Stranger Things (Season 2)
I had a really crowded week, being on the move all the time, but I did find the chance to watch the nine episodes of Stranger Things, season 2. Which was that rarity, a highly enjoyable sophomore season that didn't feel like a paler retreat of the original or an abandonment of all that had made the first season endearing.
Seriously though, what really surprised me when watching both seasons of Stranger Things was the reveal of a massive 80s nostalgia in me to be tapped, because honestly, I didn't think that decade was all that enjoyable while living through it, at least not until 1989, which was magic and optimism and history all at once. But lo and behold, watching it provide the background for this show, even such details as Dustin's mother being the lone Democrat voter in Hawkins, Indiana, makes me smile instead of going argh, Reaganmania (which I certainly felt at the time - 1984 was when I visited the US for the first time as part of a student exchange programm, right in the middle of Reagan's reelection campaign, and to yours truly, it was bizarre).
If the first season took its cue mostly from the two Steves, Spielberg and King, the second added a massive case of Joe Dante (Gremlins! Which apparantly Dustin didn't watch) and James Cameron (Terminator gets referenced in dialogue, but Aliens struck me as more of a template, especially re: Joyce. Though the King of Horror was by no means abandoned as inspiration, which is why it cracked me up that Bob thought moving to Maine would solve Joyce's problems. No, Bob, that' where you move to if you want to encounter supernatural phenomena on a more regular basis. Two particularly Stephen King vibe exuding storyelements (beyond the continuing story of Eleven, of course): Will's storyline (and the way even while nearly completely possessed, there was still a real Will left who tried, and succeeded, in communicating with the rest of Our Heroes), and Billy the Überjerk, who in the 80s would have been played by a young Kiefer Sutherland; he's completely vile but the show also includes a scene that explains where he gets that from without excusing him, which is basically the same thing Henry Bowers in It got: an abusive father embodying toxic masculinity.
I also thought the second season dealt with some complaints made: Lucas in the first season getting the least screentime and family background of the original four friends, for example. This time, it's Mike who takes a step back, screen time wise, while Lucas and Dustin get more of the spot light, and we meet Lucas' family as characters. In fact, Mike's main role through the season is to provide a sympathetic ear to Will and to pine for Eleven, while Lucas's and Dustin's actions move the storylines along. (Not that, I hasten to add, this was a bad storytelling choice in my eyes - the first season had only one scene to establish the friendship between Will and Mike which is key to the kid's motivations in that season, so being shown said friendship here in the second season by Mike doing the empathic thing felt right, not least because it's consistent with the way Mike took to Eleven in distress in s1.)
Something else the season accomplished was to mix its ensemble up and give us new character combinations in addition to the old ones. Eleven and Hopper being the most obvious example (I'll get to them in a moment), but also Steve and Dustin (given the season made it clear early on that Nancy and Steve were about to break up and, though not because of this, Nancy and Jonathan were going to get together, it was a wise choice not to go dragged out love triangle but to move Steve in another storyline, and letting him bond with Dustin turned out to be golden). And new character Max(ine) with both Lucas and Dustine. Max being resented by Mike for not being Eleven might have been a simple parallel to Lucas' and at times Dustin's reactions to Eleven a season earlier, but I also found it realistic in terms of how group dynamics work - no newbie is going to be accepted immediately by everyone. Same goes for the audience, I suppose, though I found Max while very different from Eleven immediately likeable. (Her existence also meant neither she nor Eleven were stuck with being That One Girl Exception, that annoying stereotype from the 80s, anymore.) And was very glad that it was ultimately Max, not one of the boys, who dealt with her stepbrother Blly - that felt narratively right.
Every story featuring a character with superpowers has to find a way to deal with the inherent problem of said character theoretically able to defeat most of the obstacles the rest of the heroes face on the way. Thankfully, the Duffer Brothers found a way that didn't involve either getting knocked out for most of the action (older Charles Xavier had this happening to him a lot), struck with amnesia or otherwise taking back of developed relationships. Eleven being hidden away by Hopper during the first part of the season makes story sense (as he knows she'll only end up in a lab otherwise), and is an interesting and retrospectively logical character combination; between his having lost a daughter and her having had the father figure from hell, there's both a mutual need and in-built problems galore which sure enough explode, so that for the second half of the season, you have Eleven questing on her own (which also makes sense) and making enough discoveries to justfy her not returning and and reuniting with the rest of the ensemble until the finale. It also means we get a pay-off for her mother's tragic backstory (which Hopper and Joyce found out last season). And I liked that Eleven's "sister", the other lab kid, wasn't presented as evil (which would have been too much of a cliché), that she did have something to teach, even if her way of dealing with having been a lab rat by 80s movies gang membership was evidently not a recipe for Eleven to follow.
Bob (btw, last name "Newbie" was so obvious that it was endearing again, Duffer Brothers), Joyce's love interest for the season, wore his red shirt with pride; being played by Sean Astin helped. Seriously though, it was guessable that Bob wouldn't make it and would be the good guy cast member to die this season, and the very fact he was Joyce's love interest while her friendship with Hopper still got narrative focus made it glaringly obvious he would not be forever of this world, and yet I thought the show did right by him. He was a plausible partner for Joyce - kind, funny, accepting, supportive, yet not infallible (he gives Will dreadfully wrong advice for all the best reasons), and so not only do you know what she sees hin him (even if Jonathan doesn't), but when he tells Hopper not to wait for him while he gets the computer back up, the fact that you've expected him to die does not help dealing with his actual death one bit. RIP Bob.
Joyce's fierce determination and willingness to seem insane to everyone in order to help her son kept her confined to the house for most of last season, so I was glad this season those same traits kept her on the move. (And putting the fear of god into condescending stooges in one priceless scene.) Early on, her trying to find a balance between not smothering Will yet also not risking losing him again felt just right to what had happened before, mid-season, her Eureka moment of seeing the shape of the shadow monster on the videotape was terrific as was the fact she got Will to talk to her instead of artificial suspense being drawn by the withholding of information, and her willingness in the finale to go through the science movie version of exorcism with Will while atypical to gender cliché Jonathan was the one who couldn't bear it at a certain point was scarily intense and good. (Also what I mean with the Cameron homage. "Get out of my son, you bastard" was Joyce's "Get away from her, you bitch".)
Meanwhile, Nancy still being on a guilt trip re: Barb was, I thought, at least partly due to the way the audience responded to Barb last season, but it worked for the character as well, and I really loved the savvy way tropes were used in the twist of what it made her do. Where, shame on me, I at first thought Nancy and Jonathan were stupid, in reality the pulled off A Cunning Plan (which was Nancy's), and even if the conspiracy afficiniado Murray felt like he was more of a homage to the 90s (hello, X-Files) than the 80s, the nature of the plan was actually straight from Stephen King again. (It's what Charlie does at the end of Firestarter.) What's more, Nancy's other big moment of the season wasn't about her romantic situation, either, and managed to twist the High School Movie cliché in an incredibly endearing way. Way to have your cake and eat it, Duffer Brothers. The Mike/Eleven, Lucas/Max dances both follow the prom-at-the-end-of-the-school-story pattern, and were both overshadowed in terms of emotional impact on yours truly by Nancy spotting a distressed Dustin and dancing with him, which has to be the most original take on "the belle of the ball choosing the nerdish outsider" trope that I've yet seen.
Other bits and pieces:
- when Billy began harrassing Steve, I thought: "OMG, Steve is a male post-Xander Cordelia, why haven't I seen that before!" (Though Billy only wishes he was Harmony.)
- I'll never get used to the English/American pronounciation of D'Artagnan; it weirds me out every time (glares at BBC series)
- Steve sharing hair care tips with Dustin: GOLDEN. Btw, the male characters on this show getting the 80s hair scenes, complete with transformation, instead of the female ones was rad.
- while Hopper made his share of mistakes, the prospect of parenting a girl with telekinetic powers who's been through hell already and could kill me with a single tantrum would scare me to death, so go him.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1256352.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.
Seriously though, what really surprised me when watching both seasons of Stranger Things was the reveal of a massive 80s nostalgia in me to be tapped, because honestly, I didn't think that decade was all that enjoyable while living through it, at least not until 1989, which was magic and optimism and history all at once. But lo and behold, watching it provide the background for this show, even such details as Dustin's mother being the lone Democrat voter in Hawkins, Indiana, makes me smile instead of going argh, Reaganmania (which I certainly felt at the time - 1984 was when I visited the US for the first time as part of a student exchange programm, right in the middle of Reagan's reelection campaign, and to yours truly, it was bizarre).
If the first season took its cue mostly from the two Steves, Spielberg and King, the second added a massive case of Joe Dante (Gremlins! Which apparantly Dustin didn't watch) and James Cameron (Terminator gets referenced in dialogue, but Aliens struck me as more of a template, especially re: Joyce. Though the King of Horror was by no means abandoned as inspiration, which is why it cracked me up that Bob thought moving to Maine would solve Joyce's problems. No, Bob, that' where you move to if you want to encounter supernatural phenomena on a more regular basis. Two particularly Stephen King vibe exuding storyelements (beyond the continuing story of Eleven, of course): Will's storyline (and the way even while nearly completely possessed, there was still a real Will left who tried, and succeeded, in communicating with the rest of Our Heroes), and Billy the Überjerk, who in the 80s would have been played by a young Kiefer Sutherland; he's completely vile but the show also includes a scene that explains where he gets that from without excusing him, which is basically the same thing Henry Bowers in It got: an abusive father embodying toxic masculinity.
I also thought the second season dealt with some complaints made: Lucas in the first season getting the least screentime and family background of the original four friends, for example. This time, it's Mike who takes a step back, screen time wise, while Lucas and Dustin get more of the spot light, and we meet Lucas' family as characters. In fact, Mike's main role through the season is to provide a sympathetic ear to Will and to pine for Eleven, while Lucas's and Dustin's actions move the storylines along. (Not that, I hasten to add, this was a bad storytelling choice in my eyes - the first season had only one scene to establish the friendship between Will and Mike which is key to the kid's motivations in that season, so being shown said friendship here in the second season by Mike doing the empathic thing felt right, not least because it's consistent with the way Mike took to Eleven in distress in s1.)
Something else the season accomplished was to mix its ensemble up and give us new character combinations in addition to the old ones. Eleven and Hopper being the most obvious example (I'll get to them in a moment), but also Steve and Dustin (given the season made it clear early on that Nancy and Steve were about to break up and, though not because of this, Nancy and Jonathan were going to get together, it was a wise choice not to go dragged out love triangle but to move Steve in another storyline, and letting him bond with Dustin turned out to be golden). And new character Max(ine) with both Lucas and Dustine. Max being resented by Mike for not being Eleven might have been a simple parallel to Lucas' and at times Dustin's reactions to Eleven a season earlier, but I also found it realistic in terms of how group dynamics work - no newbie is going to be accepted immediately by everyone. Same goes for the audience, I suppose, though I found Max while very different from Eleven immediately likeable. (Her existence also meant neither she nor Eleven were stuck with being That One Girl Exception, that annoying stereotype from the 80s, anymore.) And was very glad that it was ultimately Max, not one of the boys, who dealt with her stepbrother Blly - that felt narratively right.
Every story featuring a character with superpowers has to find a way to deal with the inherent problem of said character theoretically able to defeat most of the obstacles the rest of the heroes face on the way. Thankfully, the Duffer Brothers found a way that didn't involve either getting knocked out for most of the action (older Charles Xavier had this happening to him a lot), struck with amnesia or otherwise taking back of developed relationships. Eleven being hidden away by Hopper during the first part of the season makes story sense (as he knows she'll only end up in a lab otherwise), and is an interesting and retrospectively logical character combination; between his having lost a daughter and her having had the father figure from hell, there's both a mutual need and in-built problems galore which sure enough explode, so that for the second half of the season, you have Eleven questing on her own (which also makes sense) and making enough discoveries to justfy her not returning and and reuniting with the rest of the ensemble until the finale. It also means we get a pay-off for her mother's tragic backstory (which Hopper and Joyce found out last season). And I liked that Eleven's "sister", the other lab kid, wasn't presented as evil (which would have been too much of a cliché), that she did have something to teach, even if her way of dealing with having been a lab rat by 80s movies gang membership was evidently not a recipe for Eleven to follow.
Bob (btw, last name "Newbie" was so obvious that it was endearing again, Duffer Brothers), Joyce's love interest for the season, wore his red shirt with pride; being played by Sean Astin helped. Seriously though, it was guessable that Bob wouldn't make it and would be the good guy cast member to die this season, and the very fact he was Joyce's love interest while her friendship with Hopper still got narrative focus made it glaringly obvious he would not be forever of this world, and yet I thought the show did right by him. He was a plausible partner for Joyce - kind, funny, accepting, supportive, yet not infallible (he gives Will dreadfully wrong advice for all the best reasons), and so not only do you know what she sees hin him (even if Jonathan doesn't), but when he tells Hopper not to wait for him while he gets the computer back up, the fact that you've expected him to die does not help dealing with his actual death one bit. RIP Bob.
Joyce's fierce determination and willingness to seem insane to everyone in order to help her son kept her confined to the house for most of last season, so I was glad this season those same traits kept her on the move. (And putting the fear of god into condescending stooges in one priceless scene.) Early on, her trying to find a balance between not smothering Will yet also not risking losing him again felt just right to what had happened before, mid-season, her Eureka moment of seeing the shape of the shadow monster on the videotape was terrific as was the fact she got Will to talk to her instead of artificial suspense being drawn by the withholding of information, and her willingness in the finale to go through the science movie version of exorcism with Will while atypical to gender cliché Jonathan was the one who couldn't bear it at a certain point was scarily intense and good. (Also what I mean with the Cameron homage. "Get out of my son, you bastard" was Joyce's "Get away from her, you bitch".)
Meanwhile, Nancy still being on a guilt trip re: Barb was, I thought, at least partly due to the way the audience responded to Barb last season, but it worked for the character as well, and I really loved the savvy way tropes were used in the twist of what it made her do. Where, shame on me, I at first thought Nancy and Jonathan were stupid, in reality the pulled off A Cunning Plan (which was Nancy's), and even if the conspiracy afficiniado Murray felt like he was more of a homage to the 90s (hello, X-Files) than the 80s, the nature of the plan was actually straight from Stephen King again. (It's what Charlie does at the end of Firestarter.) What's more, Nancy's other big moment of the season wasn't about her romantic situation, either, and managed to twist the High School Movie cliché in an incredibly endearing way. Way to have your cake and eat it, Duffer Brothers. The Mike/Eleven, Lucas/Max dances both follow the prom-at-the-end-of-the-school-story pattern, and were both overshadowed in terms of emotional impact on yours truly by Nancy spotting a distressed Dustin and dancing with him, which has to be the most original take on "the belle of the ball choosing the nerdish outsider" trope that I've yet seen.
Other bits and pieces:
- when Billy began harrassing Steve, I thought: "OMG, Steve is a male post-Xander Cordelia, why haven't I seen that before!" (Though Billy only wishes he was Harmony.)
- I'll never get used to the English/American pronounciation of D'Artagnan; it weirds me out every time (glares at BBC series)
- Steve sharing hair care tips with Dustin: GOLDEN. Btw, the male characters on this show getting the 80s hair scenes, complete with transformation, instead of the female ones was rad.
- while Hopper made his share of mistakes, the prospect of parenting a girl with telekinetic powers who's been through hell already and could kill me with a single tantrum would scare me to death, so go him.
This entry was originally posted at https://selenak.dreamwidth.org/1256352.html. Comment there or here, as you wish.