Inexplicable TV Review: Stranger Things – Where to now?

Warning: Spoilers follow for all of Stranger Things, and I reference some potential season two stuff mentioned in an interview with the Duffer Brothers.

Man, that Stranger Things… Pretty solid, huh? I don’t think I have much more to say about the show itself, since it stuck the landing well in its final episodes, at least in my opinion. It left some dangling questions and characters – which I’ll get to – but it did a good job of answering some of the bigger ones, like how the gate to the Upside Down World (UDW) was created.

My thoughts about the show going forward:

- I still don’t understand the obsession with Barb, which has reached the point of the creators saying she’ll be receiving justice in a second season, if they get a second season. (Which, by the ways – lolz. The show is such a hit, the only way it won’t come back is if the Duffer Brothers decide they don’t want to do it.)

To me, Barb was a fairly one-note character and one of the weaker parts of the season. I suppose they could flesh her out in some ways in a second season, but to me, focusing on her just seems really fanservicey, and it probably won’t end well. My current theory is that she might be the monster or some grotesque creature in season two, kind of the flipside to Will, who managed to get out of UDW.

- When it comes to Will, he now seems able to go into UDW when he’s having a coughing fit. I’m unsure if this is a power, that will lead to him doing some cool stuff, or if he’s going to be The Damaged Boy for all of season two. The former is more interesting to me than the latter.

- Karen asked how I knew that Millie Bobby Brown (Elle / Eleven ) was British. I told her it was easy to tell, because she could actually act. The rest of the kids, while really charming, are mostly just being kids in Stranger Things. She actually has to convey quite a bit of emotion by showing, instead of telling, because her character doesn’t really talk.

Speaking of Elle, I first thought that she was definitely dead. After all, she seemed to vanish into a pile of pixelated dust, along with The Monster. But, Karen has convinced me otherwise, given how the Chief is leaving her Eggos. She’s just such an interesting character, that it seems impossible that she would be one-and-done.

- Elle didn’t seem to create The Monster, or the UDW itself, so there is still a lot of interesting development available when it comes to that. Besides the obvious question of, “Why is the Chief leaving Eggos in the woods?”, I think the rules of UDW are the most interesting, unanswered questions. How are things actually create in the mirror universe? Is it full of weird monsters, or are there actually towns and other things going on? We didn’t see enough of it to know whether changes are automatic, or if they happen over time.

- According to the Duffer Brothers, Matthew Modine is still alive because we didn’t see him die on camera, which is somewhat amazing to me. He was really compelling, but unquestionably evil in his actions. Maybe we’ll get a tiny bit more from the government / conspiracy side in season two? In that linked interview above, the brothers mention that they intentionally kept that side unexplained to heighten the mystery and anxiety. However, if the show is going to run multiple seasons, I think you eventually need to give a better motive than “we need to stop the commies!!!” for the dark black evil of the government’s actions.

- Winona and The Chief will probably be back, but especially for the former, I think her role should be somewhat limited in season two. I don’t really want Winona to suddenly become a superhero, for example. That’s already Nancy’s role on the show, because she’s totally bad ass.

Steve ultimately surprised me a bit with his actions on the show, and he’s still with Nancy. I still don’t really like him, but kudos to the Duffers for rounding out his character a bit. As long as we don’t get a weird love triangle with him, Nancy and Jonathan in season two, I’m all-for Steve going forward.

- My guesses for season two: We’ll see some of the other experiments, since Elle was 11, or at least learn what happened to them. One of them, or Barb, could be a new monster. Elle will be back in some form. And Dustin will continue to be the best, and best-dressed, of the four kiddos.

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Inexplicable TV Review: Stranger Things, through 2.1 episodes

Make your own here!

Warning: Spoilers follow for the first two episodes, and a tiny bit of the third, of Stranger Things. Also, this has been edited from an earlier version where I misidentified the chief. DOH.

Like everyone else on the Internet now, I’ve started watching Stranger Things. Here are some random thoughts about the show, followed by some random guesses on where it might be headed, similar to what I used to do for Lost. (And man, it feels like that show aired a million years ago, doesn’t it? It was the first show I significantly live blogged and followed on the Internet, to the tune of 31 entries, but now pretty much every significant show has that sort of devoted following.)

- To explain my numbering in the title of this entry, Karen and I watched the first two episodes, and then we made a rookie Netflix mistake. We absolutely did not get to the remote quickly enough to pause it, so, the third episode started playing. We got through the big “swimming pool reveal” of the pre-title screen moment, and then paused it.

- The supporting cast MVP through two episodes is definitely Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo). Just his look alone is incredible, as I definitely want copies of his EXPLORER sweatshirt and his regular ball cap. But, beyond the impressive style, he also gets some snazzy and funny lines, my favorite being when he’s speculating about Elle and his friend. “Do you think they slept naked???”

- I always dislike when my namesakes in shows are sleazy, so I’m prepared to be disappointed with Steve. He just seems oily and sleazy, but maybe he’ll end up surprising me, and not being horrible.

- Winona gets top-billing for the show, along with Matthew Modine as a creepy scientist, but I’m assuming that’s mostly because of the rest of the cast (so far) is unknowns. The real stars are the three buddies and Elle, especially the former group. My friends Cosmo, Tom and Nikki described this show to me as the mixture of a 1980s coming of age movie with The X-Files, and while I didn’t watch much X-Files growing up, it definitely has that feel. Stand By Me is the other obvious parallel for this show, as far as the interaction between the kids goes.

- But focusing on Winona for a second, it feels bizarre that she’s now playing the mom on a show like this. She’s 44, according to Wikipedia, but still looks younger in non-Stranger Things appearances. It helps her role on the show, as she seems hard-working, but also overwhelmed.

- David Harbour is also good as the small-town chief who seemingly has Hidden Burdens and Secret Issues bogging him down. They hint at them in the first few episodes, with references to his deceased daughter and the fact that he used to be a “big city” police officer. (I’m guessing they mean Indianapolis.) So far, his character has been a bit cliché, but because the rest of the show has been so good, I’m assuming they give him some more depth as time goes on. (I also completely thought the chief was played by Modine, doh. Harbour is a character actor who was pretty solid in some Law and Order episodes, and I should have recognized him.)

- I’m far more interested in the spooky, scientific and supernatural goings on then the High School Melodrama between Steve, Nancy, Jonathan and others. The symbolism and camera cuts between Nancy losing her virginity, and Barb in the pool, were definitely the most heavy-handed and least interesting aspects of the first 2.1 episodes to me.

And finally! The reckless speculation and guessing part of the post, about where I think the show is going.

- Since Elle / Eleven seemed to escape from a Department of Energy compound, I’m assuming that the only-glimpsed Monster has the power to materialize out of energy sources (lights). This seems to be the case so far, as he snatches Will from a shed that has a light, and seemingly appears out of a light in the facility’s elevator and in Jonathan’s room as well.

The Monster seems to kill Barb in the pool, but it’s a Bizarro World pool, with snow falling and no water in it. My hypothesis would be that it can “snatch” people from the Real World, and bring them into Bizarro World. However, something seemingly distracted it when it got Will (maybe Elle?), and that’s why he’s still alive in Bizarro World.

- I’m unsure if Elle is from the Bizarro World, or simply a special project of the weird head scientist she seemingly calls Dada. She obviously has Force-like powers, and the show did a clever job of having the kids be familiar with Star Wars, and thus not immediately freaked out by that concept. I always like when a show acknowledges that other media exists, and thus that a bunch of kids in the 1980s are going to be at least open to the idea of powers, thanks to movies, TV and comic books. The kids will obviously play a role in humanizing her, and in turn, she’ll protect them and probably, ultimately will slay the Monster and rescue Will.

- I think Harbour tracks down the incidents to the Department of Energy, since he’s already found the pipe leading out of their facility. I’m assuming that the escape of the Monster is what allowed Elle to make her escape as well, and that there could be others out there as well, whether we get to them in this eight episode run or if things are revealed in future seasons. She’s #11, after all, which suggests at least 10 others. (And heck, why would they have stopped at 11? A nice, round dozen makes more sense.)

- At some point, we’ll probably get a storyline about Jonathan spying on Nancy and Steve, since he was also the last “witness” to Barb being alive as well. (I’m assuming she’s dead.) I’m not sure if he’ll come forward willingly, or if the police find him because he leaves a camera cap or something else traceable in the wood. If this was a bad procedural show, I would have guessed the latter, because it would have provided a false lead for them to burn some episode time on. However, since I’m already through a quarter of the show’s runtime, I don’t think they’re going to devote much screen time to leads that the viewer knows are obviously false.

Want to support Steve’s blogging? Then purchase something via the Amazon clickthru link for Your Parents Basement, Steve’s other project! To read all of Steve’s past Inexplicable Movie Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable TV Reviews, click here! For Inexplicable Video Game Reviews, click here! And for Inexplicable Book Reviews, go here!