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

Agh, the image didn't work. Can look it up on google maps if you care.

We had a good time watching. As everyone has pointed out, editing the episodes down from 80+ minutes to 60-65 minutes would have made it much better. No need for a self-indulgent director's cut of this season - we're already watching it.

I’m rewatching from the beginning before the final S4 episodes come out. While the attention to period detail is mostly very well done — they even got the 1984 candy wrapper designs right! —there’s a 1986 Corolla that keeps showing up in 1983-84 and it’s making me IA.

never seen this show but am thinking about watching it, but ... well ... "graphic child death" doesn't sound like something i'm super stoked to see. what are we talking about here? can someone give me a brief description? might be a deciding factor for me.

in S4 there is a flashback scene of a lab with a bunch of kids who have been killed in the hallways and various rooms. the deaths have pretty much all already happened, so you just see their bodies. i didn't think it was really necessary.

the first couple of seasons are a bit tamer with that sort of thing iirc.

i just watched S4E4 and it would have really been an all-time episode if it hadn't been for the laughably long exposition from victor kreel in prison, and the really quite too long trip to the underworld from max. otherwise it really was excellent. i love will. the hawkins kids are great. TIL: the incredibly crush-worthy actress who plays robin is THE CHILD OF ETHAN HAWKE AND UMA THURMAN

Also, to be fair, the whole show from the start more or less hinges on children in peril. In the '80s movies they reference, kids of this/their age very rarely are subjected to the kind of horror and trauma and pain that they experience in this show. That to me ... I can't decide if it's subversion of the formula or cynical adaptation to current trends/tastes by leaning into violence and gore. S3 kind of shocked me with its pretty impressively ott body horror, not just because of the graphic blood and guts but because I'm not used to seeing it in what is essentially on its face a family show, or at least a show for young teens. Then again, I know families that watched "Walking Dead" together, and that show is pretty gnarly, too, so who knows.

i think it's leaning into current trends - the lab scenes feel more akin to something like Last Of Us than anything in the past - but also a way of giving themselves a bigger palette of nostalgia references to draw from i.e. poltergeist, exorcist - stuff i was totally not allowed to watch when i was the age my kids are now

The Thing, Nightmare on Elm Street, Scanners ...

i really like how it’s quite explicitly about ptsd and suicide without getting too after-school special about it

max: trauma witness, abusive stepdad
napolean dynamite: survivor’s guilt
chrissie: ?? did her boyfriend abuse her? is she bulimic? the scene in the toilet suggests that

I’m enjoying Jason’s “grab the microphone and seize the moments” far too much, keep expecting him to turn to the camera and wink

The persistent flashbacks to the dead kids in the Hawkins lab is tough, but the scene which really stood out for me was in E6 (I think) - the suddenly vicious gun battle and the dude dying in the back of the van, Reservoir Dogs style. A lot of the violence is cartoonish but this seemed in another level of horror.

Also, to be fair, the whole show from the start more or less hinges on children in peril. In the '80s movies they reference, kids of this/their age very rarely are subjected to the kind of horror and trauma and pain that they experience in this show. That to me ... I can't decide if it's subversion of the formula or cynical adaptation to current trends/tastes by leaning into violence and gore. S3 kind of shocked me with its pretty impressively ott body horror, not just because of the graphic blood and guts but because I'm not used to seeing it in what is essentially on its face a family show, or at least a show for young teens. Then again, I know families that watched "Walking Dead" together, and that show is pretty gnarly, too, so who knows.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, 16 June 2022 12:03 (one hour ago) link

The spirit of this post is similar to my thoughts on Star Wars. What it is vs. the demographics it targets.

so, bear with me here: these are, like, reasonable movie deaths and not "torture porn" style? define all of that however you will.

like, a kid is shot or stabbed or killed but not, idk, disembowled or pulled apart limb from limb or whatever?

It's not quite that bad, but it's still pretty horrific. I mean, this is a season with teens being levitated into the air and essentially twisted into grotesque pretzels by unseen forces.

TIL: the incredibly crush-worthy actress who plays robin is THE CHILD OF ETHAN HAWKE AND UMA THURMAN

Do please excuse me, but DUHH

lol the cheekbones should have given it away i guess

idg everyone ffwd-ing through the russian plot, i love it. joyce and fleabag guys are extremely good value and enzo probably as fanciable as robin.

baddie really is very laughable. the kind of thing you’d dream up if you own an xbox as your only console

Love Brett Gelman.

Watching this now. Aside from a few little problems (most of which have been part of the series from day 1) I really don’t get the hate. If you liked the first three seasons you’ll probably like this too. Sure, there are groanworthy moments, the Big Baddie is dumb as hell, and the usual anachronisms that indicate the writing team probably didn’t live through the times depicted (like the word “assholery” being coined by Max a full 20 years before it appeared in the real world), but for what it is it fits the bill fine — for me, anyway.

Also ffs at all the 30-year-old teenagers in this. A persistent feature of Hollywood teen movies of the 80s, but c’MAWN.

I wouldn't have minded all that stuff if the first episode hadn't been feature-length. It's easier to not start playing Tetris on your phone when each scene doesn't go on ten minutes too long.

New part out. Eh

Huh

This wasn't SNL on a Thursday night.

This was Wyoming's Republican primary debate. pic.twitter.com/PUHeOMdx7I

— The Republican Accountability Project (@AccountableGOP) July 1, 2022

Whoops, wrong thread

Everrrrrything takes sooooo lonnnnng

no spoilers, but we're watching the first of the two new ones and it suuucks. so dumb. hoping it gets better. why does one monster survive a million bullets and the other dies with one shot? why is Jonathan falling asleep on the six hour drive from salt lake city to Vegas? why did they even shave eleven's head again?

there's really another season after this?

Max and Hopper may be the only two actors this season.

This Russian comic relief guy sucks.

The reason anything happens in this show is "just because."

It's like they're comically averse to momentum. This is season ...4? Whatever it is, we get it, now get moving!

I've been watching everything from Ep2 of this season on x1.25 playback and still it's like fucking glacial, I should just step off.

This is like "Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors: The Extended cut."

And so loud. All of it so loud. My poor dogs did not enjoy being in the room with it.

Dogs are the best tv critics, mine barks at the television whatever is on and he's always correct.

why did I expect this episode to be anything but hot garbage, it was filmed with the rest of this season.

Dogs are the best tv critics, mine barks at the television whatever is on and he's always correct.

Ha! Mine normally don't care, which was why I noticed it. They had a real air of "Jesus, is this still happening?" when we started into the final hour last night, and I could only agree.

Despite the runtimes I felt like these last two moved much faster than the first batch of this season. Having the different locations moving toward the same point in time worked very well in that respect.

I stuck with it but yeah, fucking interminable. If I had a button that automatically jumped past any 'people emoting in rooms' scenes, the second episode would have been about a half-hour long.

And so loud. All of it so loud. My poor dogs did not enjoy being in the room with it.

The problem is that the dialogue is so much quieter than everything else, and the sound effects are on steroids.

“Here, let me staple that.” [ominous zoom-in on stapler] KER-CHUNK!!!!!!

Has anyone made a youtube supercut of every time someone turns away from the group, looks off in the distance, and shouts “Guys?…GUYS!” ?

That's become a running joke in our household.

God only knows when we'll get around to watching the final episode. Even one of my kids had just about had enough. She'd recently re-watched most of the other seasons with her cousin, and when the credits of this penultimate episode hit she immediately said she wanted to watch S3 again to remind herself that the show could be good.

Her theory of what went wrong with this one is basically the "high on their own supply" theory. That is, the show people think every single cast member and relationship is equally important and iconic, and therefore deserves as much screen time as possible. And yet, they keep adding new characters, who if only by dint of being new are often more interesting. Again, imo the only actors carrying any weight in this season are Hopper and Max, and the former has been relegated to a Russian prison camp (I have no idea why) the whole time. Tbf, my kid defended Wynona's acting in this season by citing the terrible dialogue she's been given to deliver, but my take is that a good actor (David Harbour, Sadie Sink) can rise above the campy melodramatic stuff.

In their defense, the rest of the crew features some performers with solid comedy chops. Dustin, Steve, Argyle, Murray. But this show is not a comedy, and their comedic relief comes off as yet more padding amidst all the oppressive portent.

This is like reading a book by having it spelled to you. Trust your fuckin audience just an IOTA for god’s sake.

Still enjoying, but increasingly grudgingly.

Bah, you grumpy old fucks :p

My daughter and I loved the finale. Yes it was overlong but there was certainly plenty of fireworks and also lots of feels and stake raising.

Also liked how everything was tied in to earlier seasons and the final shot definitely left me looking forward to next season

I guess I'm grumpy because I really enjoyed the first 3 series, despite always wishing it was a little pacier (can't defend the 'old' part tho lol)

There were many things about this season that I loved, particularly Eddie and Argyle. Joseph Quinn should give Charlie Heaton some tips on how to do a convincing American accent.

The last shot irrationally pissed me off. I thought, "Jeez, they just got home! Give them a minute to relax!" And what happened to Murray?

Older teen's spoiler-free take away from the finale: "It sucks."

We asked, is it because you didn't like it, or didn't like what happened? She said it's because the acting and writing were terrible. I'm kind of surprised, not that she thought it was terrible (I also think this season sucked, not least because of the acting and writing) but because she is by far the biggest fan in the house (had posters, shirts, etc.), and if it even lost *her* ...

The only major disappointment for me was that the Dean & Jerry dynamic of Steve and Dustin -- which had been getting funnier with each season -- was largely absent. My idea for a spinoff is having those two, in character, co-hosting a variety show set in the mid-'80s.

I'm about 20 mins in and so far the most annoying rhing is "cracks in dams create pressure, the pressure builds..." no, the pressure is constant, the cracks reduce the ability of the dam to withstand it.

I chuckled at the use of breaking something to demonstrate how things break.

"Here is this pane of glass." (throws brick) "Now it has shattered. Understand? We are in grave danger!"

(Calls to get pane of glass replaced)

so
slow
and did the baddy win in the end or not?
They took everything that was good about this show and spoiled it, BOOOOOOO

I do like Vecna's crib, very end-of-Labyrinth.

'Member Labyrinth?