Stranger Things

[Gabriel]

I think the American prisoner is going to turn out to be Murray. We could get some decent comedy out of that for the next season. They want us to think it's Hopper, but I think that the Russians got hold of Murray.

[DFF]

Finished Season 3 last night. Absolutely brilliant stuff that is miles better than season 2. Might even be my favourite of the three. 

[Baddar]

Read this morning that Stranger Things 3 has been viewed on 40 million separate accounts in 4 days, with more than 18 million finishing it already. A new record.

[I Don't Mind]

Finale thoughts:

I'm calling it now that "The American" is going to be a season guest star from the 80s like Anthony Michael Hall or Fred Savage.

Was anyone else massively disappointed in how dumb they made the Mind Flayer all of a sudden in the finale? It strategized how to accumulate an army and manipulate the kids into various traps, tracked them across town to the mall, and then... blindly attacked mannequins and dead bodies as though it couldn't tell the difference between animate and inanimate objections. As if it plays by the rules of needing functional eyeballs to see the kids are ten feet away hiding behind a Goddamn counter.

Edited July 12, 2019 by I Don't Mind

[Colly]

Spoiler

I really enjoyed it, but I do think they'll struggle to ever match the first season. It's a bit like Homeland in a way, where that first initial storyline "Where is Will Byers?" was so good and such a slow burner, and now the cats out of the bag as to who the baddies are they now have to cram it a bit more with spookiness from the start. Still great though.

I was a bit gutted Robin turned out to be gay too, not because I hate representation and equality, just because poor Steve deserves a break.

 

Edited July 12, 2019 by Colly

[Ruki]

4 hours ago, Colly said:

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I really enjoyed it, but I do think they'll struggle to ever match the first season. It's a bit like Homeland in a way, where that first initial storyline "Where is Will Byers?" was so good and such a slow burner, and now the cats out of the bag as to who the baddies are they now have to cram it a bit more with spookiness from the start. Still great though.

I was a bit gutted Robin turned out to be gay too, not because I hate representation and equality, just because poor Steve deserves a break.

 

He has something better...a gay best friend to be his wingman and help him get all the ladies (and apparently jobs).

[Kaney]

I thought it was pretty great but I still rank season 1 as the best.

I loved the scene where Will destroyed Castle Byers. I loved El moving away from being all Mike Mike Mike all the time. The speech at the end by Hopper was really well done and I hope they dont swerve us on his death cos that undermines the whole thing.

I hated the scene with Dustin and Suzy singing, just utterly bizarre. And so was the New Cola advert with Lucas.

[Ruki]

56 minutes ago, Kaney said:

I thought it was pretty great but I still rank season 1 as the best.

 

  Hide contents

I loved the scene where Will destroyed Castle Byers. I loved El moving away from being all Mike Mike Mike all the time. The speech at the end by Hopper was really well done and I hope they dont swerve us on his death cos that undermines the whole thing.

I hated the scene with Dustin and Suzy singing, just utterly bizarre. And so was the New Cola advert with Lucas.

 

Regarding that speech...

 

There was no way he fit all that on a single piece of paper.

[Colly]

2 hours ago, Kaney said:

I thought it was pretty great but I still rank season 1 as the best.

 

  Hide contents

I loved the scene where Will destroyed Castle Byers. I loved El moving away from being all Mike Mike Mike all the time. The speech at the end by Hopper was really well done and I hope they dont swerve us on his death cos that undermines the whole thing.

I hated the scene with Dustin and Suzy singing, just utterly bizarre. And so was the New Cola advert with Lucas.

 

Spoiler

I liked the singy bit too! That said I thought "I haven't talked to you for yonks but sing this song for me and I'll tell you the random fact you asked for then fuck off" was a tad daft, but acceptably daft.

 

[Josh]

We finished it last night. I loved that this season leaned harder into horror and gore, borrowing a lot from John Carpenter and David Cronenberg.

[Adam]

Just finished season 3. Wow! I really think this was terrific from start to finish, loved the character arcs and the new people, the story and the cinematics. The sets, the music, yeah. Awesome show.

Spoiler

I spent all of the epilogue and mid-credits being like "Hop cannot be dead" so I don't agree with those who say him being alive would undermine that letter at the end. That was brilliantly done and if/when he returns my reaction will not be "ah, that undermines the last season!", it'll be "YES HE'S ALIVE THANK GOD!". Plus, whether he's in Russia or the Upside Down, El and Joyce are still experiencing his loss and living through that for a bare minimum 3 months, probably a lot longer. So I don't think it would lessen the impact of that scene.

Anyway, I thought the finale in particular was a masterpiece. The story beats, the twists and the performances were all superb, fresh and exciting. I cried twice, when Billy died and then during Hopper's speech at the end. Theyve built such a terrific cast of characters who all bring something different to the table and who you feel invested with. Even when adding quite a few new ones - Robin, Erica, Alexei, Murray was fleshed out a lot more this season, Billy was monumentally more important, and yet the expanded cast didn't diminish anyone. Sure, Lucas and Will maybe didn't get as much focus but they still had really important story moments and development. I just think they handled this so well in the writing and presentation.

I'll have to add in thoughts on prior episodes and the season as a whole later because I literally just finished the finale, but I greatly enjoyed it from start to finish and I thought it was definitely an improvement on season 2 (sorry Bob Newby) in almost every way.

Last thing, on Hopper...he is either in the Upside Down, or he ended up down the ladder in front of the ray gun thing, out of harm's way but caught by the Russians somehow. Personally, I think he's in the Upside Down and will be found by El in ST4.

 

[Gazz]

Spoiler

I hated the scene with Dustin and Suzy singing, just utterly bizarre.

Kaney is the worst.

[Kaney]

17 minutes ago, Gazz said:

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I hated the scene with Dustin and Suzy singing, just utterly bizarre.

Kaney is the worst.

Suzy is the fuckin worst. The only redeeming part of that was

Lucas and Max mocking Dustin for it at the end.

[Josh]

Y’all got no taste. That scene was phenomenal.

[Mx. Canadian Destroyer]

My favourite scene was

Spoiler

Robin coming out to Steve. It was brilliantly acted. Steve expressing his feelings and then Robin sinking into her hands. I had no idea whether she didn't like Steve or she was worried because she did like Steve. Then the way she comes out to him was great. Him taking a moment than being totally cool with it was perfect. 

 

[IDOL]

On 7/15/2019 at 2:32 PM, Kaney said:

I thought it was pretty great but I still rank season 1 as the best.

 

  Hide contents

I loved the scene where Will destroyed Castle Byers. I loved El moving away from being all Mike Mike Mike all the time. The speech at the end by Hopper was really well done and I hope they dont swerve us on his death cos that undermines the whole thing.

I hated the scene with Dustin and Suzy singing, just utterly bizarre. And so was the New Cola advert with Lucas.

 

You hate fun 😄

Spoiler

We just finished this last night, and even though I had Hopper’s death spoiled (by a God damned yahoo article headline of all things) - that scene and the subsequent reading of his letter absolutely gutted me. This season was great, and it moved so fast I couldn’t believe it when we had reached the last episode.

also, kudos to the writers - they even made me sad when a piece of garbage human like Billy died.

 

[Ruki]

On 22/07/2019 at 08:29, Ms. Canadian Destroyer said:

My favourite scene was

  Hide contents

Robin coming out to Steve. It was brilliantly acted. Steve expressing his feelings and then Robin sinking into her hands. I had no idea whether she didn't like Steve or she was worried because she did like Steve. Then the way she comes out to him was great. Him taking a moment than being totally cool with it was perfect. 

 

My wife and I agree. Such a good scene!

[Skummy]

I finished it last night. It's still good, but I thought this series just got way too "busy", compared to how tightly focused the first series was, especially.

The final episode was perfectly put together, though. I wasn't sure how they'd tie everything together without it feeling forced, but everything from the Suzie scene onwards was perfect. I kind of wanted to hate it as just a Deus Ex Machina, and lazy '80s nostalgia, but it was so good, and I popped for Suzie reading Ursula Le Guin.

Back to it being too busy, though...there were just too many plotlines going on at once. The first series worked because it was about insular small town weirdness. The bigger the story gets, the more people have to know about it, and the less convincing it is that it can keep happening with only a select few people being really involved.

The Bodysnatchers/The Thing plot of the Mind Flayer taking control over people really didn't pay off at all for me. We saw dozens of people apparently under its control, none of which ever served a purpose aside from Billy, who would disappear for several episodes at a time. Not to mention that Billy being the main "flayed" character meant the stakes were pretty low, as he was already an asshole, so you're not really rooting for him to be saved, nor is there much sense that he's acting out of character the way it would have seemed if another character had been controlled. It really felt like this whole plot only existed because they needed a way for Eleven to interact with the larger Monster, and could only figure it out by giving it a human face.

Giant Monster was a bit of a letdown too. The unknowable spookiness of the Upside Down is far, far scarier than a slasher movie, "hide in a cabin while a monster stalks you" scene. Again, it felt like there needed to be more of a physical threat than the more supernatural element of the Upside Down, just because they needed an obvious way to up tension.

Evil Russians...how many antagonists does this one series need? Evil Russians Part 1.0 being the Terminator-esque guy stalking Hopper, Part 2.0 being the crew under the mall. I'm not sure why the Russians feel the need to access the Upside Down to give them an advantage in the Cold War, considering they've already been able to infiltrate America so comprehensively as to create a heavily defended military installation there, but hey, what do I know? Again, another enemy that's not as compelling as the nature of the Upside Down. I also don't see why it needed to be Russians, other than a hacky Cold War arms race analogy - we know there are shady government agencies experimenting on the Upside Down, would it not have been more plausible, and believable, for it to be them operating here, rather than The Russians?


I kind of hope this is it. As much as it was left open for another series ("The American" will be Hopper, I'm sure of it), and as the kids growing up while physically more separate from one another is the logical next step in the coming age of story, I don't know if I want to see the series get "bigger". I don't want to see it expand beyond Hawkins, and introducing Erica as a new character felt like a Cousin Oliver move to get a mouthy young kid in the mix as the original cast get older. In terms of casting and performance, she was probably the only weak point.


All criticisms aside, the quality of the directing and acting is good enough to improve on the weaker parts of the writing/plotting and make it work. It left me wondering how from the first series this didn't lead to a broader career resurgence for Winona Ryder, I still love Hopper, Dustin and Steve, and I will never understand how Cary Elwes hasn't been a much bigger star. He was so brilliantly smarmy in this, and perfect as the uber-'80s corrupt mayor archetype - there was a point at the 4th July celebration when he speaks, and affects more of a "rural" accent than you've heard him speak with before, as it's the first time you see him speaking to the public, and I immediately felt my skin crawl. So good.

[Baddar]

Love this show. Just finished it.

As much as I was enjoying Season 3, I found that 1 and 2 had gripped me more - until those final two episodes at least, which were excellent.

[Baddar]

With everything that's been said here;

Spoiler

Hopper is alive, I'm confident of that. After the blast I said he'd gone into the upsidedown, and when there was no sign of a body/him actually dying, it made it more clear to me. That letter was great though and would have been an amazing send off.

I don't think we'll see much of Hop at all in S4. It'll take a new direction and I imagine we'll only find out he's still alive for certain in the middle/near the end, possibly after El gets her powers back and realises where he is.

Oh, I called that we'd get a Dusty/Suzie payoff in that final ep of S3 and it was better than I could have imagined. Unfortunately my missus had that spoiled a week or so ago by the Netflix FB page so it wasn't as good a moment for her.