“Chapter Five: The Flayed” opens with a thrill ride, there’s no denying it. As Starcourt’s “secret room” plunges (as Steve poetically puts it) “halfway to hell,” our heroes’ screams rise over the screeching of metal on metal as their elevator car drops. (Dustin’s scream alone is bloodcurdling; hats off to Gaten Matarazzo and his inimitable pipes.) Joyce and Hopper’s adventure is quieter but just as suspenseful, as they arrive at the old Hess farm in search of a massive government conspiracy—and not even their own government this time!
But however ghastly or intense the show gets, thrills have never been the heart of Stranger Things. The characters, with all their messy, complicated relationships, are the show’s heart. “The Flayed” intersperses its action with character beats, but it rarely integrates character and action as previous seasons have routinely done.
For better or worse, Stranger Things has embraced the traditional, even hackneyed, logic of the three-part film franchise. The original, the most beloved chapter, is a scrappy, lean work that balances style and substance, and relies on its core characters and the viewer’s fascination more than any special effect or showcase scene. The second expands the universe, bringing in new, often broader characters and wider settings, creating more complex systems of interpersonal drama and bigger action. The third blows up the whole dang thing in an extravaganza of violence and over-the-top characters. (Sure, sure, my example of film franchise is a tetralogy, but as my colleague Clayton Purdom puts it, “films think in triplicate.”)
There’s one big in-universe problem with these folks acting like action heroes: They’re terrible at this! Joyce and Hopper go out to search the suspicious properties on Kline’s list, not bothering to tell anyone where they’ve gone or why. Steve, Dustin, and Robin are trapped in the “secret room,” now deep underground, and they brought a child, also without leaving a clue of their whereabouts.
They make wild leaps of logic, like Nancy announcing, “That proves it!”—it being every single thing she’s speculated about—after learning that two odd events took place “around 9:00” last night. (She’s right; as Mike said earlier, “This can’t be a coincidence!,” because most fiction allows little room for coincidence.) They announce their presence everywhere they go, like Steve splashing urine on two separate levels of their confined space, or Hopper barreling his Blazer right up the driveways of the secret buildings they’re secretly scouting.
But, entertainingly, they’re also great at this. Hopper jauntily commandeers a bystander’s airboat convertible as casually as he might hail a cab. Winona Ryder continues her unexpected detour into quiet comic genius as Joyce shifts her body language from flustered mom to seen-it-all cop after hearing Hopper introduce her as “Detective Byers.” Will’s plan to let Doris Driscoll lead them back to “the source” is solid; though they’re too late to put it in action, and their arrival at the hospital does lead them to Tom and Bruce, and to the slithering entity that their bodies unite to form.
They’re great at this and they’re terrible at this, and that’s where all the entertainment in “The Flayed” arises, and—despite the noise and violence of prolonged fights—much of its tension. Even Erica, the unlikely key to entering Starcourt’s secret elevator, has her head on a swivel and her spy patter down pat: “First door, northwest,” she tells the others with the assurance of a Mission Impossible agent. “The comms room.”
Joe Keery showcases what works best in these action scenes, hustling his team to what passes for safety with a characteristic combination of audacity and anxiety. In the middle of the clear, coherent, but otherwise uninspired fight between legend-in-his-own-mind Steve Harrington and a hapless Russian soldier (in what does appear to be the comms room! Good work, Erica!), Steve grabs an instrument from its cradle, flips it in the air as casually as he flips his Scoops Ahoy ice cream scoop, and bashes his opponent with it. It’s a needless flourish, but it’s also a moment of pure Steve Harrington in an otherwise generic fight scene.
We have to talk about Bruce. What is the point of Bruce? What, one might ask, use is Bruce? He has no personality beyond “loud, crude, and insulting,” and now that he’s in the command of the Mind Flayer, he need never have a personality again. So why does he exist? Why bother to have Jake Busey play this braying, empty husk?
On any other show, I would expect future development of this character to justify the casting, but any other show didn’t let Cara Buono melt into the background for two seasons before she had a chance to shine, and any other show didn’t introduce Billy Hargrove as a mysterious new resident with a seething temper and an even more sinister, slippery charm, only to reveal his entire dark secret of that season was… an abusive father.
Stranger Things can be lovingly attentive to its core characters, but those on the sidelines sometimes feel like props or puppets, their behavior exactly as ominous or innocuous as the script demands. With her unflappable confidence and unstoppable wisecracks, Priah Ferguson plays Erica as a classic action-movie sidekick. It’s not her fault the character is written as a cliché, never given fear, or anything but admirable self-interest and smart backtalk.
Erica’s costume goes farther even than her dialogue to camouflage the sight of a little girl in grave danger; with two flashlights taped to her helmet, with her pads and backpack adding odd angles to her silhouette, Erica is reduced almost to a robotic sidekick/instigator in the style of Short Circuit’s Johnny 5. But for me, that facial silhouette will always conjure up images of Roberto, ha HA!
Stranger Things has always had its share of under-served or overblown characters. But “The Flayed” also lets its central characters lapse into lazy gender stereotypes. (It’s not the first time, or the second, or the third, and some on-set dynamics demanded scrutiny as well. Many of those potential problems, on-screen and off, have been resolved, but not all of them.) In earlier seasons, those slanted, even sexist portrayals are incidental and presumably unintentional; in “The Flayed,” writer Paul Dichter (Stranger Things staff writer, and credited with the eerily effective “Will The Wise”) hangs a lampshade on the show’s simplistic gender dynamics.
It’s more than Mike and Lucas moaning about girls being “a totally different species” of creatures who “act on emotion and not logic.” It’s more than this episode’s action grinding to a halt while Max and El giggle into a mirror together, or Lucas informing his friends wearily that “girls just like hanging out in bathrooms.” It’s Mike assuming that two girls laughing means “they’re conspiring against me!” It’s Hopper insisting that Joyce’s fears are a way of avoiding what really matters, which is him. It’s Jonathan, hearing Nancy’s urgent, near-panicked voice on the phone at dawn and being surprised that she wants to talk about anything but their breakup.
It’s the female characters accepting that they are seen either as incorrigible fabulists or as infallible. Like Robin before her, Max gleefully asks the boys, “You do still realize we can hear everything you’re saying, right?” Nancy apologizes to Jonathan and accepts his apology, then gloats, “I just look forward to you never doubting me again.” Listening to Joyce’s story, Hopper scoffs that she should “stick to sales” (a particularly sharp jibe considering the going out of business vibe Melvald’s gives off these day); when he sees evidence mount, he beams, telling her with a twinkle to come work for him at Hawkins P.D.
Most emblematic of all, it’s Mike, who has twice now tried to make up with El without quite apologizing. Gathering supplies at the pool, he tried to charm her into a smile and explain “the context” of his lies; in the hospital waiting room, he offers to share his candy, asking, “Does your species like M&Ms?” He doesn’t make amends; he doesn’t promise to behave better. In this episode, Mike Wheeler and the writers and showrunners of Stranger Things have this in common: They’re trying to entertain and charm their way past their mistakes instead of addressing them.
Putting a lampshade on the thing you’re doing wrong isn’t the same as doing it right. And maybe that’s the core problem with this season, the reason it hasn’t quite hit its stride. Going big and broad with its cast, its world, its characters, and especially its new embrace of the loud, slick style of ’80s action flicks, Stranger Things is doing something that doesn’t quite work, and winking at us about its failings. Stranger Things has successfully navigated the perils of being moony, blunt, and unabashedly earnest. What it’s not great at is winking.
Stray observations
- “You did it! You won a fight!” Hey, if you’re going to win one fight, make it the one against the lone armed guard whose station you’ve infiltrated.
- “I’ll take those odds,” Robin says, and if I were trapped in an underground bunker full of nervous scientists and heavily armed guards, one out of a hundred odds of escape would sound pretty good to me, too.
347 Comments
How old are the kids supposed to be here? this takes place about six months after season 2’s Snow Ball, so they are about 12-13 years old, right? My point is that Mike is a young kid in his first relationship with a girl and just had his first fight with El. I feel like his attempts to make up with El should be in the context of that story, where he is still maturing. I don’t know, maybe cut the character some slack.
Yeah, “Girls are like, another species, man!” is exactly the kind of WAY profound thing a middle school boy would say.
A typical middle school boy might say something like that, but Mike was never one to speak that way. And especially not about Eleven. He was always kind and respectful when speaking about her. And to just randomly have him speaking about her that way, made no sense. He would deny his feelings, or shrug off what other people said, but even when Eleven wasn’t around he wouldn’t say degrading stuff behind her back. So to have him running around, lying to her, and questioning why she broke up with him (when their number one rule was ‘friend’s don’t lie’) was probably the dumbest storyline they could have thought up.
Kids goin thru puberty be trippin’, dogg.
Kids can become assholish/lean into some assholish behaviors real quick. And the show has tried to show the moral core is still there in Mike’s character.
Probably just as well that he was just parroting what Lucas had said, while feeling hurt, which makes you more likely to say hurtful things you otherwise wouldn’t…
The thing is, he still cares for her. This is obvious. But in an already-insular town like Hawkins it’s not surprising that Mike or any one boy in the group would basically be play-acting at this stage what he thinks a Cool Dude is. Dustin might have the closest thing to a positive role model in Steve, for goodness’ sakes. I don’t think the show is letting Mike or Jonathan entirely off the hook, given that Nancy and Eleven clearly shook each of them when they stood up for themselves.
Wasn’t he lying initially because Hopper put the fear of god into him on that car ride home?
I think it’s a year and a half later. The first scene trying to open the gateway is a few months later and then when the action kicks in is a year after that.
I’m pretty sure it’s only six months. Hopper complains about the six months of Mike and El dating, which is implied to have started at the Snowball.
This! There is a huge difference between a grade schooler spouting uninformed rhetoric about the differences between men and women, and the writers actually believing it, or even trying to sell it.
Where are the writers trying to sell it?
Also, check Lucas’ advice to Mike: Max had dumped him so many times, but he always managed to win her back. Military metaphors aside, it was kind of an adorably naive way of saying he was learning what pleased her and what didn’t. They are not sophisticated dudes. They went to the mall looking for an apology gift she would like with $3.50. They’re learning as they go.
Sadly, this no longer seems to be the case, in the eyes of reviewers! They think anything that acknowledges problems must be problematic…
Also, the breakup coverup was 100% Hopper’s fault. I don’t know why we are pretending anything else. So the extent of Mike’s sins was one assholish comment as a teen. I can’t imagine the writer of this article holds everyone to these standards.
Maya Hawke is really great in this. I think she could have a big career.
Tarantino may cast her in his ‘final’ movie, as The Bride’s Daughter who has to do battle with a vengeful daughter-of-Vivica’s-character.“I am the Daughter of Copperhead. Your mother killed my mother. Prepare to Die!”
How’s that gonna happen? Uma Thurman really doesn’t care for Tarantino any longer. No one want’s to see a Kill Bill part three without Uma in it. She’s the heart of those two films.
Oh, I forgot he’s not her favourite person. And I didn’t say Uma wouldn’t be in it, but even if she weren’t, I could still see it having appeal with the right support cast and great script
Not gonna lie, I would watch that.
Maya Hawke is in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood this summer though. Don’t know what that means for the QT and Urma Thurmon’s relationship (and, to a lesser extent, Ethan Hawke’s relationship with him since he threatened to beat QT’s ass after Urma got injured in the crash).
I would.
Ehh, I thought she was cool with him, they’re not BFFs but their major beef had to do with a stunt gone awry and her biggest beef was against Weinstein. I imagine if a script came her way with the right clauses and stipulations she’d be game. Especially if they’re trying to poach her kid for it.
iMDB says she has what looks like a small role in Once Upon A Time In Hollywood.
yeah, with that last name she could. *cough* nepótism
There are some scenes/shots where she looks and acts just like her mother. It’s uncanny. She’s definitely my MVP for this season. By the look of it, she’s got a part in Tarantino’s new flick.
I question how it’s possible that the Soviet government would be able to build a top secret facility to open a gateway to another dimension along with the military and scientific personnel required to maintain such a facility smack dab in the middle of the US without anyone noticing.Like I can buy the Soviets knowing about what went down last season. But the Chernobyl Disaster happens within a year after this season and the Soviet Government collapses within a decade. If the USSR was too cheap to make non glitchy RBMK reactors for themselves I doubt they would bother going to this much effort to open an extra dimensional gateway that even the American gave up at attempting.
“Hey! Capitalist American pig-dogs! Look over thereski!”[Like the brainwashed bourgeoise oppressors of the proletariat they are, foolish Americans are distracted by Boris performing the Cossack Dance while Ivan gets to work with a shovel.]
True
Because it’s a homage to Red Dawn, which was also a movie filled with Russians and Americans doing absolutely impossible things.
This. Stranger Things is, at its heart, actually a 1980s movie, so in that context, if you put yourself in a Reaganesque 1985 mindset, then a fear of the Ruskies infiltrating America like this is totally plausible. In 1985, we didn’t know about Chernobyl, the Berlin Wall, or how terrible New Coke actually was. Sure, we smirk about the notion of a Soviet particle accelerator under Indiana now, but I’m pretty sure our Aqua-netted forebears in 1985 would have totally bought it.
+1 for the reference to Aqua Net. No 80s household was complete without a can.
My sister went through cases of it.
My mom always had a can or two under the bathroom sink. It was practically industrial-strength. For anyone wondering how people teased their hair to such heights in the 80s, seriously, look no further than Aqua Net.
aquanet is also absolutely fantastic for a 3d printer print bed to printed model bonding agent.
I bet. No surprise there – the stuff is practically industrial-strength.
My lungs contracted just reading this sentence.
IF only these shows could STOP with the god damned constant. Look its the 80s, remember the 80s, remember this thing from the 80s. Hey remember this thing, its from the 80s. Look guys its the 80s…..You guys like the 80s, don’t forget about the 80s…Its the 80s…..They did the same thing in the last season too, nobody needs to constantly be reminded its the 80s
Oh
Yeah, you have to understand that not only does this series pay homage to the 1980s tropes and movies, it’s TRYING to be one.
We now how bad New Coke was.
Its like they forget stranger things has always been a well written homage to the 80s movies.
This was the point of all the training and research in “The Experts.”
I’m going to use your smart, reasonable complaint** to add my own very irrelevant one. It’s pretty absurd that the large, vaguely-Schwarzenegger-looking KGB senior sergeant (I think—I got a look at his shoulder rank insignia, one thick stripe) would, without a word, break the apparent project chief’s neck after the fuck and without any (seen) follow up. Because the apparent project chief clearly fucked up: he killed every one of those valuable lab workers when the machine glitched. So, for example, the senior sergeant kicking his ass after the KGB major general* explained how he fucked up (“These people took years to train, and now they’re all dead.”) would’ve made much more sense. Of course, in actuality this sort of situation would’ve resulted in severe reprimanding, demotion or maybe even arrest, and not physical violence, because it’s not like you need to threaten scientists with very much to get a point across, but then again, apparently they’re trying to open a portal to another dimension, so we can stretch are belief pretty easily as long as it actually servers a purpose. But apparently the senior sergeant really wanted to channel Darth Vader, so he kills the project chief (as far as I can tell) for no useful reason at all. *Another point—a lot of American media commonly makes the mistake and assumes that flag officers in the KGB wore general’s uniforms because senior officers below that rank did. Actually, generals and admirals served in the KGB, typically on a provisional basis, but they wore the same uniforms they wore in their previous branches of service, just like admirals or generals in the CIA would wear, or civilian attire. KGB personnel in military uniforms, unlike the proceeding NKVD, were uniquely rare because the vast majority of its personnel were technically civilians (with no military rank) and/or worked in clandestine roles (kind of obvious)—aside from the militarized Border Guards Troops, who were practically a separate, larger branch and had different uniforms, uniformed personnel were almost entirely the domain of the elite units who made up the honor guard around the Moscow Kremlin. Cue the stock photography:(Note the military-style winter and summer parade uniforms, almost identical to their army and air force counterparts, and similar to other ceremonial military troops you’d see in the United States and other countries. Their shoulder insignia feature the letters ‘ГБ’, from Комитет Государственной Безопасности —the ‘GB’ in ‘KGB’, since the K is only for “Committee”.) It’s no big deal, so much as a common misunderstanding—Americans studios making Cold War cinema do their research and correctly identify that royal blue was branch color of the KGB’s non-border-patrol elements, but actual uniformed KGB generals were only a product of western cinema and not reality (since the demise of the USSR, lots of reproduction fake uniforms have been made for interested collectors though). The Americans, notably, gets this right, with General Zhukov wearing either an army uniform or civilian attire.**Also, the USSR, even in a time of relative economic strain (though it wouldn’t hold a candle to the total post-Soviet economic collapse of the ‘90s—the Soviet Union was still nominally the second largest economy in the world, until overtaken by boom-era Japan in 1988), still poured enormous amounts of monetary wealth into large civil, military, and agricultural projects throughout the country, right up to the day the country collapsed, itself the consequence of a political catastrophe, rather than economic pressures. If economics could’ve killed the USSR, the country would’ve collapsed during or after the Second World War, not 40 years later when political liberalization saw several republics use the Soviet constitution’s federalist self-destruct mechanism and the central government refused to call their bluffs. Still, that doesn’t explain how they’d build such a thing in the middle of United States territory….how is that your response to some psychic Americans frying the brains of your favorite spies?(If you wasted your time to read my entire post, you deserve some kind of prize, like a virtual cookie.)
Because the apparent project chief clearly fucked up: he killed every one of those valuable lab workers when the machine glitchedAlso, while it was still an oppressive police state, the Soviet authorities were far less into the whole “failure equals treason and must be punished by death” thing that they had in Stalin’s time. This is the summer of 1985, the dawn of Gorbachev’s reign, although he hadn’t really begun his reforms yet.
Actually, courtesy of archival research, and not swimming in our own propaganda, we know today that this whole Star Wars-esque “You have failed me for the last time,” thing was actually quite rare during Josef Stalin’s time, much less 40 years later (and actuality, the liberalization of Soviet society proceeded Gorbachev by many years, especially in the vocational and professional space—if not the political space—under L. Brezhnev’s long tenure and the move towards collective leadership). A good example would be famed aircraft designer Andrey Tupolev—fingered during the height of Stalin’s purges (and seeing some of his colleagues in the elite circles of Soviet industry actually executed), he himself was interned in a sharashka (basically a industrial and design extension of the existing “Gulag” prison labor system), he was tried in 1940 for sabotage and released in 1941 (because of this whole inconvenient “World War” thing). It sucked, undoubtedly, that he was not formally rehabilitated until after Stalin’s death in 1955, but his treatment would be a better example of what happened to the Soviet scientific and technical elite when they were targeted during the Purges. Tupolev was well on his way to becoming a juggernaut of Soviet aviation industry 20 years before Gorbachev’s rise to power, in no small part because of how much the Soviet Union valued technical expertise in the Cold War (frequently much more than political expertise, importantly). Conversely, people were on occasion executed for stupider reasons. Look at Sergey Kirov. Haha, no, not really, just some history black humor for you. (I say this with the totally strong authority of having actually been born in the twilight of another one-party dictatorship that could be just as rigid and autocratic as the Soviet Union—but because Generalissimo Chiang was smart enough to have a Road-to-Damascus conversion to western capitalism after the end of the civil war, we got to call ourselves “Free China”. Dollar-dollar-bills-y’all.)
It’s dumb either way and for any era. Basically all it is embodying the trope that Soviets are just pure evil and not human like all of the US’s enemies have been portrayed over time.
Why is everyone acting like this is a totally accurate portrayal of the mainline Soviet government. This is their answer to Hawkins Lab, so it’d make sense that they’d be as far from their government as that version of the DOE is from ours.
Why are you acting like this is a documentary?
I will take the rest of these cookines if nobody else wants them
Last I checked this wasn’t a documentary.
Ah, you get your history from television. Very good, not at all terrible
I like that you question the logic of the Soviets being able to afford and execute this, but not the opening gateway to another dimension. Obviously no one has ever had the ability to open a dimensional portal or train telekinetic soldiers, Soviets or otherwise. In the Stranger Things universe, you have to accept that building an interdimensional hole-opening machine, or training a telekinetic who accidentally opens a portal, is akin to building a nuclear reactor in the real world. Also, it’s not like they did it well, their first machine blew up and killed a bunch of people, their scheme was unmasked by a drunken, local sheriff and a cashier, and their facility was successfully infiltrated by some mall workers and middle and elementary schoolers. And a cold-war era government putting the effort in and investing a bunch of money they probably don’t have into an extremely dangerous technology in an effort to gain a military advantage is one thing that actually rings pretty true.
Bio-monsters are invading small town America from another dimension, but the soviets doing something on US soil is what’s unbelievable to you?
Spoiler for later in the season I guess, but…
Wasn’t the entire sub-plot with the mayor about him making a deal with the Russians and the Starcourt Mall was built as a cover for all concrete and construction? So basically Mayor Cary Elwes is why nobody else noticed, he was important enough to smooth over any discrepancies anyone noticed.
It still astounds me that he was Cary Elwes. Damn he looks really thin right now.
This! If you have the local top politician and funding coming from a consortium of investors looking to build a new mall, digging a massive bunker during construction isn’t all that far-fetched. Realistically it wouldn’t be that large and they wouldn’t have ANYONE in uniform as that’s a dead tip-off. but a few large rooms dug under cover of early mall construction, a few elevator shafts tucked in beside loading bays and some shipments going only to specific rooms wouldn’t be that hard to arrange. The bigger challenge would be the housing for the workers since it looks like they need at least a couple of hundred people involved in running this machine. Maybe a few other large rooms for barracks, commissary, etc. just not dug so deep? You could hide all the electrical, ventilation, plumbing, sewage, etc. as part of the mall. Now, is any of this LIKELY? Is the chance of pulling this off without being caught tiny? Sure. But the name of the damn show is Stranger Things, so suspend your disbelief and enjoy.
Not only do you have the top politician in your pocket, but chief of police is a former drunk that spends all of his time chasing after 14-year olds.
and the fact they built this shit in less than a year!!!
In Soviet Russia, Capitalist Mall builds you!
You realize this may not be a historically accurate depiction of the USSR because portals also don’t exist?
The Americans also knew what happened when they opened the gate the first time.
I question how it’s possible for the women on this show (and many others) to routinely be 12x more attractive than their love interests, but I guess we all have to suspend our belief system every once in a while.
You’re so right, and it is to a distracting degree.
Uhhhh I hope you’re sarcastic because real life is overwhelming populated by women who are far more beautiful than their male partners. Phoebe Buffay said it herself.
Soviet peasants beat the United States into space.
Yeah it’s absolutely ridiculous. All of it, even by Stranger Things standards. That they’d be able to build such a large so deep underground facility that has a large hadron super collider or whatever in it and building a new mall would be sufficient cover!? It’s absurd. The show has chosen to just lampshade it all. It’s no longer pastiche of good 80s blockbusters like it was in the first two seasons but is going right into 80s cheese
Some cheese deserves to be left in the 80’s.
Fair enough
but it’s an aged cheddar!
You make a good point, and I suppose I’d explain it as being one more element of Stranger Things as an exercise in genre homage. It’s paying tribute to the eighties films where the Soviets were depicted as cunning and brilliant and with seemingly unlimited resources. They were legitimate existential threats, not a crumbling superpower rotting from within. This series works practically on the idea that we the viewer too occupy the eighties and accept these fictional versions of the Soviets. And on a related note, surely I’m not the only one who was shouting at the screen “Whatever you do, don’t press the AZ5 Button!”
I think the implication is that this is one of the many disastrous events that took the USSR down. They couldn’t pay for it, but they did anyway in their insanity to keep up the arms race.
Maybe this is what they spent most of their money on.
Yes, but in true Russian style their second-rate portal ends up malfunctioning and killing them in droves.
I agree! I also find it ridiculous that any government, let alone the US government during the 80s, with all that money & paranoia during the cold war, would open a portal to anothert dimension that was an absolute hellscape, see it all go to shit & then just leave it completely unattended, bar telling the chief of police to give them a call if something suspicious happens.
like of all the things to think “ah, i’m sure it’ll be fine!” that is absolutely not it…at least stick a couple of guards and an alarm system there maybe…
It’s only just a tv show…you really should relax
You have obviously never been to Indiana.
Hang on. You mean this fun and goofy show (which is clearly an homage to 80’s movies and TV made in a time when disbelief was much more easily suspended)about alternate dimension blob monsters explained by psuedoscientific hoo-hah (who can even remember honestly?) who are simultaneously a threat to end human life and able to be defeated by a group of 10-15 year olds, a county sheriff, and a single mom has PLOT HOLES? Well done, Encyclopedia Brown. You’ve cracked the case!
Next you are going to tell me that the Dread Pirate Roberts is not real.
You’re absolutely right. But, suspending disbelief and going with it, makes it a lot more fun.
You can definitely see the budget went up dramatically with this new season. Season 1 seems downright quaint with it’s limited settings and minimal monster.
I was particularly impressed by how well they computer animate slimy goo. There are shots where I wasn’t sure if it was actual goo, only for the goo to move in a way that had to be cgi.
I find the idea of the Soviets having a fraction of the necessary
funds to pull this off amusing, when we know in hindsight that like,
they didn’t even have working tanks or enough guns for everyone in the
Red Army. The show is portraying them as the evil superpower we thought
they were in 1985.I feel bad for Jo Keery and Maya
Hawke (who is an eerily exact 50/50 match of both of her parents, like
her face was designed by a CAD machine or something) for having to wear
those dumb sailor outfits for almost the entirety of the season.
I could see them trying to make their own army of psychic children but going to these lengths to open a gateway to a dimension whose inhabitants have shown clear intent on either murdering or enslaving humanity seems really rediculous.For that matter how was the underground portion of the facility even built without anyone noticing?
Not nearly in the same league, but consider the case of the Greenbrier Bunker, aka “Project Greek Island” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Greek_Island). The US government had a secret bunker for Congress in the event of a nuclear war located underneath a popular resort hotel in West Virginia (as it was judged both close enough to DC to be feasibly gotten to yet outside the predicted blast zone).
The Mayor got the mall built (remember the protestors?). But the Mayor was being blackmailed by the Russians so they actually did the construction.C’mon people. This is all basic bad guy moves 101. They shouldn’t have to spell out every fucking detail.
It’s not like anyone told them “hey, by the way, the residents of this dimension are real assholes”. They’re flying mostly blind.
“Paranoid anti-Russian bigotry is really hot right now in the United States”. Yeah, so unfair. I look forward to Putin helping us vote the right guy in again in the next election.
<>
They built it at the same time as the mall, the Russkies built Starcourt mall as a cover.
That’s the point, at least in my opinion. This whole show is a play on hokey ‘80s movies, and is meant to not only portray the ‘80s, but also be shot and feel like the movies of that era. We thought the Soviets were big bad at that time.
Jesus, I swear the writers got away with murder this season. This show is not an 80s movie. It’s theme and style is 80s, but it is without question shot as a modern film. The story is inspired by many other books/movies, but the cinematography, tone, and its plot still made it Stranger Things. Season 3 gave so much attention to the homages and references that it actually highjacked the plot of the show and did so on a shallow rehash of season 1/2’s plot; Experiment gone wrong, gate to hell, monsters, fight, close gate to hell. There was no expansion on the upside down or mention of the other experimented kids. Instead we got Starcourt nostalia factory and cartoony Russians apparently in the name of HOMAGE…Not to mention the emotional ending that will no doubt be undermined by the return of Hopper in the next season. smDh
Frankly, we weren’t wrong. They were pretty bad until right before the end.
The show is portraying them as the evil superpower we thought they were in 1985.That’s… kind of the point.
These episodes definitely need more discussion of Soviet economics and budgetary issues during the mid-80’s in order for this season to work more effectively
Since I don’t particularly wish to reply to a bunch of commenters who haven’t managed to work themselves out of the greys yet: Yes, I understand that is the point. That’s why I deemed it “amusing”.
Ouch.
Greys are people too. Even superstars like us were once grey (though I don’t really like to talk about it.)
You do know that Russia was actually pretty powerful, until AFTER Chernobyl right? It was Chernobyl that sucked up all their money….They weren’t some piss ant little 3rd world country without enough guns for everyone in their military..They were LITERALLY the 2nd most powerful country in the world until their economy collapsed
Paranoid anti-Russian bigotry is really hot right now in the United States. I suppose they want to cash in while they still can.
Yes, because the Russian government has done nothing at all deserving of suspicion in the last few years. At all!
Firstly, every 80s movie with an international enemy starred the Soviets, because we were still in the cold war.Secondly, the Russian government actually did attack our elections, murder people in other countries like the UK, annex Crimea, sell weapons to despots used to kill Americans, shoot down a passenger airplane and killed the over twenty journalists in the last 20 years. Its not paranoia if it’s factual.
Yes, total paranoia. Russia doesn’t interfere with foreign elections, or routinely murder inconvenient figures, much less take over land from a foreign nation.
Paranoid? They literally attacked our elections. That’s not paranoia.
lol anti-Russian bigotry. Maybe if yakov and his pals weren’t elbow deep in our president, we wouldn’t want to see their rotten potato drinking asses turned into a parking lot.
This is really a reach. The US government was portrayed as badly, if not worse in past seasons. Having the USSR have an answer to it during the Cold War isn’t illogical within the frame of this universe at all.
Maybe they didn’t have those things because they were pouring all their resources into building “keys” to another dimension.
well as a realistic story in a real world I don’t believe they could be able to pass the frontier line. but in a world where they open doorsway to the shadow world, I am pretty sure the commies are developping lunar station on the moon shadow,. for a 80’’movie style they are pretty much on point.the only thing this season lacked is
Stranger Things universe doesn’t equal our historical universe
The Russians building a secret base for mad science experiments is something with enough basis in reality and popular culture I’m willing to accept. Them being able to do that in the middle of enemy territory, within a few miles of their enemy’s own super secret mad science base is so utterly absurd it’s hard for me to even sit through an episode without the aid of drugs or alcohol. There’s bending the suspension of disbelief and then there’s snapping it in two, and with this season they’ve done the latter.
Again, I can’t believe now in season 3, people are having this issue. The plot of Season 1 is that this huge conspiracy is being conducted by the DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY! Do you really think our country would ever invest that much in a non-defense agency during the Reagan Era?
The show is portraying them as the evil superpower we thought they were in 1985.I mean, that’s kind of thee whole point of the show, it’s a period piece/homage to the 1980’s and should be crafted as if it were from that time period, not simply set in or about it. This also excuses all the dumb things the kids say about girls being a different species, they are 13 year olds in the 80s, they really don’t know any better.Keery and Hawke’s Scoops Ahoy! uniforms are the MVP of the season.
I can get as far as: “Well, they must have shipped all this stuff in through Lake Michigan – right?” then it all breaks down after that.
“The show is portraying them as the evil superpower we thought they were in 1985.” As opposed to the evil superpower they are in 2019.
Maya Hawke is young enough to be my own daughter … so I’ll limit myself to observing that against all reason, she can actually carry that costume off.
I don’t know if it makes me a creep (it probably does) but I really, really like Joe Keery in that sailor outfit.
I’m giving you a star for your honesty, creep.
You’re sooo right! it’s almost like this show is fictional.
Maybe that’s why. The budget for tank maintenance got reallocated to building a secret underground lab in the American heartland.
“We have to talk about Bruce. What is the point of Bruce? What, one might ask, use is Bruce? He has no personality beyond “loud, crude, and insulting,” and now that he’s in the command of the Mind Flayer, he need never have a personality again. So why does he exist? Why bother to have Jake Busey play this braying, empty husk?”Because all Buseys have an innate urge to kill and must be sated with whatever character they’re playing being turned into a homicidal maniac.
That checks out.
He kind of reminded me of Robert Redford’s portrayal of Bob Woodward in All the President’s Men except even more obnoxious and not having the saving grace of being brilliant.
In that character’s mind it’s likely the look he was going for/thinks he has.
or the good looks.
If something happens during the rest of this season that is more satisfying than Nancy beating Jake Busey’s character to death with a fire extinguisher, it will have to be pretty g-d satisfying
Pretty sure that’s a nod to Winona Ryder beating Christian Slater with a fire extinguisher in 1988’s Heathers.
Did Jake Busey turn down a bunch of other leading roles to play this character? Why are we pretending Jake Busey is a highly sought after actor?
‘They’re great at this and they’re terrible at this’Just like…oh…The Goonies, who they’re directly patterned after?
Are you downplaying the role a physically and emotionally abusive parent has in their child’s development? Billy always made a ton of sense to me.
Mental Health issues and how much of an impact they have in people lives seems to be a major blind spot for way too many Kinja writers
I’m mentally ill and I’m not a violent racist who tried to kill three children on bikes with my car like Billy. I really hate this line of thinking. It’s like those people who somehow think it’s helpful to those of us who are mentally ill to assume every mass shooter is mentally ill
One can talk about mental health without painting someone as having a mental illness. You took it there.
Mental illness is maybe the wrong framework to look at it but the point is there are plenty of people who experienced abuse who don’t become as racist and malevolent as the character of Billy
Correct. Those people aren’t characters on TV shows, though. Billy was a dick because they needed someone to be a dick.
So the victim of abuse excuse for Billy’s behavior both made sense and was good writing but was also completely arbitrary and contrived because the writers simply “needed someone to be a dick.” Got it. Strong argument
Yeah, it is. It was originally supposed to be Steve, but when Joe Kerry auditioned they loved him so much and realized it would be a huge fucking waste to make him the one-dimensional high school antagonist. They rewrote the Steve stuff from the ground up and thus needed a new guy to literally just fill the role of dick. The Duffers are on the record with that one. Billy literally just fills a void, checks a box. His antagonism is utilitarian.
It’s pretty strange to see someone ostensibly defend something by admitting that it’s bad writing that’s merely good enough to “fill a void” but okay
I’m just explaining what it literally is. You’re the one that thinks a person that is popular in school, can acquire and hold down a job, and manipulate a laughable number of adults into his hand also would consciously decide to attempt triple vehicular homicide with a witness riding shotgun. One of our explanations makes way more sense than the other.
The larger point is that the character of Billy Hargrove as written and the supposed explanations for why he is the way he is are unconvincing which you’ve pretty much agreed with so . . .
Says the guy who think billy tried to intentionally murder 3 children
I’m not sure why you’re so stuck on this. The point of the scene was to show again that Billy, who’d just been introduced as a character , was a violent psycho and who knows what he might be capable of up to and including murder. Even if he wasn’t literally setting out to kill them (and I’m not sure how anyone can be so sure of a fictional characters motives) at the very least he was creating an insanely dangerous situation which could easily lead to death or at least great bodily harm to one of the boys. I guess the opposite way of reading the scene would be that Billy was fully in control and rational the entire time and is such a great driver that there’s no possible way he could hit one of the kids while driving full speed into bicycles in a muscle car and it was just a harmless prank. That’s not what I think was going on with that scene. That’s all.And the fact that Billy can still con adults etc. doesn’t prove anything. It’s pretty much textbook sociopath stuff
Now I didn’t say that his childhood justify his current actions, I didn’t say that at all.
I didn’t say or imply that you did but you do seem to be saying that having an abusive parent and “mental health” are a satisfactory explanation of Billy if not a justification and that’s what I’m trying to push back on.
Not everyone with a mental illness is the same either. It’s a rich tapestry and one of the reasons it’s so poorly understood.
Right but using mental illness as a catch all two word explanation for every school shooting and all bad behavior isn’t helpful to those of us who are actually mentally ill. Not to mention that mentally ill people still have motivations and personality traits beyond simply being mentally ill
I’d agree with that, as someone who suffers from mental illness and is a dyed in the wool pacifist. I’d also argue though that anyone who plans and executes murder, mass or otherwise, suffers from some sort of mental illness. Obviously not a popular theory or we’d be seeing more murderers sent to hospital instead of prison.
Yeah that’s literally the exact opposite of what I’m saying
There we have it then. At least we’ve proved that two people with mental illness can differ in their opinions regarding mental illness and we can’t all be thrown into the same basket labeled “crazies”.
We also, like, anyway knew about it tho
I’m with you, but I think many folks were more just disappointed because the abusive dad as backstory is extremely cliché. Obviously, it’s a common trope because it’s a common situation in real life, but some folks might just have expected something more original…
I mean…have these folks seen the rest of the show? The whole thing is tropes we’ve seen a thousand times before.
Ha! Valid.
So true. This show should be called “hey, remember this kinda shit?”
I wrote last season I was expecting a reveal where Billy had a tattoo on his wrist saying “Six” or something, revealing that he too had been experimented on like Eleven, which would help explain his behaviour (remember what Elle was like in season 1). His dad being in the military fit this theory too. Alas, it was not to be.
Something… stranger?
Billy is an violent abusive racist who try to kill three children on bikes by running over them with his car. There were also all these talks about “what happened in California” and these nods to the idea that there was some mind-blowing reason as to how he ended up in Indiana as his sister’s legal guardian. The resolution of that was a disappointment. Bringing up the idea that Billy himself was abused seems to say that his behavior is sympathetic or excusable when it wasn’t
There’s a 0 percent chance he was planning to actually run over the 3 boys. That’s fucking stupid. One of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen written. He was also never made out to be Max’s legal guardian.
YOu haven’t been on the internet very long if a different interpretation of an ambiguous scene is the “stupidest thing” you’ve ever seen written. It was clear to me what the implication of the scene was but even if he wasn’t explicitly trying to kill them and it was a “joke” or he was “just trying to scare them” he was creating a situation which could easily lead to death or severe injury even if by mistake.
nope, it was just that dumb
I could be with you except for the racism that the show wants us to forget about
Before 2016, I would have agreed with you, but maybe racism is just a depressingly mundane and common thing that people can act on for very little reason.
I don’t think you’re wrong but it doesn’t feel like the show’s being INTENTIONAL with that, if that makes sense. It just feels like an issue in the writing. I won’t say more since my brainspace is having just watched E6.
I guess my thought is if a person is demonstrably a billy-sized asshole and then I learned they were also racist, I wouldn’t be surprised. It’s just more shorthand for “inexcusable dick” to me. I don’t hold the 80s nostalgia hour TV show to the responsibility of interrogating racism. It’s cliche, but so is the rest of the show.
I can’t respond without commenting on Episode 6!
I absolutely adored that moment where Eleven is running past the father and she takes a beat to turn around and be like, “fucking asshole.” It was silly and sweet and heartbreaking at the same time, and such a kid thing to do. The show is intentionally cliche piled on cliche but at its best, it’s those little moments of truth that make it work.
I thought part of the storyline of season 3 is to show how Assholian boys/men can be/are and I felt it was a success, in general and this episode in particular.
I didn’t really have a problem with Stranger Things 3 until the last episode. It was downright awful. The pacing was terrible as was the writing. It felt extremely anti-climactic and the story was essentially done a quarter of the way into the episode. I just kept waiting for it to end.Many of the things that happened in the episode made little to no sense and it absolutely reeked time manipulation in order to force certain things to happen at certain times solely to have certain things happen. It felt extremely forced.Stranger Things 3 definitely starts out stronger than it ends. Perhaps that’s partially because the actual conflict part of the story just doesn’t work on so many levels. I enjoyed the more lighthearted parts of this season a lot, but aside from Billy’s story arc, the more serious stuff doesn’t really work and the entire premise of an underground Russian base in the middle of Indiana is ridiculously implausible.
Maya Hawke has an incredible voice. I bet she can sing.
I think part of the problem is your view this show through “modern” eyes. It’s not just that the SHOW takes place in the 80’s but the entire vibe and storytelling is straight out of the 80’s. Think Goonies, Adventure in Babysitting. I mean in the Goonies, they find a hidden treasure map in their attic, one of their friends just so happens to be able to read it, and they go on a zany adventure during the course of which they take on a mob (we assume) family, with mutant in the basement, and WIN, and then stumble on a long hidden and still functional pirate ship filled with gold and jewels. It’s the same impossible logic and set up that Stranger Things uses. So of course it uses lots of logic breaks and old stereotypes, ala Nancy Drew, because in its heart, its an 80’s adventure/sci fi movie. Because it was made, at least this season in 2018/2019 your expecting more modern takes on gender and such, which isn’t the point at all.
Minor pushback – the paper guys making fun of their young intern is one thing for establishing the fact that everyone is playing to 80s stereotypes. Mike not apologizing is a tenth grader not knowing how to be a good boyfriend. But the absolutely terrible lines between Hopper and Joyce (and between Jonathan and Nancy), lines that don’t give them credit as characters, lines that don’t respect the contributions the women are making, are really shitty writing.
I’m not saying its bad writing, but again fitting given the time it takes place, that is still the time of the men are men and the women are women, right or wrong. The man takes the lead as leader and the woman follows, again not right but those were the times. And come on you have to give Mike some slack, he’s a kid who has never had a girlfriend before. Can you tell me you knew exactly the right thing to do in that confusing time of your life, lol.
All the characters were very out of character. I feel like they tried to make the youngest characters more immature, instead of more mature. The result was cringe-worthy performances from the youngest actors, mostly because they weren’t used to making their characters that stupid. Such as Mike and Eleven breaking up over non-communication. And Hopper threatening Mike was just insane. They basically just wanted to find a reason to split Mike and Eleven up again. It made no sense, considering they had spent a year apart, last season. I doubt they would randomly break up over something stupid and MIke never would have lied to her about Hopper threatening him in the first place. More to the point, Hopper threatening him wouldn’t have just been blown off by Eleven. She would have gotten pissed off about it, not just shrugged it off, like it didn’t matter. It is realistic to have characters fight and break up, but it should have been done in a way that was more in character with what we have previously seen from Mike and Eleven. I felt their characters were way more mature in previous seasons than they were this season. Which doesn’t make sense. People don’t just become less mature with age. That doesn’t happen.
That was not a given. I was 15 in 1985 and, in my mind, I could do any job I wanted, men be damned. You write about it like it was the 50s and everyone just accepted the roles of men and women, but it wasn’t like that. We’d already had the late 60s feminism push and then all through the 70s. In the 80s, a lot was changing. What I see when I see that newsroom in Stranger Things is a bunch of men who grew up with their dad working and their mom taking care of the house and doing whatever Dad said and the only women in workplaces were secretaries who had to put up with the sexual harassment. These men are lashing out because they can’t deal with the changes that are happening, with women thinking they can be more than a wife, mother, or secretary. I’m not saying the 80s weren’t sexist. I’m saying that a whole lot of women were saying, “My place is in the workplace and not just as a secretary.”
You are totally right and that was Nancy’s thoughts the whole time. She WANTED to be a real reporter, but the men in the office all considerably older mind you, still had a women are just secretaries mind set.
Oh, and did you do all of this in a small town in Indiana? You’re correct that women were entering the workforce in droves and standing up for themselves, but to suggest that a small-town newspaper run by white guys in their 30s and 40s and owned by a man in his 50s or 60s would NOT be sexist is completely ludicrous. Same goes for Hopper and his sexist treatment of Joyce; he’s mid to late 30s (at least) and is a product of his upbringing. Note that if he was alive now he’d be in his 70s and probably voting for Trump. The kids are exactly as clueless, cruel, ignorant, sexist and oblivious as any handful of boys in their very early teens – even today. None of this is out of place in the 1980s. None of these people are acting unusual by the standards of their time (and/or age). Yet there are a ton of people here whining that they aren’t all woke by 2019 standards. Hell go watch some TV from that era to get a load of how prevalent sexism was. Cheers was a perfect example. The Love Boat was still airing. Hell, Remington Steele was huge and the very premise of that show was that a female PI is so outlandish she had to have a male superior if she wanted to get any clients. Sexism was real and common and a handful of working girls (and movies about them like Working Girl) were NOT the norm. Be thankful that things are a HELL of a lot better now – even in the times of #MeToo.
I was not commenting on the show. I feel the show does a good job of showing what it was like (I grew up in Oklahoma, so small town or not, there was plenty of sexism and racism.) I was commenting on your statement that, “The man takes the lead as leader and the woman follows…” You were describing the 50s. Just in the show you can see lots of instances of the woman saying, “No, I will not follow you just because you are a man and I will not shut up and obey just because I am a woman.” Just because it didn’t happen as much as today doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.
You are replying to the wrong person – I never said this: “The man takes the lead as leader and the woman follows…”Might want to confirm who you’re talking to before you go off on them.
Also, it’s really fucking annoying of you to tell me how things were in the 80s and tell me to go watch some TV from the time to figure out what it was like when I already told you that I *lived* through that time. I spent my preteen and teen years in the 80s (I was between the ages of the younger kids and the older kids in Stranger Things.) Especially when it seems a lot like you did not live through that or were very young at the time.
Uh huh. I was born in 1970 and was only a bit older than the kids in Stranger Things at the time. Maybe you lived in some magically woke pocket of the midwest where the ingrained sexism of American culture had been successfully rolled back by 1st-wave feminism, but if so I’d love to know where that pocket exists. My point about watching TV of the era was to indicate the level of inherent misogyny that was omnipresent in American culture at the time. Your experiences may be valid and meaningful to you, but they are not necessarily representative of the rest of the country. When the current media is depicting confident women tackling the ingrained old-boys-club of business in big cities, it’s with the understanding that this is NOT the norm. As such, complaining that a local small town newspaper in the midwest would NOT have a bullpen of sexist white middle-aged assholes is unreasonable and unrealistic. You say “I was 15 in 1985 and, in my mind, I could do any job I wanted, men be damned.” which is all very well and good, but I suspect the reality of 15-year-old women in the workforce was very different. I sincerely doubt that your older male co-workers would have agreed with you on that point. Neither would society in general, as evidenced by the media at the time. That’s the point I was making.
I NEVER SAID THAT THE SCENES DEPICTED IN STRANGER THINGS 3 DID NOT HAPPEN IN THE 80S!!!!Maybe that will make you see it. What I said was that the world in the 80s was not some world where women blindly did what men said because they were men. Which was in reply to you saying almost exactly that. You are arguing against something I am not saying. I know it was fucking sexist in the 80s because I was a teenage girl in the 80s. I know exactly how it was. I said, “In my mind, I could do any job I wanted” because I saw that message. How about this, “I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan…” That’s a fucking commercial for women’s perfume and the “I” in it is a woman. And it was a commercial when I was a kid. “You’ve come a long way, baby.” Sure, it was for cigarettes, but the words and the images that went with them were distinctly feminist and implying independence of women from men. How about 9 to 5? Do you think that movie would have been made in the 50s? Can you see Donna Reed having a job, much less telling her boss off for being a sexist asshole? Yeah, the reality was that women were subjected to sexism in the workplace, but the reality also was that women were standing up for themselves and that was changing. I mean, women were talking about breaking the glass ceiling. A woman ran for vice president for the first time a year before Stranger Things 3 took place. Is that a world where women quietly obey men? It was still a sexist world, but it was a changing world. Just because sexism existed doesn’t mean women were meek.
Also, there weren’t 15 year old women in the work force for two reasons: 1) 15 year olds are not women and 2) you had to be 16 to legally hold a job (outside of working on your family’s farm or a family business.)
Full disclosure, I’m a cis-gendered man. I had a slightly different reaction to the exchange (and aftermath of the exchange) between Nancy and Jonathan. I think Nancy was frustrated that Jonathan was unwilling or unable to empathize with what it’s like for her to move through the world as a woman, and Jonathan had an equally valid frustration with Nancy’s unwillingness or inability to empathize with his life as a person who is poor. At least in that moment, he wouldn’t see sexism, and she wouldn’t see classism. I thought it was more nuanced than Jonathan is a lout. Neither was listening to the other. I thought the scene was very good.
My thoughts as well.
Murph, this is spot on how the scene plays out and its intent. It’s like certain people commenting either are clueless to what show they are watching, or more than likely they are part of our unfortunate outrage culture that tries so hard to twist anything they perceive as an opportunity to make controversy.I say that as a liberal, progressive, and inclusive person in the year of our lord 2019. I can watch this and not get bent that things were different then for people and it’s accurate for the times. I can also interpret that the scene was just as you described, nuanced and sensible, and not some sexist trash.
Agreed. It’s like complaining that Mad Men is sexist because of the way all the men treat women. Duh – that’s the POINT.
Agreed. You might even call the Jonathan/Nancy fight a demonstration of intersectionality, rather than a depiction of sexism. They’d established that he wanted to keep the job because he was getting paid to take photos (and that Nancy, comically, never paid attention to the red light when he was working in the darkroom), and that he didn’t receive the same sort of harassment she put up with daily from the boys club bullpen. The depiction of sexist acts and thoughts and words isn’t in itself an endorsement of sexism.
I’m not saying the newspaper men aren’t sexist assholes, and Jonathan didn’t have to face the ridicule and humiliation Nancy did, that’s true. However what’s also true is Jonathan just put his head down and did the job he was hired to do. Nancy’s job was to help around the office and get coffee, but assumed the role of cub reporter. Who’s to say that if he didn’t do the same thing, they wouldn’t have called him Joe Hardy and constantly made fun of him too?
No, see that’s the thing. She wasn’t a secretary. She was a reporter too. Only, because she was female, the only assignments she got involved coffee and lunch and puff pieces. The job wasn’t turning out as she’d hoped.
She wasn’t a real reporter, she was an intern. Is there any reason for us to believe a male intern with no reporting experience would be sent out to get stories instead of coffee, either.
Internships imply opportunity and training, which she wasn’t getting. So she set out to make her own opportunities, a very Nancy thing to do, really.
So the women that end up saving the guys time after time with their actions mean nothing?I’m pretty sure that’s part of the writing.
Mike isn’t in 10th grade (age 15-16). I’m pretty sure he’s about 13 (8th grade)
Agreed. Hopper being a douche is the one thing that doesn’t make sense to me.
Try watching some episodes of Moonlighting. The casual sexism will make your head spin.
I get that they are doing a Romancing the Stone thing with Joyce and Hopper but their dialog is *painful.* My husband reflexively dove for the fast forward during one of their “banter” sessions. He stopped shy of actually pressing it but his gut was like, “No.” Anyone who sees the way those two interact and think it is in any way cute or charming needs some kind of intervention.
THIS
My problem with this season is they have become a show that is an homage to the 80s that feels like it was made today, while the first season at least kinda-sorta feels like it was an homage to the 80s that was actually made in the 80s. Product placement in this new season was pretty gross.
Thank you! This post made me LOL when I got to the part about gender stereotypes. Have you ever heard about the “battle of the sexes”? The 80s where all into that shit. We’re still feeling the shockwaves today. The difference is that in ST3 the characters learn to respect each other and grow. Which brings me to why doing “reviews” of single episodes is dumb. It’s like watching 2/3 of “A Christmas Carol” and then writing a scathing article on how Scrooge is toxic.
EXactly.
Not trying to wade into the gender dynamics debate but this comment is spot on in terms of the tone and the influences that this season of Stranger Things is going for. The show was never subtle but it’s REALLY not trying to be subtle or non-ridiculous now
I think the point is that, what is said was HOW IT WAS! The writing is showing what things used to be like. It actual gives more power to the gender inequality and male-dominant dialogue that is happening in 2019. This was life in the ‘80s … aren’t you glad it’s not like this anymore?
Goonies is a great counterexample! Actually written in the 80s, by dudes… and yet it’s still better than this in terms of the female characters, I think. Thanks for pointing it out. For that matter, the writing for the female characters in the 1st and 2nd season of this show could be compared to this current season, whcih is what the blog author is trying to do. But… plenty of stuff from the 80s isn’t that good. Maybe it would be best to compare it to like family ties or something. We’ve been watching Cheers lately, which is … really interesting. Good writing, such good characters…. plenty of sexist tropes but not unfaithful to the characters themselves in terms of what they say and do.
In writing this out, I realize I enjoy this show but I really don’t find many of the characters that deeply considered. And it’s fine for Mike to turn into a typical dick teenager… it happens to plenty of kids who were perfectly nice before middle school. If people were attached to him they may feel mad, so in that sense maybe it’s a bold risky move for the show. El taking him back with the lame line about m&ms seemed surprising, but people in terrifying situations do stuff they normally would not, I guess. If you want to be “true to the times” I am surprised no one is pointing out that in the 80s a kid with Mike’s appearance would not be playing the lead and keeping the pretty girl, but people seem to only apply that when they want to.
Stranger Things can be lovingly attentive to its core characters, but those on the sidelines sometimes feel like props or puppets, their behavior exactly as ominous or innocuous as the script demands. With her unflappable confidence and unstoppable wisecracks, Priah Ferguson plays Erica as a classic action-movie sidekick. It’s not her fault the character is written as a cliché, never given fear, or anything but admirable self-interest and smart backtalk. At this point, this is basically the strongest connection between Stranger Things and Stephen King.Again I feel like I have to emphasize that we can expect too much of this show – and I should clarify that when I say it, it’s not a defense. When Erica shows up in a goofy outfit or the relationships devolve into potboiler battle of the sexes, it does so intentionally, because even beyond the overt references, Stranger Things is explicitly about glad-handing the audience. We’ve just gone from Goonies pastiche to John Hughes pastiche. It’s a lump of sugar. Don’t give it more care than it earns.
Joyce and Hopper go out to search the suspicious properties on Kline’s list, not bothering to tell anyone where they’ve gone or why.Thank you! This annoyed me! Why would Hopper go to all these places alone, with his only backup being an unarmed waif-like Joyce? The scenes with him barging in, pointing his gun all around, while Joyce is just … there … beside him, really defied logic.Where’s his deputy? aka 50% of the non-white male characters we’ve seen. Wouldn’t he have been more useful? Or some other policeman. Or just about anyone who isn’t Joyce!Speaking of non-white characters , something else that annoyed me personally (but I’ll probably be told I’m exaggerating/over-reacting)- was the portrayal of that nurse, who is now 50% of the Black female characters who’ve spoken (oh wait there was ‘girl at ice-cream parlour’ too), and, she’s characterised kinda like an adult Erica. Same ‘Sassiness’ and also kinda annoying. A nuisance to the main characters. The Duffer brothers can do better than that one-note cadence, is all I’m saying …
While I agree with you on the joyce and Hopper point, I wholeheartedly disagree with the portrayal of “non white characters” as you put it. Sure maybe the 3 black girls talked “similar” to you but to me, someone who is black, I can confirm that some people just talk like that. For real, my mom does sometimes, they weren’t being “portrayed wrong” Erica is a 10 year old brat until she has to start working with everyone and tones it down, the girl who rejected Steve just seemed like a diva who wasn’t interested, and the nurse was an older woman who probably had a long day and was trying to enforce the rules, so yeah they were all sassy, how “stereotypical” right?
The nurse was pretty bad. I’ll give you that. But Erica has broken a lot of stereotypes IMO.
Hopper has been rushing in to dangerous situations alone without telling anyone since Season 1. There was almost an entire episode of plot in Season 2 where Hopper dug into the pumpkin patch and Bob had to interpret Will’s map to find him. Again, this show is an homage to Spielberg-esque 80s movies, where under-prepared characters took it upon themselves to save the day.
The deputy was shown to be flayed in an earlier scene/episode.
So many bloody songs on this series, you can basically release a soundtrack for each episode.
I had high hopes for seeing how Busey’s infuriating character would meet his end, but him dying directly at the hands of Nancy seemed a bit off to me. Same with Heather’s dad being stabbed by dude. He and Heather’s dad are possessed by The Thing, so if they deserve to be killed off by the gang then by that logic so do Rob Blowe and Heather and anyone else not in control of their bodies/actions. (I haven’t finished the season, but I seriously doubt those two will be killed off, more likely ‘evacuated’ and returned to their former selves). I’d have preferred the work assholes to be directly terminated by the mind flayer itself, or by some result of their skepticism (e.g. laughing in Nancy’s face as she warns them to take cover, and then meeting a gruesome end as a result).Anyway, maybe I’ll feel differently once I’ve finished.
I mean they were literally trying to kill them and Nancy had tried to “talk them down”. All this for people who had been nonstop complete assholes before. I think it’s fine given the context.
I know – it’s just that, as douchey as Busey is, it wasn’t really him trying to kill Nancy, it was the Flayer controlling him. Like how it wasn’t really Billy trying to stab his sister with the glass. Busey and the other journalists were such assholes and I wanted them to suffer (e.g rabid rat attack!) but Nancy killing his body while it wasn’t being being controlled by the actual misogynistic Busey wasn’t the satisfying end I wanted for him (though it appears I’m in the minority and most commenters liked the scene)
So, if someone is trying to kill me, I can only stop them if it’s really them and not something taking over their body? What weird logic. If anyone or anything is trying to kill me, I’m going to do whatever it takes to stop it, no matter the motive or who/what is really in control of the body.I think you’re just mad because the person he most victimized got to kill him and that really tells me something about you.
But the decision was out of their hands. They were literally fighting for their lives.
Busey and the rest were dead the second the mind flayer touched them. They and the rest of the zombie horde walking around Hawkins are all just extensions of the flayer. This is not only made obvious via dialogue, but blatantly slapped in your face by the fact that when damaged they all just melt into organic goo and combine into a totally new creature a la The Thing. Wanting a drawn out revenge for Busey is pointless as he’s already been mind wiped and turned into a meat puppet (and then into just meat).
During that whole hospital scene I screaming at my television “PULL THE F*CKING FIRE ALARM YOU IDIOTS!!”
I had mixed feelings about that too. Is it murder? Or are those people ‘copies’ of the real ones? Gotta keep watching
Season 3 was fantastic. Only bad thing about the binge model is that it’s over so quick. Can’t wait for season 4.
I guess I’m in a weird place with movies in 2019, regarding the sexism discussion within this article. I’m legitimately looking to have a constructive discussion on what you and others believe the (or a) show should do differently. Like, this is a portrayal of early-teens in the 1980s. Gender viewpoints are probably bad with modern young teens (as in, 13 year old boys may still think of girls as a different species, would fumble around their apologies to a girlfriend, as teenage girls in the 90s my sisters often behaved like stereotypical teenage girls of the 90s, etc.). I also have to imagine gender viewpoints were significantly worse (and those views considered legitimate) thirty years ago in a small Indiana town, for both the kids and the adults like Hopper.It just doesn’t occur to me to watch every show and apply modern, mature gender views to a portrayal of teenagers in the ‘80s. As I said, I’m legitimately wondering what you would have liked the show to do differently in their portrayal of how 13 or 14 year-old “nerds” would have acted towards their girlfriends in the ‘80s.Point being, I’m a white dude, I understand my privilege and that it is a big reason why this doesn’t occur to me while watching. I’m genuinely curious as to what you see the solution as. Am I being kind of aloof, or an asshole for the more aggressive, for not being bothered by what I may consider to be more accurate portrayals? Do you think that, since it’s a fiction one way or another, we’re better served to just treat the characters with more modern tact, and consider less the more ignorant viewpoints of the era being portrayed?
Ii didn’t see any sexism in this…than i saw your profile pic and i got it
Yikes this was an annoying episode.
I just finished it. It was definitely the worst of the 5 I’ve seen thus far. Way too much going on a lot of it really annoying. I hope they can get it back together now after getting all of this exposition out of the way
I hated the cross cuts that undermined a great deal of the momentum and suspense.
It’s a very poorly-written show.
kudos to the actor playing Russian translator dude, I found him so repulsive in Fleabag as the sleazy brother in law, funny how he’s just as offlooking here with similar mannerisms but he’s perfectly fine now
Thank you!
Brett Gelman? He’s pretty much always cast as a sleazy weirdo. He seems to pop up in everything and always plays some variation of that combo.
Only he could make his Greek chorus dialogue sound beliveable.
It’s really interesting that Brett gelman always gets cast as a creep. He’s actually a remarkably subversive comedian. https://youtu.be/nHfWKGT1gPo
He also has the uncanny ability to produce a racking sound on a shotgun that doesn’t have a rack.
Is it just me, or does he look like a young Patrick Wilson?
holy shit a B MINUS. I assume you’re not allowed to go any lower than that. what a terrible, embarrassing show
The thing that sets ST3 off from 1 and 2 is it’s lost its relatability. We can relate to all the tropes and plot points beyond the 80s callouts, because mistrust of government is relatable, talking about “it must be the Russians” is relatable. When you try to actually make Russians the “bad guys” when you made it a gag of the previous seasons, it just comes off forced, and becomes the slapstick fantasy of the 80s films of that time. That’s kinda the disconnect I feel with this season.
The problem isn’t a sequel problem. The problem is that the producers don’t fully understand what made Stranger Things a hit in the first place. Sure the series was a great call back for 80’s nostalgia and watching the stars get down and dirty bashing some monsters was cool but it was the uniqueness of the universe Stranger Things created that kept the naysayers around. Season 2 was a complete rehash and it appears Season 3 is going down the same route. The producers only understand how to give people what the producers think people want. This will only make the naysayers jump the band wagon and only the hard core fans will be left. Hopefully this series dies like it should have back in Season 1 then maybe we’ll be treated to a new story with a new cast.
“Hopefully this series dies like it should have back in Season 1 then maybe we’ll be treated to a new story with a new cast.”Yes, because that’s what everyone wanted after season 1 – not to see any of these characters again and get an entire new cast/story in season 2. Nobody wanted to see any of the season 1 characters return for new adventures.
Stranger Things has always had its share of under-served or overblown characters. But “The Flayed” also lets its central characters lapse into lazy gender stereotypes. Look, you wanted 80s youth movies cosplay, well, THIS is what it looks like because THAT’S how it was.You people romanticize the 80s far too much, anyway, and don’t remember that films could be reflective of how regressive things got in the Reagan era. Wake up.
Exactly. I like this way better than the shows where characters act way too “woke” or otherwise moral by our standards in period pieces. Mike being a completely woke feminist “relationship goals” bf as a 14 year old in 1985 would bother me way more.
Hmm. I might argue this is why Everything Sucks felt a little “off” to me
Yeah, I think it’s pretty obvious that they’re playing around with “bitches be crazy and don’t know what they’re talking about” tropes of the 80s and poking fun at it.
You might even say the Duffer Brothers are Romancing the Stone 80s a bunch and people aren’t digging it?… I’ll show myself out…
This may have been the most horror-filled episode yet. The showdown in the hospital was incredibly shot and nerve-wracking. (Even if it did mean conveniently forgetting about Will being able to sense the Mindflayer’s presence).I love reading these reviews, and I definitely agree that Stranger Things hasn’t always done right by its female cast, but I’m not sure if I agree with the critiques of gender in this piece. Aside from Hopper, who’s been rude all season, all of the interactions felt natural to the age and positions of the characters. Max and El weren’t staring at their reflections, they were treating El’s wounds after she was strangled by a possessed-Billy; Jonathan dropped everything once Nancy actually told him why she was calling him; Max and Lucas have been dropping snarky one-liners for two seasons now. I suppose Nancy’s quip about “never doubting me again” could be seen as lampshading the way women are usually not believed on this show, even though it was probably intended as an empowering moment. (Granted, Nancy’s writing has always leaned a little towards the ham-fisted, like that scene last season when they made a big show out of Hop tossing her a rifle and her immediately knowing how to use it – despite having instead previously learned how to shoot a shotgun, which is obviously very different).For Mike, I think his line about El and Max “conspiring against him” was more evidence of his own egotism. I’ve noticed that a lot of adult viewers find Mike insufferable, and I think this is a large part of that. Of course, as this review suggests, taking Mike to task for the way he treats other people, such as Hop, Will, and Max, would definitely be interesting to see.I liked how Nancy and Jonathan resolved their argument in a mature way, especially since that’s surprising rare in media. It’s nice to see a relationship that’s portrayed as fairly stable and growing, rather than the break-up/make-up rollercoaster that screenwriters normally prefer as a way to build drama. I agree that Nancy’s investigation does feel underwhelming, however, especially given how her entire arc this season has been centered on it. Compared to the earlier seasons, the mystery-cracking in general is not what it could be.And I’m sorry, but as much as I like Robin, and regardless of how smart she may be, I seriously doubt she would be able to learn conversational Russian in the span of two or three days. (And where do all of these Russian workers live? No one noticed that a bunch of Russian government officials who don’t speak English have been wandering around their town for the past year?)
It didn’t ignore Will’s ability. He didn’t sense the Flayer until it directly appeared after the puppets died. He probably directed them to it, since Nancy & Johnathan ran to a different part of the hospital.
Good catch
“And where do all of these Russian workers live? No one noticed that a bunch of Russian government officials who don’t speak English have been wandering around their town for the past year?”Based on the size of the underground tunnels, it’s safe to assume that the Russians are living underground in this complex, and that they only go to the surface when they have to do, like to handle deliveries to the mall.
So this is basically a “Cinema Sins” type of post.
Gues y’all (writer) missed the point this isn’t “Dark”, dudes & dudettes ….it’s a freakin’ COMEDY, not an end of the world 2 he movie….plot holes & logic don’t matter, not important….it’s a teen-focused scifi story, everyone!!! Seriously .
They reduced the only black girl to a sassy sidekick? Good. I thought I was going to have to actually watch this, for a minute.
Nit everything is about race you racist, what if it was a white boy who was the sidekick? Would you be complaining then?
“Reduced.” They greatly expanded her character from last season. She acts like a bratty child, because that’s the age she’s meant to convey. People are getting really mad at this show for portraying people the way they act in real life.
Oh, and the girl and all her little Black girlfriends descend on the ice cream parlor grifting for free handouts, while the “sassy Black” hospital receptionist is so intent on gabbing on the phone that she can’t do her job and pick up the emergency call from Nancy-the-hero.
The Duffer brothers are tone deaf at best, but maybe a lot worse.
I really do wish the hospital employee was not a black woman. Between her and Erica, it’s just a very bad look overall .
Considering how late and relatively empty that hospital seemed to me it worked for any person pre-smart phones with sufficient down time and a working knowledge of how many beds were occupied and where. Also I thought Nancy was pushing the emergency buttons in a closed portion of the hospital.
They showed it blinking while said “lazy-ass receptionist” was yakking on a personal all and didn’t see it.
They reduced the only black girl to a sassy sidekick?Erm, hate to break it to you, but it’s worse … “a sassy sidekick”
is actually a step up from what they originally had that black girl portrayed as
She actually gets a nice amount of dimension beyond that by the end of the season. It’s a welcome surprise.
You’re missing out then. She’s one of the best characters of this season. Definitely the funniest IMO.
I agree, Erica was awesome.
A friend and I were getting such Urkel vibes from her that we thought the actor may have been Jaleel White’s daughter. Not so.
She’s a sassy sidekick who is great at negotiating, really badass at math, obsessed with my little pony, good at navigation and keeps her cool in a crisis. For a ten year old that’s not bad.
Let me ask you something:Why the hell would you title something like this knowing FULL WELL that 95% of us haven’t finished this series whatsoever or even gotten to episode 5? All of the Stranger Things articles on this website have this issue. It’s absolutely tone deaf.
Like I understand you guys get paid to watch this stuff and probably got early access for reviews, but you really need to reconsider how you title things in regards to a show like this when it’s been out less than 48 hours. You absolutely do not need to say “This specific episode has a problem” when you title things. Just an FYI.
And for anyone responding: I didn’t read the article and I didn’t seek it out. It was “suggested” on the left hand side of Kotaku when I was browsing that site.
“Five episodes in Stranger Things has a classic sequel problem” – what is the problem with this title? What is it “giving away” to those that haven’t watched the episode yet? Nothing, that’s what.Even to those that haven’t watched this episode yet (or watched any episodes yet), what is this title really revealing? That one of the episodes has “a problem”? This is what you’re upset about? Seriously?
I’m going to parse the M&Ms line as a perhaps awkward nod to E.T. instead of some weird way to be sexist.
Hmmm weird, when I saw her crawl into the vent shaft all padded up with a survival backpack and head lights it made me think they cared more about her safety than anything else, I’m not sure how you came away with the idea she was “reduced almost to a robotic sidekick”… I don’t agree with much of what this article says actually, it feels like people just expect way too much from entertainment these days.
Good lord they’re kids and you’re trying to me too the 80s?! WTH? This series is a flashback to a Spielberg type 80s flick. It not to be over analyzed and criticized by millennial’s politically correct and metoo insanity. It’s a flash back to when people didn’t stress out and argue about everything while thinking their opinions were soooooo important. For the love of God give this kind of thinking a break.
Wanting to like this season. Unable to. Melodrama, ridiculous dialog, plot holes, 10 minute scenes that convey 30 seconds of information.
Sorry for negativity. Let down.
All in all i just want to say that Jake Busey was underdeveloped af. If you got a psycho-actor like this in your ranks, you give him something special. Over and Out.
I am less blanched by the gender tropes and winking nods to the “failures.” These are intentional to highlight every conceivable 80s blockbuster sci-fi movie crutch. The boorish male behavior and cynical female behavior has a satirical bent to it. I am actually thoroughly enjoying the absurdity of this season: it plays of the lunacy of their forebearers: Red Dawn, Goonies, Alien, and yes…Howard the Duck 🙂
Always amazed at how out of touch these movie bloggers are. Never satisfied but cannot write anything of their own. Got 1/4 through this trash opinionated crap and bounced to voice my opinion
I love the scientist dude. He was so fuckin’ stoked about that 7/11. And clearly very amused at Joyce’s tear down of Gelman’s conspiracy guy.
Same here. He was delightful to watch with a slurpee.
At this point I’m assuming all the Russians are living underground in that complex so this particular Russian was so happy at the idea of going to an actual 7/11.
I just noticed that Stranger Things leaned HARD into the neon 80s aesthetic and added some Cold War shenanigans on top, and was completely and utterly overjoyed. And it was easily the best season yet.
“he tried to charm her into a smile and explain “the context” of his lies”I feel like people are ignoring that the ‘context’ of Mike’s lies is that he’s a child who was threatened by a very angry adult man.
Emily, you’re young. There were minuscule “gender dynamics “ in the 80’s. This series is embracing the tropes of that time, thus, trying to force a modern narrative is kind of a dead end.
This. Dear god, this.
You nailed it. I just don’t get trying to fit a “period piece” into a modern dynamic. That’s exactly the opposite of it being a good show at that point, and how many times have we seen a legitimate criticism of a show because they weren’t authentic to the times and in this case 80’s genre homages. You can’t have it both ways, especially when the way Emily criticizes this episode is the wrong way.
I’m pretty sure every time period had “gender dynamics”. The question is whether they were good ones or bad ones
I agree, and I noted that when I said ‘minuscule’.
Yeah I’m not sure that word means what you think it means
Well don’t tease! Enlighten me! I am an old Gen X’er, sir.
Well I think it means something like very small and I don’t see how it makes any sense to say that the relationship between genders is “very small” is all
I feel that way about all the people hollering that the USSR wouldn’t be able to build that underground secret facility because they couldn’t even build nuclear reactors right due to being cheap. They are young and have no concept of what the image of the USSR was in the 80s and that’s what Stranger Things is going by, not what we know in hindsight. I think those younguns need to watch some Red Dawn and Rocky IV and any other 80s movie with the USSR in it.
Slightly devil’s advocate: 9 to 5, Working Girl, Aliens (which is so important on so many levels this season), The Hunger and the Howling all complicate that narrative.
Ah, The Hunger. That was a good late night move. And the Howling was a classic. Howling 2 was a guilty pleasure in our dojo. I mean, Sybil Danning? Oh, baby!
And it added some early 80s lesbian frisson with Sarandon/Deneuve. And the Howling was mostly about blonde career woman Dee Wallace vs. a miasma of unstable male desires; I should really see the sequel!
Howling 2 is classic 80’s schlock sequel cinema. Enjoy with an adult beverage or 3, or whatever tickles your fancy.
Note taken!
You’re saying that men weren’t misogynistic assholes in those films?
I’m saying the women in those movies didn’t just accept the misogyny, they had their own things going on, stories the cinematic narrative was interested in too.
But you know what the ‘80s didn’t have? Red M & Ms (and they’re usually so good with the details on this show).
Yes, the show truly is terrible: it portrays teenage boys and macho men in the 1980s acting chauvenistically, and points out how bad and stupid that is….yeah, that’s so morally unforgivable for show to do that.Of course, if the show had portrayed teenage boys and macho men in the 1980s acting like wonderfully enlightened feminists, the review would instead complain about how it was unrealistically whitewashing the past and refusing to examine the problematic foundations of its mythology…
Right? Like who criticizes Mad Men for betraying all that shitty behaviour of men towards women?The recapper’s critique in this case is asinine.
Mad men showed the full scales and repercussions of the shitty behavior. Stranger things laughs it off or makes the audience accomplice to the behavior by showcasing it as charming or endearing. For example how El smiles happily and smitten after all Mike did was offer her sweets and referencing his earlier douchebagy words.
I have nothing to really add to this discussion….I just wanted to see if anyone else enjoyed….NEVER ENDING STORRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As a former member of the teenage boy species, we sucked at any apology no matter who we were giving it to, and we were not very good at understanding girls or their behavior. That lack of understanding led to paranoia and acting like a moron. We didn’t want to admit that we didn’t know what girls were thinking or doing, so we drew our own conclusions which were generally pretty self-centered and ridiculous, and usually based on what we saw on TV (bad idea). If the most popular example of “love” during the period the show takes place in was “Sam and Diane”, the boys are going to do and say some very stupid things in an attempt to pretend to understand girls based on the not-great-example set by Sam Malone. The show is kind of dead-on with some of that stuff.
I love it when the different combinations of characters on the show start to team up, especially when Nancy takes charge of the younger group. Hilariously Mrs Wheeler told Joyce, I think, that Nancy was taking Will & the other boys to the movies? Just when it seemed like Mrs Wheeler was possibly halfway smartLoved Nancy ordering the kids to put their seatbelts on before taking them to go hunt down Mind Flayer puppets
And then running over their bikes as she backed out of the driveway.
Ethan Hawke’s daughter is 20 fucking years old?!Oh my gawwwwd I’m so old.
Only two things I hate so far:
1. The terminator vibe from that one guy is overly cheesy.
2. I HATE when El gets nose bleeds, but the next shot shows her with no blood (like literally as 1 second later). I get no media is perfect but it always takes me out of the moment.
I guess you missed the scene where Max cleans her up with a wet washcloth. Or where El wipes away the trickle with her thumb. Or the multiple scenes where she’s blindfolded and doing the whole astral projection thing with A BOX OF TISSUES IN HER FUCKING LAP – WHICH SHE THEN USES REPEATEDLY!Maybe pay attention a bit before you whine on the internet? It keeps you from looking like an idiot who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Oh, and if you don’t realize the Terminator vibe is deliberate, then I don’t know why you’re even watching this show.
Well that was just the one scene, the others she would have blood, then turn around and suddenly it was gone. I’m referring the other scenes. Maybe don’t whine without paying attention.
Most people felt the terminator vibe was a bit overboard. Intentional or not.
I just described three scenes. There’s also the one where she wipes her thumb under her nose after telekinetically shaking the vending machine. That’s all just off the top of my head, but I’m sure I missed a couple of others. Regardless, the point you’re making is completely invalidated: she DOES know she bleeds from the nose when she uses her powers and she DOES wipe it away. In fact, it’s almost reflexive as seen with the vending machine. Complaining that they don’t show her wiping her nose every single time is ludicrous. Guess what: they don’t show El taking a leak either – does that ‘take you out of the moment’ too? Do you even understand how TV works?Oh, and you speak for ‘most people’ about the Terminator vibe, do you? Did you commission a survey on that point? Talk about ‘confirmation needed’! If you have a problem with a show set in the 1980’s that is an obvious homage to 1980’s movies like Alien, The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and Terminator that actually gives a big, strong, foreign-accented guy a ‘Terminator vibe’ then you are completely missing the point of this show.
You need a goddamn Snickers. Settle down.
Just push a wad of kleenex up your nose, kid. You don’t have to use one kleenex for one wipe and then throw it away.
as @SoMuchForSubtlety said, there are multiple scenes through this season (and the entire show) where after Eleven uses her powers, she’s seen using a tissue/her sleeve to clean up the blood from her nose. This is something the show has been very consistent about.
I hate people whining about it’s not very PC/SJW. Um, it’s the 80s. It is how things were. Hence it being a show IN THE PAST.
Its like you wrote this without realizing Stranger Things is literally a well written homage to the 80s movie culture. You should probably get on the level if you’re going to critique something. Such as recognizing the difference between technical and personal critiques.
I just want these damn writers to figure out that you can’t inject drama into a story by just having characters trade out personalities like hats and have them engaged in petty bickering all the time. After three seasons of it I’m just so over all the little spats that do nothing but add tEnSiOn where it’s just not needed.
There seems to be A LOT of bickering this season and it’s driving me crazy.
lol @ seifuku fanservice – did not seen the eps. jet, only screencap here
I’m 5 eposides in and I think its way better than season 2 .Things are moving quickly and no side visits to another # kid !
I always took Erica as a homage to “Adventures in Babysitting”.
Why do shows ever bother to address the whiny bitching of internet comment sections and reviewers when in the end they’re going to get run through the ringer anyway?Emily, do you ever write about shows without falling back on gender tropes? And when a show addresses it they are “lampshading”. Sometimes you barely touch on the characters and what the show IS doing, and just go off on long tangents about tiny injustices you percieve. Oh dear, the young girls act like young girls sometimes do! Only they’re not, they’re being reduced to gender stereotypes, or some other nonsense. You suck the joy out of everything you review.The only tropes I see these days are the tropes reviewers learn on to side eye every inch of a show or movie.And the subtle touches aren’t subtle. Pointing out the episode was written by a man…dundunDUN! It’s tired and lazy.Sorry, I know this is gonna come off as dickish, and I admit it is in some ways, but it’s also pervasive on AVC and review sites in general to be stuck harping on issues that shows like this seem compelled to address because of complaints that are ridiculous in the first place.Justice for Barb was just the beginning. Which characters this season will have “deserved better”? Imagine if Cara Buono was as pointless as her napping husband. Which character is “criminally underused”, and why will it be an injustice?I know, I’m being jerky. But I feel like some of what I’m saying is valid, and I’m just putting it out there. I’m sure plenty will disagree, and I know I’ll get shit for it, and that’s cool. I won’t bother to check on this post. I’ll just put it out into the universe and see if anyone finds it valid criticism.Again, apologies for how I’m going about my criticism, but it’s always bothered me the way entertainment is filtered through the same lens over and over again.
I find it interesting how people today lens things through current societal norms, and completely forget that how things are now isn’t how things were then. I grew up in this era and it is a pretty damn accurate portrayal of how things were, right or wrong. If someone really wants to get triggered, go listen to radio shows from the ‘40s, especially when WW2 was in full swing. Racism wasn’t just casual, it was open and openly accepted when it came to the Japanese. Was it wrong? Through today’s lens, yes, but it was contextual and a sign of the world AT THE TIME. We need to filter these things properly.
This is a questionable argument to make about racist art from the past (it implies that demonizing Japanese people was okay in the 40s, which implies that Japanese people in the 40s were less deserving of dignity than Japanese people today). It’sa very silly argument to make about a show released in 2019. The idea that someone is obliged to judge a contemporary work by the values of its fictional setting is absurd. This show presents a fictionalized version of the 1980s, tailored to the needs of the creators. They did not have access to a time machine. Regardless how seriously you take this review, it’s bizarre to treat a 2019 television show like a dispatch from a bygone era.
(it implies that demonizing Japanese people was okay in the 40s, which implies that Japanese people in the 40s were less deserving of dignity than Japanese people today). NO IT DOES NOT IMPLY ANY SUCH THING. The whole point of taking the work in context is to draw attention to the fact that the stereotypes portrayed within are clearly objectionable, up front, SPECIFICALLY so that no one misses the point and believes that they are in any way being endorsed.I mean, unless of course you’re just looking to justify your belief that entire pieces of art history should be straight-up deleted and burned because they contain material you deem “problematic”. (And bang! I’ve Godwinned myself.)
I’m very confused what point you’re trying to make. I made two fairly straightforward points: offensive art from the past is offensive, and art made in the present is made in the present. You can find historical and artistic value in offensive art, but there’s no need to hedge on whether it’s offensive. Demonizing Japanese people was wrong in the 1940s, just like it is now. That’s not a matter of historical perspective, it’s a matter of moral standards. Stranger Things is a television show made in the 21st century, so the correct frame of reference for viewing it is a 21st century frame of reference. I genuinely have no idea how your first paragraph connects to the block of text you quoted, and I similarly have no idea how your second paragraph relates to my post at all. It actually seems like you’re accusing me of making an incoherent, poorly considered, kneejerk argument by making your own incoherent, poorly considered, kneejerk argument. In that sense, this post is perfect.
It’s the sad state of modern blogger journalism. They scraped by through some gender studies courses and landed a few gigs here and there, just trying to keep avacado on the toast. It’s a progressive doubleplusgood era and they’re upholding the standards. Personally I think it’s a lazy crutch and shows the writer was never really taught how to view something with a critical eye, only an eye with a specific, woke perspective and all the trappings that brings with it. You could give this reviewer any series and the output would be the same, because the thought process is an algorithm.
I’m surprised nobody has noticed the show’s poor writing when it comes to dialog. Having lived through the 80’s and remembering how people talked and what sort of phrases were used and not used, every time a character says something modern like “that’s not a good look” or “I just threw up in my mouth a little”, it’s jarring. Really breaks the immersion and what’s worse is it is unintentional.Maybe I’ve come to expect too much from this show after two mostly good seasons but making my way through this season sure is a slog. I find myself fast forwarding through predictable dialog frequently to keep the pacing up.
THANK YOU. “Ask for forgiveness, not permission” is another one that wasn’t commonly used back then.
“I just threw up in my mouth a little” is an unforgivable anachronism .
“Imagine if Cara Buono was as pointless as her napping husband.”
Yeah I’m done reading reviews for this show , the comments are way better.
I think the homages to various 80s movies — Red Dawn, Fast Times at Ridgemont High, The Thing, Terminator … was crafted by the Duffer boys pretty well, considering it could have come across as tackier than leg warmers. I also think Emily is missing the point concerning the inter-relationships between the romantically-paired characters. You have to approach it all (especially the brazen sexist way Bruce treats Nancy at the newspaper) from that 1980s pre #MeToo movement lens. Take it or leave it, that’s the way male-female relationships often went down in those days (or were commonly portrayed in society). Looking at it from the perspective of a bit more (only a bit more) enlightenment that we have developed as a society in the past 30+ years and portraying it that way would just not be in the spirit of ST keeping things in the true spirit and groove of the times.
Every damn time it’s a complaint about women getting short shrift. While this is absolutely an issue in our culture. It has become low-hanging fruit. Too easy. My answer as a male feminist. Quit bitching about it and do something. Actually contribute to making it better for everyone. Complaining doesn’t fix it. Action does. When does the “males bad”, “females good” argument end? Is it when we cut it off? Do you see my point? This trope is fast becoming a cliche…which Stranger Things has fun with, correct? Much of today’s culture (Culture Club, anyone) has its roots in the 1980s. Poking fun at those roots is exactly the purpose of Stranger Things. But they MUST keep it 1980s. Applying today’s logic DOES NOT COMPUTE and is not faithful to that era.
FFS just change the name of this crappy show to “Nostalgia” and be done with it already.
I might sound like a self hating feminist but I like the “misogyny” as you describe it in your article that appears in Stranger Things Season 3. I don’t watch it go learn about myself I go back in time through watching it to observe through a lens what was wrong that I didn’t see then. And I appreciate it as much today as I did when I saw Back to the Future, The Goonies and Indiana Jones. And I applaud Hollywood for going back to basics to bring us back to childhood (through the veil of modern humanity). 🙂 I was more interested in your opinion whether they could sustain the originality of Season 1 which, mostly, they did. Through the male sexy lifeguard: to kids growing out of D&D, to self exploding rats (would have been more interesting in the mind control theory than disease montage), but this entire series was SO satisfying. Worth the wait. Bringing me back to when iPhones didn’t exist and being cut off and grounded from someone by your parents really meant cut off. And the look and feel of the 80’s, superb. Well done for most sequels and trilogies that fail awful this was a breath of fresh air.
I’m not feeling the amount of screen time and dialogue Sadie Sink is getting this season. The understated on-point acting of Millie Bobbie Brown (and Maya Hawke too) is really making Sink’s middle school-level face scrunching look pretty bad – but she gets major face time in nearly every set piece that involves the kids. It’s not so much her problem as it is for the director who is over-using her.
I like your writeups, Emily, except for one thing: Do you honestly expect us to click on all of the links in them? In one paragraph alone, you have hyperlinked nine different articles. Do you expect us to open them, read them, and them come back to your article? We won’t have the slightest clue about what we’ve read before after reading more than an hour’s worth of cliff notes. Or do you just do like I did, and ignore the links while feeling like I was missing up on essential information, even if it’s an AV Club article detailing information about season 1 I read 2 years prior?
My point is, perhaps a system of footnotes would be more ideal here.
Most emblematic of all, it’s Mike, who has twice now tried to make up with El without quite apologizing. Gathering supplies at the pool, he tried to charm her into a smile and explain “the context” of his lies; in the hospital waiting room, he offers to share his candy, asking, “Does your species like M&Ms?” He doesn’t make amends; he doesn’t promise to behave better….And it doesn’t work. Neither does Hopper’s jealous blustering.
As for the boys and their “girls are a different species” sadsackery… I mean, what kids don’t think that way when trying to unravel the other sex? It seems pretty faithful to how confounded and stupid you are around that age (and beyond it).
I know you had to write these crazy fast but in what world did the show treat the characters as having the correct POV on gender issues?The scene in the car with Nancy and Jonathan, as well, was a bit heavy-handed but a solid exploration of how two young people can suffer from different societal ills and still not be able to recognize other problems with the world because they haven’t experienced enough to be empathetic.
Did anyone else find Hopper’s CONSTANT SHOUTING really annoying this season? I don’t remember finding it this bad before. I think this episode was when it was at its worst so I’m dropping the comment here.
I’m really tired of the bickering between him and Joyce. I know it’s an 80’s trope where the love interests fight until they realize they’re in looove, but it’s driving me batty.
It seems to be getting worse with each episode. They’ve really destroyed the character.
What’s the point of casting Jake Busey? Because he’s terrifying and not many people could have creeped me out the way he did at the end of this episode, so I think he was effective enough in the small role he was given.
Right? Like “What’s the point of casting Jake Busey in Contact if he’s only got like 2 lines as a creepy preacher and 4 minutes of screentime!”It’s … somewhat more important what he does with that limited screen time?
these are 80’s movies with modern budgets.
I’m not disagreeing with you about any of this, but I think you’re forgetting that this all takes place in Indiana in the ‘80s. It would be completely unrealistic to expect total progressive attitudes and behaviors from these characters, what they’ve exhibited so far is actually a stretch.
I just find it sad that instead of “homages” or “references” they just lift cool things that their audience has no knowledge of and won’t go and learn about…want to guess what percentage of “Stranger Things” fanatics went and saw even Firestarter or any of these movies…then they lift El’s mindspace from “Under the Skin”…it’s not homage and repurposing, it’s just pastiche and theft.
The sheer scale of that “secretly run by the Soviets” mall and its underground complex is kind of hilarious, but that aside this was a fantastic episode. The hospital scenes were incredible. Poor Busey turning into The Blob, I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry. The Rusky going full Terminator was pretty dope too.
If you have a Busey at your disposal, and a dumb, hissable, scenery-chewing dickhole for him to play … don’t ask. Just put him to work.
Going a little crazy with the links.
This show certainly has it’s share of problematic gender dynamics (forcing a girl to have the first kiss of her life on screen with minimal to no notice, separating all the female characters so they never converse without a male present, others I’m sure), I don’t get the policing of the actions/dialogue of characters on the show (pr many others for that matter).Is the standard now that we expect a small town Indiana cop in 1985 to be woke? A dorky 13 (?) year old navigating his first romantic relationship? It’s very likely that Hopper is a sexist- why would he not say/do sexist things? I’m older than most of the people on here (48), but I’m not one of those “Oh, you crazy millenials!” people, but this particular type of criticism totally confuses me. People are complicated, and sometimes in a work of fiction we are expected to root for (or at least examine the motivations of) characters we disagree with on some, many, or almost all things.
Two words: Jolt Cola. Hopper knows the good stuff when he sees it.
1) It must be tiresome to view everything through an ever changing conception of “isms”.2) It is 1985. Of course everyone is acting like it is 1985.3) I think it is pretty obvious that the Soviets and Americans are working together on this. 4) The contemporary fascination with “back story” and “character development” is silly.5) Crony backdoor deals are not “capitalism”. The Soviet economy was basically one big crony handout to party apparatchiks.
To agree with others. The Russians in this show are 80’s movie Russians and not meant to in any way approach a realistic infiltration plan.