read that it leans further into the dread/horror aspect which was what turned me off last season so i doubt i'll be checking this out, as much as i loved those stupid sailor outfits

Don't have Netflix anymore, so I'd presumably have to acquire it by other means and that feels like too much work.

lol at “6 months later” and half the kids look like they aged 4 years.

Really trying to decide if I’m up this, or am more inclined to experience this through podcast recaps