Stranger Things

[SuperBacon]

Should probably have its own thread now we're coming to the end.

I watched the first four episodes of the final series as my eldest came over and wanted to finish it up before she had it spoiled (I suppose that's the issue with releasing them all at the same time)

I'll be honest, 4 episodes was unnecessary and it could've all probably been one. So much meandering going on. I don't mind letting stories breath and slow pace, but you're going home brother, there is no need. But that's just me, and what I want after 5 series.

Not saying I didn't enjoy them as I did, but unnecessary amount if episodes.

Anyway, episode 4 spoilers so don't read until you've seen them 

Spoiler

WILL FUCKING BYERS! Go on lad. That fourth episode was fantastic. Max! Eleven being a bad ass! All the demagorgons, just a riot. Also I love Derek, new favourite character.

Very surprised by the level of violence in these though, can't remember it being this heavy.

Roll on the last 4 episodes. 

[BrodyGraham]

I've got no problem with the pacing tbh. I think you need that space to catch back up with the characters and get to know the new ones. The new characters are a breath of fresh air and a much needed one at times. Mike, Lucas, Jonathan and Nancy have been properly dull so far. Whether that's a writing problem or an acting one I can't decide, probably both. Maya Hawke and Sadie Sink continue to be the best things on the show though and Noah Schnapp benefits from Will having more to do.

It's always been a surprisingly violent show, season 4 was pretty grim and don't forget to pour one out for Bob.

Boxing Day can't come soon enough.

[King Coconut]

6 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

I suppose that's the issue with releasing them all at the same time

Or maybe Netflix would like people to subscribe for several months to watch it.

[TheBurningRed]

6 hours ago, SuperBacon said:

Very surprised by the level of violence in these though, can't remember it being this heavy.

First season had a lot of necks being broken quite early on.

Good for Will to finally have something to do. Despite being the one linked with the Upside Down, he’s been a bit of a spare part throughout the show (Season 2 especially)

Was wondering if I’d struggle with the length of the episodes, but I thought they all flew by and were paced quite well. Can’t wait for the rest of it now. And to see who they kill off. Not everyone is going to have a happy ending. I really thought 

Spoiler

We were losing someone to set up Boxing Day. I was sure Joyce was done for.

 

[SuperBacon]

2 hours ago, TheBurningRed said:

Was wondering if I’d struggle with the length of the episodes, but I thought they all flew by and were paced quite well

Yeah I didn't have any issue with the pacing actually, I just thought a lot of it was fairly unnecessary that's all.

 

[SaitoRyo]

Watched the first two episodes last night, after watching the four-minute season 4 recap as I couldn't remember a fucking thing that happened during it. 

I think that's been a problem with a lot of television for me in recent years, to be honest. A lot of stuff happens but hardly any of it registers or leaves a lasting impression. I've never been into big-budget, effects-driven stuff for this reason. 

I quite like (or at least liked) Stranger Things because of the whole 80s aesthetic and the way it played off movies and TV shows from that era, but the show has gradually lost its charm as the kids have gotten older and they've expanded their universe. It was a lot better when it was kids discovering something weird in their small town imo.

It's not bad by any means, it's just not as fun as those first couple of seasons were and I think it's definitely the right time to end it. Some good moments in those first couple episodes, mind, and I'll watch the other two over the weekend because it is still an easy watch. Can't see myself being arsed to watch the rest when they drop as I'll be back home for Christmas/NY, but I'm curious how they end it.

[SuperBacon]

23 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

quite like (or at least liked) Stranger Things because of the whole 80s aesthetic and the way it played off movies and TV shows from that era, but the show has gradually lost its charm as the kids have gotten older and they've expanded their universe.

Yeah fair play, and my main enjoyment of it has always been the gang, the supporting gang and their time spent with each other faffing about rather than the other stuff with the Upside Down etc. Doesn't massively grab me.

Having said that, it's not as if it was a small show to begin with. Sure it started as a "small town" Eerie Indiana type show, but it was clear quite quickly that the scope of it was huge and would get bigger (IIRC I mean this was 10 years ago) but I understand why people have switched off from it. 

I've never been the biggest fan but its nice to share something with my kids and that's enjoyable.

I suppose it doesn't help that I also think Vecna is a dreadful baddy. Absolute state of you mate.

[LaGoosh]

42 minutes ago, SaitoRyo said:

the show has gradually lost its charm as the kids have gotten older

This is something I'm struggling with in the new season. Dustin going through high school bullying while having five o'clock shadow is quite weird to watch.

[SaitoRyo]

39 minutes ago, LaGoosh said:

This is something I'm struggling with in the new season. Dustin going through high school bullying while having five o'clock shadow is quite weird to watch.

It's really odd, isn't it? The first time it showed the kids and they're all fucking six-foot-something and clearly in their early 20s was like a jump scare.

[BomberPat]

I watched the first episode of the new series, and I'm not at all seeing what other people saw when they apparently watched it and came away reassured that it was all going to be great, and impressed by what was going on. I'm probably going to stick it through to the end, but it was poorly paced, charmless, over-long bollocks.

I don't like Vecna at all. I think it's a failure of writing, to take a concept like The Upside Down, where the horror is largely that it's unknowable and alien, and where the real villains are the humans who try to control it, and go on, "no, actually, there's a gloating supervillain there who is controlling everything and does bad guy monologues in English". I know that's not new to this series, but it's the biggest point of the show losing its way for me, even more than the needless Russian stuff and making everything bigger and bigger.

Spoilers for the first episode of series 5, and for the play:

Spoiler

I really disliked the play too, by the way. I thought it was visually stunning, and worth seeing as a great bit of stagecraft, but absolute bobbins as a story. It's a flashback to the kid who used to be Vecna when he was at high school, so all of the parents and other older characters are in place of the high school kids. It's very unintentionally funny that it's English actors doing their best American accents, because so much of the dialogue is about how it's this sleepy small town where nothing ever changes and nothing ever happens, and I just kept wondering, "so how come you're all from completely different states?".

A big part of my problem with that play is that it basically tries to do the "gang of kids going on adventures" thing in the '50s rather than the '80s, but because it needs to have all the big effects and Stranger Things moments, all it does instead is establish that this isn't a sleepy small town where nothing ever happens, it's a small town where this precise thing just keeps on fucking happening again and again. But nobody thinks to say, "oh, this feels just like the last time supernatural shit was happening here". That's the problem with trying to make prequels follow the same patterns as the original in general, but it happens throughout the series too - Joyce is still understood by other characters as a paranoid weirdo, not as someone who has been consistently right about everything.

 

Anyway, fast-forward to episode one of series five. They've explained the time-jump away with a military occupation - I'm not sure how else to get around that given how the last series ended, but it seems like a way to try and have their cake and eat it too; everyone in Hawkins is continuing with life as usual, so it still gets to be a small town drama about high school kids and their relationships, but also it's an utterly unique situation where the military are patrolling everything and sending people into the Upside Down.

It's the problem with a lot of this kind of horror/sci-fi/fantasy, the Doctor Who problem - if the basic premise is of an ordinary town being affected by extraordinary events, at some point that town ceases to be ordinary. There's no attempt, at least in this episode, to meaningfully reconcile the situation with how characters actually behave. It's still only a small core of characters who know that the Upside Down exists, even though we're shown that high school bullies still seemingly believe that Eddie and the Hellfire Club were literally responsible for opening up what, to them, was a portal to Hell directly underneath their town. You'd think that the lasting effects of that would be a little more significant than kids wearing Hellfire Club shirts getting bullied! People's understanding of the world and religion have been completely upended - it was a fun riff on the Satanic Panic to blame it on Dungeons & Dragons, but it actually happened, and the repercussions of that would extend beyond high school bullies continuing to bully the kid they were always bullying! People are continuing to play Dungeons & Dragons, life goes on as normal.

The flip-side of the military occupation thing is that the only real consequence we've seen is that the military are actively hunting for Eleven. But that doesn't seem to have had any impact on any of the other characters. The US government know that Eleven was adopted by Hopper, they know what schools she attended, they know who her friends are, etc. etc. etc., yet none of the other kids or their families seem to be under any additional restrictions or adversely affected by their hunt for Eleven.

Another problem I have with this kind of writing, of sci-fi having to get bigger and bigger until it loses sight of the scale that made it work, is that immediately we're thrown into a world of guns and grenades and radios, with Hopper running around in full military get-up in the Upside Down. This was about kids fighting something because the adults didn't believe them, and that dynamic works, and is fun. It's the laziest way to write yourself into a conclusion or an escalation by just getting to "and then the heroes have a load of guns" and can shoot all the monsters.

 

[LaGoosh]

I'm halfway through episode 3 and I'm surprised how utterly boring it is.

The show has never been high art or anything but it's always been breezy, charming and fun. Absolute slog this one so far though.

Also not a Vecna fan. He's so generic. Much preferred the Lovecraftian nightmare entity of the Mind Flayer. The ending shot of season 2 with it looming over the high school was incredible, not as cool knowing there's some boring twat behind it all.

Edited December 1, 2025 by LaGoosh

[cobra_gordo]

We finished episode 4 yesterday. We're fans of the show in our house and have just recently rewatched the first four series for the third time in anticipation for series 5.

So far we've found the start of this series enjoyable but a bit over-padded. They also have a brilliant knack of forgetting about things- why are we spending all this time in the upside down and haven't seen another flying murder bat from series 4?! Give me my godamn murder bats.

With Vecna, series 4 just felt like they were shoehorning in another villain and have then spent that series and the start of series 5 making it all fit in the same world. I'm not the biggest fan of the character although I do like the blatant Freddy Krueger rip-off elements to his character. I've always thought the costume looked shit too


 

Spoiler

until he appears in episode 4 that is. Fuck me, the last 20 minutes of that episode more than makes up for any negative feelings I've had about the character. It was like the end of Rogue One watching him fuck up all the military lads, especially the one whose head he just sort of exploded. Cracking sequence that. Made an out loud "Oh fuck" when there were loads of demogorgans chasing after everybody, probably one of my favourite moments of the whole show.

Also, Derek is fucking brilliant. Up there with Erica as one of my favourites. Lucas is still shit and no issues at all with Will now having full Skywalker powers.

 

[SuperBacon]

7 hours ago, BomberPat said:

I watched the first episode of the new series, and I'm not at all seeing what other people saw when they apparently watched it and came away reassured that it was all going to be great, and impressed by what was going on. I'm probably going to stick it through to the end, but it was poorly paced, charmless, over-long bollocks.

I don't like Vecna at all. I think it's a failure of writing, to take a concept like The Upside Down, where the horror is largely that it's unknowable and alien, and where the real villains are the humans who try to control it, and go on, "no, actually, there's a gloating supervillain there who is controlling everything and does bad guy monologues in English". I know that's not new to this series, but it's the biggest point of the show losing its way for me, even more than the needless Russian stuff and making everything bigger and bigger.

Spoilers for the first episode of series 5, and for the play:

  Reveal hidden contents

I really disliked the play too, by the way. I thought it was visually stunning, and worth seeing as a great bit of stagecraft, but absolute bobbins as a story. It's a flashback to the kid who used to be Vecna when he was at high school, so all of the parents and other older characters are in place of the high school kids. It's very unintentionally funny that it's English actors doing their best American accents, because so much of the dialogue is about how it's this sleepy small town where nothing ever changes and nothing ever happens, and I just kept wondering, "so how come you're all from completely different states?".

A big part of my problem with that play is that it basically tries to do the "gang of kids going on adventures" thing in the '50s rather than the '80s, but because it needs to have all the big effects and Stranger Things moments, all it does instead is establish that this isn't a sleepy small town where nothing ever happens, it's a small town where this precise thing just keeps on fucking happening again and again. But nobody thinks to say, "oh, this feels just like the last time supernatural shit was happening here". That's the problem with trying to make prequels follow the same patterns as the original in general, but it happens throughout the series too - Joyce is still understood by other characters as a paranoid weirdo, not as someone who has been consistently right about everything.

 

Anyway, fast-forward to episode one of series five. They've explained the time-jump away with a military occupation - I'm not sure how else to get around that given how the last series ended, but it seems like a way to try and have their cake and eat it too; everyone in Hawkins is continuing with life as usual, so it still gets to be a small town drama about high school kids and their relationships, but also it's an utterly unique situation where the military are patrolling everything and sending people into the Upside Down.

It's the problem with a lot of this kind of horror/sci-fi/fantasy, the Doctor Who problem - if the basic premise is of an ordinary town being affected by extraordinary events, at some point that town ceases to be ordinary. There's no attempt, at least in this episode, to meaningfully reconcile the situation with how characters actually behave. It's still only a small core of characters who know that the Upside Down exists, even though we're shown that high school bullies still seemingly believe that Eddie and the Hellfire Club were literally responsible for opening up what, to them, was a portal to Hell directly underneath their town. You'd think that the lasting effects of that would be a little more significant than kids wearing Hellfire Club shirts getting bullied! People's understanding of the world and religion have been completely upended - it was a fun riff on the Satanic Panic to blame it on Dungeons & Dragons, but it actually happened, and the repercussions of that would extend beyond high school bullies continuing to bully the kid they were always bullying! People are continuing to play Dungeons & Dragons, life goes on as normal.

The flip-side of the military occupation thing is that the only real consequence we've seen is that the military are actively hunting for Eleven. But that doesn't seem to have had any impact on any of the other characters. The US government know that Eleven was adopted by Hopper, they know what schools she attended, they know who her friends are, etc. etc. etc., yet none of the other kids or their families seem to be under any additional restrictions or adversely affected by their hunt for Eleven.

Another problem I have with this kind of writing, of sci-fi having to get bigger and bigger until it loses sight of the scale that made it work, is that immediately we're thrown into a world of guns and grenades and radios, with Hopper running around in full military get-up in the Upside Down. This was about kids fighting something because the adults didn't believe them, and that dynamic works, and is fun. It's the laziest way to write yourself into a conclusion or an escalation by just getting to "and then the heroes have a load of guns" and can shoot all the monsters.

 

There is no malice or ill will in this post but every time over the years you've posted about Stranger Things, you seem to really dislike it. Can I ask why you watch it still* or if you do actually enjoy it?

Is it a "might as well see it through to the end" situation?

 

*Coming from a man who despite absolutely despising it, watched all 3 series of After Life

[DavidB6937]

This is a wrestling forum. Watching something for 40ish episodes and moaning about it is nothing.

[SuperBacon]

25 minutes ago, DavidB6937 said:

This is a wrestling forum. Watching something for 40ish episodes and moaning about it is nothing.

Oh of course, I am sure that everyone that watches Raw loves it.