Anyone else disappointed by:
The use of “Every Breath You Take” as the song for Mike and El’s dance? I get that people then and now mistake it for a love song, but it feels like there were lots of other cheesy, middle-school-type ballads that would have worked without the stalking/obsession overtones.
I thought it tied in well with the end turn to the upside down and the last scene showing the Mind Flayer in full effect.
Good point.
Some thoughts/questions after having seen the whole season (btw, I tend towards being a spoiler nazi, but I think not allowing open spoilers on a bingeable Netflix show once it has come out is just silly… what am I going to do, watch three episodes, then want to have a lengthy back and forth about my feelings about the show, then watch the rest?)
(1) I agree that the map-drawing scene was pretty ridiculous… no way Will’s crayon scribbles were precise enough to be uniquely matched up into a map, and why couldn’t he just draw a map? That said, it was pretty visually striking, so I give them a pass on it.
(2) Did anyone else think the whole tripwire thing didn’t pay off at all? When Hopper was telling people how to get to his cabin so they could overheat Will, I was sure that was going to be an issue, and he would learn a lesson about paranoia/trust/whatever.
(3) Are we supposed to view the very last shot, with the upside down school, as a hint that the gate wasn’t fully closed? I just thought it was kind of badass, but nothing to read anything into.
Potential hooks/teases for season 3:
(a) There’s still a demodog in Joyce’s fridge
(b) Quest to cure El’s mom
© Kali (I generally enjoyed that whole side plot, but… why were Kali’s goons so willing to risk life and limb for a quest to kill people they had never met purely for her personal vengeance? that seems weird… unless we are supposed to think she somehow mind-controlled them, even unintentionally?)
(d) I think it was strongly hinted that Max’s douchey brother is gay… not sure if we assume something will come of that
To the people concerned about the use of “Every Breath You Take,” I was a junior in 1984 and most everyone I knew did not think of it as some creepy stalker song. It was mostly thought of as a romantic song even if the people thinking that it was romantic were wrong ultimately. So, to me, the use of the song is in line with people’s thinking in 1984 when the song was popular.
I recall we all knew how creepy the song was back then.
Although in the aftershow, the Duffer brothers mention that they used it for the stalker factor as the Mind Flayer was watching over the building.
While we’re at it, had anyone else watched the aftershow? I have some problems with ep. 2, but don’t know if those shows are getting any attention.
Just saw the first one, with Finn and Millie. Not exactly essential viewing but fun enough.
Thank you for mentioning this. I was in college at the time and that’s how we all interpreted it too.
I mentioned them upthread 
We binged them. They were good, funny in places (although I thought the kids got carried away too much in several instances), and quite interesting when it came to backstories and how the Duffers ultimately chose X over Y.
Bill Nye The Science Guy is a guest on one episode. He explains the background of the Upside Down, which does have scientific theory attached to it. Unfortunately he wasn’t on long enough to go into much detail.
I plan to finish up tonight. Can’t wait to check out all the spoilers in this thread at that point.
Episode 6 & 7 thoughts [spoiler]#7 felt out of place and much lower quality overall. I suppose it was to show that in the end Jane is a good person and not going to be a monster herself. But I couldn’t wait to get back to the main story lines. 0008’s storyline is not compelling or fun to me at least.
I kept expecting Paul Reiser’s character to be a jerk, but through episode #6 it looks like he really might just be trying to do the best thing without hurting the locals. Season 2 has a strong Aliens vibe rather than Stephen King so I’m expecting Dr. Owens to be a slimeball. Well 2 more episodes to find out.
I like that Bob appears to be a genuinely nice guy, I was afraid he was going to somehow be part of a conspiracy to watch Will. [/spoiler]
Kali’s crew were also victims of the project, though they weren’t psychic like her and Eleven. It’s never explained what they were used for.
I was in high school years later ('89-'93) and it wasn’t considered creepy at least among my cohorts. Or at least not that I know of. I still occasionally come across it in “romantic” contexts, but I didn’t learn about the stalker angle until well into the 90s.
Is that made clear in the show? Or did you gather that from external sources?
I thought episode 7 was unnecessary, boring, and it killed the momentum of the show. It’s weird that I found a review that summed up EXACTLY how I felt about it.
Other than that, I like the series, though I felt like the writers were intentionally dragging out certain story lines because they were out of creative ideas.
I’m not gonna say I hated 7. But I agree it killed the momentum. I cant/won’t watch a video review right now, but I kinda wish that whole sub plot was absorbed into other episodes instead of all at once.
I really feel episode 7 was a stealth pilot. (poorly disguised pilot).
I loved the 2nd season with the exception of ep7.
[spoiler]Part way through episode 8 I realized Bob had no plot armor and was upset that he was going to die. I realize that he was also blocking Chief One-Punch (Jim Hopper) from getting together with Joyce, but still I ended up really liking Bob.
I was pleasantly surprised that Dr. Owens turn out to actually be a pretty good guy in over his head. Paul Reiser did a very nice job in the role.
I enjoyed the Steve/Justin dynamic. Steve makes a good big brother. Nice contrast to Billy.
[/spoiler]
I watched 4 (of the 7) episodes last night, and am unimpressed. The kids are fine – at worst they’re just being kids; at best they’re Gaten Matarazzo – but frankly I find the adults to be kind of annoying. Jim Rash (host) and Matt Duffer (co-creator) talk like teenage girls, complete with every sentence sounding like a question. Shawn Levy (producer) does it sometimes, too. Rash actively gets on my nerves. I haven’t heard any insights/backstories yet that are interesting enough to justify listening to those guys, and right now I’m not planning to watch any more.
Unless one of you tells me that something cool gets revealed in the last three episodes… 
Well…
To me, that seemed implied by the scene with the ID dump, when Kali says “Everyone you see here was in some way responsible for what happened to us.” But I thought “us” meant her and the outcasts - now I’m thinking maybe she just meant herself and Jane/Eleven.
I really loved the second series—not much else to be said.
But one thing that’s gotten lodged in my head is how it was decided to use three-digit codes to identify the government experiment’s subjects. I mean, who set up this thing and went, well, we’re probably gonna have more than a hundred of these (but less than thousand)? Why bother tattooing two extra zeros?
The real Stranger Thing is Shawn Levy’s facebones.