Honestly, I thought the series was absolutely sensational. One of the best I’ve seen all year.
The brilliance of the series is that, yeah, it calls back to a zillion 80s things - even the fonts are stolen from Stephen King books - but it defies cliché in the areas that matter; the characters. Just when you think you have the characters pigeonholed, they turn out to be more three dimensional and human than you expected. No, Winona Ryder/Joyce is not just screeching trailer trash. No, Nancy isn’t one dimensional. Justin isn’t just a pudgy goof. There’s more to the Chief than you think. The asshole teenaged boy isn’t an asshole. So on and so forth. I especially liked that
In the end, Jonathan and Nancy don’t end up together. Because they shouldn’t. In the 1980s, they would have, because back then in film, a woman was a prize to be awarded to the hero. But today, women are treated as people, not party favors. Jonathan’s reward was what he wanted; he got his brother back.
I don’t understand how it is we have such wonderful TV shows like this, and “Better Call Saul” and “Game of Thrones” and “Fargo” and stuff like that, and at the same time they produce such utter garbage as “Lucifer” or “Wayward Pines.”
I agree with your whole post. It’s like they built an entirely new world that makes sense for modern audiences, but they built it using exclusively the pieces of 1980s horror and sci-fi. I thought it was brilliant.
As to the quote, art is hard. Art by comitty (what TV usually is) is almost improbably hard. I don’t get mad that there are shows like Wayward Pines which fall really far short of the mark, I am grateful for the minor miracle that we are able to get as much good TV as we do.
I liked the show, though didn’t love it as much as some people seem to. Winona Ryder did well with her part but I thought her part could have been more fleshed out. The kids were all great.
I was a little confused by one thing:
Why was Will the only taken character who apparently survived? Matthew Modine said that six people had been taken, but it didn’t seem like anyone was looking for the others. Obviously Joyce would be looking mainly for her son, but the sheriff should have been looking for the others more I would have thought. And if I was going to guess who would have survived I would have thought it’d be the hunters who were mentioned who went missing, instead of a small boy, other than that’s who the story was about.
At first, I had no interest in this because it looked so much like a Spielberg rip-off. But then I watched it on just three evenings - which is far beyond my limit of TV consumption.
It was great. It was fun. It was worth my time.
[spoiler]Yeah, I agree, it’s one of the little holes in the plot, though we were given a couple of reasons for the desinterest in the other missing people:
Like you said, the main characters are driven by their need to find Will or Barbara. Other people might have looked for their relatives or friends as well - but we didn’t follow their story.
When the chief was told about the missing hunters, he was already invested in uncovering the conspiracy, finding Will and protecting everyone in danger from the Brenner Gang. And his own back-story made it plausible that he’d focus almost entirely on the children.
Aside: I was at first surprised that he risked the children when he told Brenner where they were - that move could have back-fired horrendously. It almost did. Though he did not have any alternatives at that point; and it was nice to see him choose the bad option, knowing that he had run out of alternatives, and every other choice was likely worse.
In any case, Hopper might have thought that he will stumble upon the other missing persons anyway if he continued to follow the path he had already taken - toward the Upside Down. And the remains of other people we saw, were not all old, so, … But you’re right: a dialogue line or two would have been helpful, or a clear sighting of two dead hunters in the Upside Down.
But that we don’t hear about the hunters more from other sources is easily explained by the speed in which the crisis broke out soon after we hear about them from the deputies. And I don’t think it’s strange that a child is the centre of anyone’s attention.
[/spoiler]
Finally finished last night. Satisfying ending, with room for a second season.
Dr. Strangelove, you were totally right about that Rubbermaid pitcher, but for me it was the Tupperware Hopper put the food in at the Christmas party, with the accordion-looking lid. Looking back, it feels like my grandma’s kitchen was about 80% Tupperware.
Are we still spoilering, or has enough time passed? Just in case …
[spoiler]I like that Steve was on the road to being less of a douche before he saw the monster. It’s a small distinction, but it makes a huge difference in the character. And I’m sorry Barb didn’t make it, if only because I was Barb in high school.
So, what are we thinking happened to Eleven? Is she living in the Upside Down? Has she become the monster? Or is she just wandering around in the woods? Every time I decide what I think, I change my mind.[/spoiler]
Don’t forget MST3K! I can’t be the only one who burst into the Sodium Song, can I?
I enjoyed it, though I didn’t think the acting was especially stellar. Particularly the kid acting (excepting the girl who played 11, who was great). It was fun for a few nights, but Stand By Me it was not.
Kid actors in their earliest roles, especially when they’re leads for the first time, tend to be over earnest in their performances (unless they’re unusually mature, in a Fanning or Osment kind of way) but they tend to figure it out pretty quickly. If there’s a second season I think the kids will step it up a notch, and will probably receive better direction too.
I made the mistake of watching one episode late last night and ended up binging three episodes and falling asleep at 3:30 a.m. It’s rare for a series to get me out of the gate like that, but Stranger Things did it. I’m not exactly an aficionado of 80s movies or the horror/suspense genre (I’m more a comedies guy myself), but I did love The Goonies, Stand By Me, and the first few seasons of X-Files (I haven’t seen Firestarter), so this has been hitting all the right nostalgic notes for me. Love it so far.
We had a ton of the accordion-topped Tupperware as well. I think my mom still uses some of that, actually. The pitcher just stuck out in particular, partially because it was literally the exact same one, and I think as a kid I really liked the button action. I still have the muscle memory of pressing the button, in fact.
Was it ever explained how anyone could communicate from the Upside Down? The lights seemed to be a big limiting factor but then in another scene much later on, one character could hear an echo of another character’s voice from the Upside Down.
With the main story pretty much resolved, it seems like it would be more in keeping with the “Tales from the Darkside”-like feeling of the show if future seasons had different characters and a whole new story.
Something that came to mind after mulling on the show for a while…
Lots of shows create artificial drama by keeping the characters from communicating. But it’s gotten a lot harder today with cell phones being ubiquitous.
Nevertheless, they could have taken the easy route and used the fact that they’re in the 80’s and cell phones don’t exist. But they didn’t! The kids are almost in constant communication via their walkie-talkies, and for the most part the adults don’t have any trouble getting in touch. I’m glad they didn’t use that trope even though it would have been easy and fit the time period.
Finished it last night, and liked it pretty well. I caught the Twin Peaks music in the first ep and it had me.
I liked Benny, of Benny’s Burgers. Too bad he bought it so soon, but I suppose it had to happen.
Ryder did a fine job of performing her role, but man I couldn’t stand her character. Sure, we knew she was right, and not crazy, but I still wanted her locked up for being so crazy.
Loved Chief Hopper. He’d be a great dad for El, and El’s mom doesn’t seem up to parenting at the moment.
What grade were the kids in? Sometimes they acted like 3rd graders, but I think they were supposed to be getting close to Jr. High or something. I had to turn the volume way down when they were screaming all their lines, which was pretty much all the time, then turn the volume way up to catch a lot of the adult conversation, except for Joyce, who also screamed most of her lines.
I couldn’t watch a lot of the climax scenes with the monster, the way they had the lights flashing on and off. I don’t have epilepsy, but I thought I was going to have a seizure anyway.
I understand a season two has been greenlit, but I’m torn about that. I’d love to find out about a couple things there at the end, but at the same time it feels done. Maybe they jump forward a number of years and the kids are older? Geez, all that screaming…
Finally got around to watching Stranger Things. I read that the creators are committed to doing a season 2 (although Netflix hasn’t officially announced they are picking up the 2nd season). The overarching theme is supposed to be Revenge 4 Barb. They have also alluded that Eleven and Dr. Brennan are most likely still alive. They expect that the next season will pick up about a year after the end of Season 1, primarily because the kid leads have already changed quite a bit…Dustin’s voice has already dropped a few octaves.
The actress that plays Eleven (Millie Bobbie Brown) I caught a couple of years ago as one of the leads in a BBC America series called Intruders that was decent, but she IMHO, is a very good child actor. I have a feeling we will continue to see her in other roles.
I found it very enjoyable. I’d been putting it off because of the “Pastiche of movies from the late 70’s early 80s” thing, but while there was that, I did like the story. It was original enough, while paying obvious tribute to Firestarter, Alien, It, Stand By Me, etc. The premise was predictable, but the acting and storytelling kept me hooked. Winona Ryder’s character was frustrating, but she was supposed to be and I thought Ryder did a good job playing her. There were a few plotholes, but none that took me out of the series.
The “derivative” thing? The series is deliberately built out of tropes from science fiction and horror from the '80s, they make no secret whatsoever of it - quite the reverse (as others mentioned, watch for the movie posters on the wall, the books characters are reading, etc.). That’s all part of the fun. As the audience, you are supposed to be thinking ‘ooh, is that from Alien? Is that from Firestarter?’
What sealed the deal for me was that the series really captured the atmosphere of the time period. Any person who ever spent ten hours a day playing D&D in a wood-paneled basement as a kid would get a laugh …