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Stranger Things


Dolfan in NYC

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Watch the first two episodes so far and am digging it. The mall has come to Hawkins and that's all I care about. Do we have to deal with monsters again? Can't we just have shopping montages and maybe have Dustin and Steve forget all the Russian bullshit and just wander around hitting on girls?

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Actual incredible season of television.  Love all the love letters to Dawn of the Dead, Red Dawn and Terminator.  The whole season was a fantastic allegory for that moment when we all had to grow up and leave part of us, no matter how much we love it, behind.  I was a kid that moved a lot and had to say a ton of goodbyes, so the ending of this hit me REALLY hard.

Steve going from repugnant douche to lovable dope is one of my favorite character transformations ever.  The final episode is just a rollercoaster of emotions. I laughed. I ugly cried. I was terrified.

The "Neverending Story" scene is one of the most absurd things I've ever seen and I'll remember it forever.

This might be the only season of the series that actually scared me. The horror was a bit more mature, and because the threat had the appearance of being human, it made it more relatable and scary.

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Finished the season last night with my brother. It was fantastic, probably my favorite if not the best one (which I leaning towards it being). RandomAct already said lot of what I was thinking when watching it.

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Finished last night. I think more than the other two seasons this season really got to lean hard on characters instead of plot and I think it was so much better for it. I mean who really gives a shit about the upside down and how they stop the monster? You could probably mine a billion plot holes but I did not give a fuck. It was all about how the characters interacted with each other through out. Scoop Troop. Mike and Will's blow up, Magnum Hopper. That's the juice, folks.

Gotta be one of the most entertaining ensembles ever, and they've done a super good job on the characters they add. Robin, like Max the year before, just  kills it. Was not a fan of "Bald Eagle", but whatever.

Before the season started I felt like I'd be okay if this was the end. And the last scene(before the credits) felt like it would have been a great ending. But that loose end makes me want to see the fourth, and I think that should be a wrap. Also totally cool if it's just a spinoff of Steve and Robin in a Clerks style series, with Dustin and Erica coming in to talk shit.

 

Edited by jaedmc
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I agree with Jae in regards to Murray. He's a decent character in small doses, but they leaned a bit too heavily on him here. I did like his banter with Alexei(who was just adorable tbh) though.

One thing I forgot to mention, is that it was cool that they didn't have Eleven to rely on to beat the monster this time. I was worried they'd go that route again, and it'll be cool to see how she copes without powers going forward.

Jim's face here sums up everything about this scene....

D-zWOR8XkAAsoju.jpg

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Part of me wanted them to ditch Murray and bring Mr. Clarke into the fold for the final act, but it probably would have been too complicated. Also I enjoy Mr. Clarke being blissfully unaware of how helpful he is in saving the world with his sage advice.

Teachers are the real heroes folks.

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I can’t stand Brett Gelman so I would sort of zone out when he was on screen, he’s not Stingray from Cobra Kai annoying but still pretty annoying. The Nancy and what’s his name scenes seemed to go on forever and honestly if they’re “away at college” for most of the next season I’d be fine with that. My biggest nitpick was the video store, that looked nothing like a video store circa 1985 it just looked like a redressed version of the chain who bought the product placement, video stores back then were more like the one in Clerks.

I really want a Dustin, Steve, Robin and Erica spin-off, they did such a great job infiltrating the Soviet bunker that some government agency makes them Jr. Spy’s or something. 

Even with all they’ve been through I can’t see Mike and Lucas hanging with Dustin once they hit high school and I wonder if that’s something they’ll explore next season. 

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Dustin has always kinda been the 5th wheel anyway, once Will was back into the fold.  He's the definition of the elementary school friend that you just kinda outgrow, loveable though he may be.

You're right about Jonathan and Nancy. They didn't really add much this season, after kinda being the anchors of season 2.  There were a couple of nicer video stores in the 80s, pre-Blockbuster explosion. I remember there being a decent local store when I was growing up in Meridian, MS.  Used to rent a green tape that had episodes of M.A.S.K.

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I think part of Nancy/Jonathan's problem was the development was mostly about Nancy dealing with the press room being a gross boy's club. I liked that stuff. By the time they started working on the mystery they just kind of stalled out, while Hopper and Joyce were already kind of doing their bit.

Jonathan didn't get much in the way of development at all. If he's not dealing with unrequited love or his brother being in trouble, he doesn't have much else going on. Someone had to be under baked this season and I guess it was him. Writer's may have cooled on the actor's after his troubles, and decided not to give him much. Still they did manage to have a couple of good scenes. Their fight was nice, and the sequence in the hospital was good.

I remember so many more fun moments this season than the last one. I honestly can't remember shit about Season 2.

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Season 2 had that god awful episode where Eleven joined a gang.

The best parts of S2 were Hopper's dance, and Murray with that amazing line of "how was the pull out?"  Also the incredible chemistry of Steve and Dustin.

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Finally finished it up, tried not to watch more than an episode every couple days or so. Definitely my favourite season so far and for much of the same reasons mentioned above. The UpsideDown/Monsters are the least interesting part, so glad it got pushed aside a bit for teenager and spy hijinks.

Couple issues I did have: they kept everyone in groups all season, finally had the big reunion scene in the mall and then immediately split them all up again for the climax.

Jonathan and Will are definitely the weakest parts of the ensemble. Jonathan is a total wet blanket and while its nice that Will got a break and didn't spend the whole season infected with something or cocooned up or whatever, he clearly had nothing really to do. Every time they went back to the Eleven/Max/Lucas/Mike group it was always "oh yeah...and Will is also here..."

At no point did Hopper or Joyce question Alexei as to why the Russians were doing what they were doing. I guess we're supposed to assume, and the mid credits scene kind of confirms it, that the Russians want to control and weaponize the monsters, but if I was Hopper I'd be screaming at him "Motherfucker, don't you assholes know what's behind the gate? How fucking stupid are you?"

I guess Hopper is the American in the cell, but I was expecting that he instead managed to jump into the gate before the whole thing went kerblooey. I was kind of hoping that next season would have Hopper emerging from a gate as a battle-scarred King of the UpsideDown to save the day.

Second the appreciation that they didn't just rely on Eleven magic to save the day. She's a much more interesting character when she is used as something other than a fix it for all their problems.

 

Edited by elizium
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3 hours ago, elizium said:

I was kind of hoping that next season would have Hopper emerging from a gate as a battle-scarred King of the UpsideDown to save the day.

 

So this is how Hopper becomes Hellboy?

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This was definitely my favorite season. They were very efficient in their storytelling. At first I thought 8 episodes wouldn't be enough, but it was the perfect amount.

Robin is awesome. Not much to say there.

Really loved all of the nods to horror and sci fi movies this season too.

As for Hopper, I hope we get something like this with him...

Hopper as Uncle Stan from the wasteland please!

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Yeah, my favorite season for sure. Great pacing throughout. Even thou shit got insane,  things was so consistent that it was believable (especially character motivations).

Steve almost stole the show, he's just a fantastic character after his redemption arc. Alexei and Bauman were such a lethal combo, stole every scene they were in. Billy even had his own redemption arc... I almost wish he survived because I'd love to see what they would have done with his character after.

Season 3's monster was very much Aboleth adjacent. I hope Season 4 they finally go with the Giths.

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ST can only go on for another 1 or 2 seasons, right? Season 4 they rescue Hopper and they leave on a cliffhanger with the gate being even larger and wide open and letting out a, uh, "queen" upside down demon and then season 5 ends it all?

As for Billy, he went from a character that made me hate him so much to one that made me feel so bad for him. There was just no saving him though. He would have turned out like everyone else and would have been turned into jelly at some point. I'm just happy that at least didn't happen and he went out the way he did.

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On 12/12/2018 at 3:07 PM, Contentious C said:

I'm fine if they all get eaten and pooped out into human-shell-bodysnatched-poop-zombies by whatever the next beastie is.

I'm glad I managed to call the broad strokes of this plot detail months in advance.
 

Spoiler

 

This season could have had the bulk of the "Russian base" end of things jettisoned into space for how ridiculous it was.  I get that that was why it was there at all - to ridicule more or less the entirety of the 80s action genre - but it also just made the Soviets seem like the world's most incompetent bunch of goobers.  It doesn't make a lot of sense that people who can't manage basic operational security can manage to shoot a hole into the side of the fucking multiverse.  If the characters involved had been the other way around - Team Eleven instead of Team Scoop Troop - this whole section would have been terrible.  The fights between Terminatorov and Hopper were mostly ridiculous, too, aside from the Big Top bit that was actually fairly good.  Otherwise, Boris Buzzcut should have drank his milkshake about 704 times.

The Byerses went from being interesting (in parts) to just extra bodies.  Will has nothing to do except tremble & grab his neck, to the point that every time the camera pans his way, you want to fucking groan.  I'd rather watch a highlight reel of Ric Flair getting whipped into the turnbuckle; that's how fucking tired that got.  Jonathan continued to be a waste of space as he largely has been since Season 1.  Winona Ryder seemed...I don't want to say underused, but other than the bit where she screams at the guy on the phone, there's no part where she felt essential, either.  Though the climax was a nice touch. 

I'm glad there were finally some consequences to all the collected insanity; in comparison, Barb & Newby may as well have been wearing red Starfleet tops, so it was time for the hammer to drop on someone who was consistently in harm's way.

Also I'm not sure whether I should congratulate the writers on redeeming Billy, or tell them to fuck right off for redeeming Billy.  Dacre Montgomery did such an awesome job in both seasons that it's almost hard to appreciate how much menace and pushback he provides for practically everyone who comes into contact with him.  Whoever the next human villain is (and this show is much better off with significant human villains than without - or than with bland human villains like the original Hawkins Lab), I doubt they will have the same impact, and that's too bad.

Otherwise, highlights would be (for the umpteenth time in this thread alone) Robin & Steve playing off one another.  Probably the best stretch of legitimate horror for the entire series so far was Nancy/Jonathan squaring off against the newspaper goons and discovering they were inside-out-bodysnatched-poop-zombies.  Really felt like one of the two kids was going to eat it during that exchange, even before the melting & merging happened.  Susie was a good payoff, as it turned out. Max was more fun last season as essentially the Robin of Season 2, but the ending with Billy was twice the gut punch due to her reaction. 

I'm not sure this was much better than either of the previous seasons, but I also don't think as much of them in the first place.  I think Salman Rushdie's GOT comments - "highly addictive garbage" - apply nicely to this show, so of course I'll probably rewatch the entire series over the next month-plus.

 

 

Edited by Contentious C
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