Generic mercenary gear. On a covert op a thousand behind enemy lines, the last thing you want to do is give away the presence of Russians at all. One lost (damaged?) uniform and you risk exposure.
I have no complaint about a large secret base, but not one that’s the better part of 1000 miles inside enemy territory. It’s the equivalent of a large American underground base just outside Moscow in the 80s.
I don’t love the “kids save the world from bumbling adults” trope, but I can look past it if the rest of the story feels authentic. In Super 8, for example, I didn’t mind the trope. But as soon as you add in a dopey cartoon / comic book element, I start to zone out. For clarity, I don’t consider the supernatural stuff in the show “dopey.” I mean a giant secret Russian lab in the friggin American midwest in the 1980s? Where’s Boris and Natasha?
Now I’m imagining poor Philip and Elizabeth from the Americans trying to Gus Fring that lab into existence.
Russians building a secret facility under a mall in some podunk town is part of the nostalgia. No more out of place than the Terminator guy or the Alien blood.
I don’t think it was as good as Season 1 but much better than Season 2. One plothole I noticed: What was the Terminator doing at the Hawkins Lab? The Russians weren’t doing anything there. If Hopper had never been attacked, he wouldn’t have made the connection to the mayor, and wouldn’t have figured everything out.
The Steve and Robbin truth serum scene borrows heavily from the truth serum scene in True Lies from 1994.
Robbin getting the blueprints to Starcourt and saying “it is fascinating what 20 bucks will get you at the county recorder’s office” is almost verbatim a line said by Carl in Sneakers from 1992 when he obtains the blueprints to the Playtronics building.
I’ve seen people mention other 90s references, but most of those are tenuous connections at best, in my opinion. These two are the ones that stood out to me, anyway.
Seen a lot of movies where someone gets blueprints for a building they have to sneak through and says the line “it is fascinating what 20 bucks will get you at the county recorder’s office” have you?
I Her dad, maybe? I am remembering a scene where her dad humiliates Billy… I think I could be confusing this scene with a scene from a movie-- American Beauty? It’s terrible when your memory starts to go.
Billy’s Dad is her step-Dad and he absolutely bullies Billy the Bully.
Max’s Mom is Billy’s step-Mom.
Billy’s Mom is never seen except in Billy’s memory.
Just finished watching S3. I liked it, thought it was better than S2.
One thing thing that stood out for me: I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series where so many people (and things) in fight scenes get thrown up against walls.
Also just finished and thoroughly enjoyed it. I’d rank them best to worst as S1, S3, and S2.
Putting this in a spoiler box even though it says open spoilers just to be polite.
One question one something I didn’t quite understand - They stated that last time 11 closed the portal but a piece of the MindFlayer was left here. As a result, you have the MindFlayer in our world slowly gathering strength via rats then people. Therefore the group realized they had to both close the portal -and- kill the MindFlayer that was here. Yet in the finale it seemed to me all they did was close the portal and when that happened the MindFlayer just sorta… died as a result? I guess I expected the kids would have also killed it somehow but that didn’t seem to be the case.
I think that was just their first working theory. Later on, it became clear that the Russian’s opening the door enabled the Mind Flayer to exert some kind of influence on stuff on this side, which it gradually built up into the meat puppet effigy of itself. With the door closed, that influence ceased.
The new gate wasn’t open, it was “opening.” So the Mind Flayer was basically able to get a signal to the piece of it on our side, without being able to actually come through itself.