“Who here wants to see some fireworks?”
It’s the fourth of July, and Hawkins is all lit up for Independence Day. At the right distance, the carnival (with its inevitable banner boasting “MAYOR KLINE PRESENTS”) looks fun, all bright lights and cheerful tunes. But get too close and you see the grimy details: the rust on the rides, the grease on the corn dogs, the weary faces on the hard-laboring folks staffing the rides. And everywhere, money changing hands: bills and tickets and coins.
It’s “Chapter Seven: The Bite,” the second-to-last episode of Stranger Things 3. Everyone’s back in Hawkins, Indiana, on Independence Day 1985. We’re R-O-C-K-ing in the U.S.A. in an explosion of patriotism that’s both forceful and forced. Under a President who denounced the U.S.S.R. as “an evil Empire,” a 1980s Independence Day could be as much an expression of hostility to outsiders as it was a celebration of unity and freedom. But for fifteen tickets, Alexei, a top-secret Russian scientist and a captive of Hawkins’ Chief of Police, can join in all the fun of a small-town fair. For fifteen tickets, he can ride the teacups or throw darts at balloons or swing the hammer, ring the bell, win a big prize.
And Alexei can’t get enough of it. He’s stopped haggling over Slurpees and gone for the brass ring. He’ll show Joyce and Hopper how to disable the lab’s beam, closing the gate, “and I become an American citizen and join in the fun, yes?”
Murray Bauman has warned Alexei that the games are rigged. “They don’t look rigged,” Alexei replies, but that’s the trick. That’s the bite.
Alexei wins, and Alexei loses. He hit the last green balloon and wins the grand prize, an oversized Woody Woodpecker doll… and he walks past (Gregori) and loses the grand prize, with a quiet, efficient bullet straight through the stuffed doll and into his chest. It’s a credit to Alec Utgoff that Alexei, who speaks not a word of English (okay, maybe two words, if those words are “Looney Toons”), has become such a clear and vibrant character. In stark contrast to Bruce, who could stay gone forever without disrupting the flow of the show, I miss Alexei already.
The tragedy is that Alexei was always going to lose. The game is rigged. None of Alexei’s captors have the clout to promise him citizenship—and you’ll notice Murray doesn’t pretend to. He sidesteps Alexei’s question, distracting him with the promise of carnival rides and fireworks and corn dogs, corn dogs Alexei doesn’t even get to try.
From Hopper’s cabin, the fireworks seen through the forest are downright eerie. They paint the canopies of leaves with lurid light, like the sickly purples and reds and eldritch greens of the clouds that loom overhead when the shadow monster is near.
It makes perfect sense that El and her friends would hole up in Hopper’s cabin. It’s private, it’s familiar, and, because Hopper is a cop with a protective parent’s mentality, it’s protected. The dialogue gets sluggish as these actors try to carry the weight of the exposition and increasingly Dune-like phrases they need to repeat. (The first few times I heard it, “The Mind Flayer” sounded sinister and unspeakable; after the tenth or twentieth time, the name loses impact.) But the action is solid and so is the teamwork.
Now that Nancy is chauffeuring Mike, Will, Lucas, and Max along with El, two of the four or five separate action flicks Stranger Things 3 had split itself into have come together seamlessly. The kids shutter the little house against the thing’s approach, working as smoothly in their strange circumstances as any action unit John Carpenter ever assembled.
El’s battle with the Mind Flayer’s monster is what I’m talking about when I say conflicts need to have consequences, or at least the narrative possibility of consequences. The scene of the massive protean creature smashing its way into El’s home and trying to rip her away into the night is deftly filmed and painstakingly choreographed to keep its action intelligible to the audience. The swift shifts in camera angle accentuate the beast’s speed, power, and unpredictability as well as our heroes’ courage and fast reactions. But that’s not what makes it powerful.
This is a strong stand-alone action scene, but it’s also full of echoes from previous episodes, like Nancy blasting off rounds like an old-school action hero and Lucas, always ready to take the long shot, leaping into the fight with axe in hand. But what makes it powerful is watching them all work, together and separately, to save El… so El can save everything else, yes, but also to save their friend. This battle takes place on El’s home turf. Their foe knows El’s name, it knows her face, it knows her home. And now it knows the taste of her blood. Now it has taken a bite.
Amidst all this peril and valor, there are smaller, more personal consequences, too. At first, it looks like Mike will try again to flatter his way past an apology. Sitting with El as she recovers from battle, he says, “You’re going to have an awesome scar. You’ll look even more bad-ass.”
“Bitchin’,” she agrees.
But Mike has learned about himself and his feelings: his jealousy seeing her make new friends, his anger over sharing her time, and the realization that his “unfair” and “selfish” reactions are the dark side of the most powerful thing he feels for her. “They do say it makes you crazy,” he adds, not saying what it is.
“Girlfriends?” guesses El. “Boyfriends?”
Mike, flailing for any word that isn’t love, blurts out, “Old people say it to each other sometimes!” But at the end, it’s only Dustin’s code red that stops him from saying what he feels.
Dustin and Erica chaperoning their serum-loopy chaperones is a nice reversal on Steve Harrington’s second-season leap into informal youth counselor and monster hunter, and their lingering effects are a tidy excuse for these two dynamic characters to spill their guts and bare their hearts. Steve The Hair Harrington is a gift to any writer looking to explain or extend a moment. No matter how straightforward the situation, there’s always an excuse for Steve to take a beat to absorb it. “But… Tammy Thompson’s a girl?” he half-tells Robin, and then, “… oh.”
“Yeah,” Robin replies. “Oh.” Even in the face of armed enemy agents and a portal to another world, Robin’s barely submerged tension at revealing herself is palpable and plausible. (If you weren’t a queer teenager in 1985, you don’t know how plausible.) It’s a welcome relief when Steve immediately starts ranking on her crush (there’s a piece of slang straight from the ’80s: ranking on) the way he’d razz any of his friends about a girl.
There are flaws to point out; there always are. Will’s neck prickles and hand reach combo is becoming a narrative tic, and Noah Schnapp, who has delivered such sensitive, nuanced performances in the past, deserves better than this. Will, whose absence and peril drove season one, deserves better than this. Murray’s outburst to Hopper and Joyce is both true and long overdue, and it’s a relief to stop their over-the-top bickering. But this too feels like a wink, and Stranger Things does better with loving homages than with winking in-jokes. The funhouse scene is grubby good action, with Hopper using the attraction’s obstacles and distortions to get the drop on his pursuers. But the Scary Russian Henchman (he’s named Grigori in the credits, played by Andrey Ivchenko, but I have not heard his name spoken, have you?) is too blank to be a character and too hampered by human vulnerabilities to have the menace of, say, obviously The Terminator.
But those are quibbles. In “The Bite,” the action is thrilling and the emotional beats land. If the characterizations are sometimes broad, that broadness at least matches the spectacle onscreen as fireworks fill the sky with light and noise, as carnival rides creak and clang, as a gang of kids fends off a monster that’s only growing bigger. As we slide into the credits, eager for the finale—according to Erik Adams, “the series’ most satisfying finale to date”—Karen and Holly are right: These are the best seats in the house. And the fireworks have just started.
Stray observations
- Robin and Steve, zeroing in on a pressing matter: “So, I wasn’t totally focused in there or anything? But I’m pretty sure that mom was trying to bang her son” and “Then why is it called Back To The Future?” These are the great philosophical questions of my youth. I do hope Robin’s explanation of how time travel makes the present into the future doesn’t foreshadow a time-travel element to any potential fourth season. Time travel is really hard to write about!
- Also playing at Starcourt cinema along with the newly released Back To The Future: Fletch, Cocoon, Return To Oz, The Stuff, … and D.A.R.Y.L., about a little boy (Barrett Oliver, also star of 1984's The Neverending Story) who’s actually a Data-Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform created by a top-secret government agency.
- Robin and Steve tasting the air is the best involuntarily-drugged acting I’ve seen in a while.
- Lucas’ thirsty slurps won’t bait me into the New Coke comparison, not when Erik Adams got there before me.
- “Hold the ride!” “Not on your life, Magnum!”
178 Comments
“But… Tammy Thompson? She’s such a dud.” I’ve never loved Steve Harrington—easily my favorite character in a crowded ensemble—more than I did in that moment.
And I loved how Robin coming out didn’t change the intensity of that relationship, just our (and Steve’s) understanding of the nature of that relationship.If anything, it strengthened it. When you hear Robin verbalize how she anticipates Steve reacting to the truth, you get a glimpse of how much of that toxic Reagan-era “moral majority” horseshit she’d internalized. Saving each other’s lives from Soviet assassins is one thing. But revealing that you’re queer at a time when the nightly news is full of reports a couple times a week about GRID, a disease sent by God to punish the abominations for their sinful behavior, and having your friend accept and love you for who you are without condition, that is on a whole other level.At the video store, when Robin successfully lobbies for Steve to get hired, you get the sense that Steve and Robin are like Butch and Sundance: Even if they each find romantic partners and end up living on opposite coasts from one another, that will still be a ride or die friendship. They’ll be important people in each other’s lives until the day they die, even if they don’t see a lot of each other.
It’s kind of weird to me because I remember a few people who were out in my high school and no one made a big deal about it. I mean, I can’t say what life was like for them outside of school and I know there was a lot of shittiness out there, but in school it was just the way it was. And I grew up in Tulsa, OK. Not exactly a liberal bastion (although probably the most liberal city/town in OK.)
I am happy they outed her instead of Will, as was being speculated. That would have been too much on the nose.
Robin and Steve were easily the best parts of this season and one of the most satisfying relationships on any television show I have watched in years. All-timers, those two.
So true & I’m now crying. Thanks, I think.
Hope you understand Reagan was a top 5 President? Oh no? You must be a millennial.
People like to remember Steve’s little theater marquee stunt in S1 to talk about why we shouldn’t like this obviously growing and evolving person – who has apologized for that profusely, but then Nancy ends up with Jonathan who was literally stalking her and taking secret photos of her back then – and never apologized as far as I can remember.
Speaking of, Jonathan has really been useless since last season, no? I can’t get a read on Charlie Heaton as an actor and a person, and the way they’ve been using Jonathan on the show certainly doesn’t help.
He was like Jimmy Olson as sidekick to Nancy’s Lois Lane.
He’s a poor but smart kid who wants to make things better for himself and his family, using his talents and despite his handicaps. He’s not that complicated, really.
I always feel bad for Charlie Heaton. In a cast full of memorable and extremely likable characters he’s just kind of… there.
classic Brit amirite
Wasn’t it Steve’s douchey friends who were the masterminds behind that?
Jonathan did apologize to Nancy: To be honest, I think the showrunners’ probably had only intended for Jonathan taking pictures of Steve’s party to function as a) yet another 80s movie homage (ala Back to the Future), and b) a plot device to kick off Nancy’s search for the Demogorgon. He hadn’t been out looking for Nancy when he ran across Steve’s house, and he had been taking pictures of everyone there, which was how he ended up with the picture of Barb and the Demogorgon in the first place. It was a poor decision on their part, in my opinion, but then again, there have been a lot of clumsy character moments on this show, as Emily has pointed out time and again.At the same time, now that we’ve seen the second and third seasons, I do think you could view this scene as kicking off Jonathan’s character arc. Even if he isn’t able to come right out and say it, Jonathan loves photography because it allows him to observe people from afar rather than have to put himself out there and interact with them, and we see over time how he grows more comfortable in his own skin and becomes better at being around other people rather than isolating himself. Even just explaining why having a job was so important to him this season was a pretty big leap from the person who bottled up all of his emotions and could barely make eye contact back in season one. The bigger problem, as others have already pointed out, is that his role for the past two seasons has been so much smaller than it was during the first season. It’s been very disappointing to see one of the show’s main characters be continuously sidelined (I think we can also throw Lucas into that category).
Jonathan did apologize. When he and Nancy went looking for the Demogorgon, he told her that he was sorry and he shouldn’t have done that. He told her that it was always easier taking pictures of people as opposed to talking to them. Also, to be fair, he took pictures of everybody, not just girls or Nancy.
To the sad little tittybaby leaving dozens of copypasta comments whining about “SJWs” “ruining” Stranger Things: you’ll have to dangle that get-out-of-the-greys bait somewhere else. I’m not going to take it, not least because your comments are bad and stupid and I have zero desire to interact with you.
Steve’s latest fan-pleasing character trait is being the accepting best friend of a new lesbian character. As if he needed to be more popular than he already is.The Steve/Robin/Dustin/Erica grouping has been the biggest success story of this season so far.
Robin is easily the most likeable of the older kids. Steve is up there… I think i’d like him more if his hair wasn’t that 80’s monstrosity. He’s definitely a lot better than he was in season 1 and 2.
I couldn’t stand Nancy and whatshisname this season though. They felt empty.
As a balding 29 year old, I envy his freaking perfect hair.
Balding 32 year old here. Still no envy, but mainly because I’ve always cut my hair really short (except for one cornrow ‘phase’ in middle school).
Guys, you can still serve as “Bald Eagle.”
Nah. That’s some good hair.
Robin is Ethan Hawke and Uma Thurman’s daughter. Mind. Blown. (seriously though, I loved her character, and now that I know who she is I can totally see her resemblance to her mom).
Yeah, I mean kudos for attempting to give Nancy some agency this season, but it kind of failed miserably. Her and Johnathan are a waste of screen time when the rest of the cast and their characters are so terrific.
Season 4 better involve Robin getting an awesome girlfriend. She deserves it.
The cynical part of my brain noticed that as well.
All I wanted after season 2 was a spinoff that was Steve and Dustin (AND NOBODY ELSE) driving around solving mysteries. Robin is now totally invited to be part of this show, the dynamic between the three is fantastic.
I expected to like the storyline with Nancy leading the kids more than I did, it seemed sort of repetitive and the boys other than Will have all been insanely annoying. Hop and Joyce are always fun but Alexei really carried their storyline (you will be missed, comrade). It somewhat imbalanced this episode that the Dustin-Steve-Robin-Erica story was SO much more fun and entertaining and even suspenseful than the other ones. Super-happy for Robin to meet the rest of the crew. I LOVED the quick introductions by Steve and Dustin of El and Robin to the characters that didn’t know them yet
Nothing will be sadder for me this week than the moment Alexei gets shot through his Woody Woodpecker doll.
As soon as he won the doll I said ‘oh he’s dead’.
SAME. Saw it coming and it still made me sad when the shot hit.
The ‘win the prize at a carnival, then get involved in a fatal incident’ scenario reminds me of The Dead Zone, of which the film (technically not the 1979 book) is another piece of 80s pop culture. As did the carnival’s eerie atmosphere during the prizewinning.
I actually had it more as The Living Daylights (the first Dalton Bond) with a Soviet assassin killing a British agent at a Carnival as Bond watches, but that’s the thing with trope-y shows — they’re tropes for a reason!
Alexei, no!!!!!!!It should have been Mike or Lucas or Jonathan instead. God they have all been crazy annoying this season. When Lucas went on his stupid monologue about New Coke while El was trying to concentrate (to find Dustin!) I wanted Max to attack him
Lucas has been the most underused character in the run of this show.
The New Coke thing was so strange and outside of the style of the rest of the show I didn’t get what they were going for. It almost sounded like he was reading ad copy. Was that the text of a commercial for New Coke? Was the whole thing a wink to the audience/quasi fourth wall break where they were admitting the New Coke like qualities of Season 3?
The New Coke monologue was a genuinely bad, irritating scene
And Murray’s god damn corn dog dance in the background 🙁
Nothing will be sadder for me this week than the moment Alexei gets shot through his Woody Woodpecker doll.
I’m really impressed with how they ramped up the body horror and the gore this season. It is a pretty huge leap from past seasons without quite pushing past the boundaries of what feels appropriate for Stranger Things: ‘Yes we’ll melt children into goo to create our monster’s body, but we’ll only show it happen to the adults onscreen’
Very The Thing.
The (Stranger) Thing(s).But yeah, they weren’t kidding when they said season 3 would be darker.
It feels like an actual 80s grossout horror movie, not just an homage.
Not to mention smacking them damned hard in the face (Max and Mike)
I’m impressed by it too. I don’t like it at all because I hate that kind of stuff but I’m impressed with their commitment to the special effects etc.
There’s been a steady MPAA-rated progression throughout the three seasons: homaging/riffing on/stealing from films from the Eighties rated G and PG, then PG-13 edging into R, and now, a boatload of the era’s R and ‘hard R’ action and horror flicks. The true big bad really is growing up!
There were some moments here and probably why the A- . But Stranger Things has the most uncanny ability to take the pedal off the suspense with its crosscutting all but neutering the momentum, especially when cutting to absolutely painful young teen romance or an 8 year old girl trying to be “sassy”.That said, a really great amusement park set beautifully lit, and that a Walter Lantz creation couldn’t save our Looney Toon loving Russian was tragic irony.
I grew up in the ‘80s, and consider myself an aficionado of the ‘80s and ‘90s pop culture, but STranger Things finally stumped me. I have never heard of The Stuff, and I though it was some kind of movie theater typo for the Right Stuff. Like they couldn’t fit the whole title on the marquee, or something. This review touches on it, but I feel like Will fades too far into the background at this point and never really recovers. There’s a lot of characters to service, sure, but I feel like his connection to the Upside Down is reduced too much to some goosebumps.
I feel like it is a throw away gag here to due the film’s plot…only 50 or so people have actually seen it…
I’ve mentioned this before, but a few years ago my local independent cinema had a Larry Cohen season. Each film was introduced by a short lecture, and for ‘The Stuff’, he asked us who had seen it before. All 15 or so people raised their hands! I think that surprised the lecturer a bit.I think ‘The Stuff’ is well known-ish here in the UK. Perhaps it got shown on TV in the right slot or something? I knew it cos of my Dad, a big Cohen guy.
And yet I’m from the UK and I’ve never heard of it. Possibly due to being minus 3 during the time when this season is set?
I was only minus two…I’m not saying it’s known like Jaws or anything, but my local cinema did put it on, and that was years after I’d first seen it.
I’m a child of the ‘80s who saw it, but only as a stoner teenager in the ‘90s. It has a pre-Law & Order Michael Moriarty being referred to as someone’s “male secretary”, a detail which always cracked me up. And the opening shot is a couple of hoboes stumbling across the titular ooze burbling out of the ground and deciding to eat it, because why not. If it was actually in the theater, it couldn’t have been much more than a couple of weeks.
I’ve watched The Stuff twice just this year. Once when Larry Cohen died, then again when Joe Bob Briggs showed it on the Last Drive-In. It’s lesser Larry Cohen, but it’s an incredibly unique, bonkers horror comedy with Michael Moriarty chewing up the scenery with glee. Given that it’s an anti-corporate satire about sentient, yet delicious yogurt-like substance that dissolves and/or zombifies people, there’s a clear throughline from it to this season of Stranger Things. And apparently it did indeed have a limited theatrical release in June 1985.
It had a cable life as well, and there were plenty of horror aficionado movie opportunities in the 80s, on TV and elsewhere. There were still drive-ins.
At some point, someone here at the A.V. Club should do a retrospective on Michael Moriarty and his B-movie career prior to Law and Order.
If I remember correctly “the stuff”was killer vanilla pudding that came up from the ground to kill people, and at one point one of the heros would disquise himself by switching to different hats
I was so happy to see The Stuff on the marquee, It was one of my favorites growing up and almost nobody else I have ever met has seen it.
“Are you talking about the Queen again on Independence Day?”
If you weren’t a queer teenager in 1985, you don’t know how plausible.I do think this needs to be emphasized.Given how they’ve dealt with Will, I wasn’t sure if the Duffer brothers actually had a handle on how kids dealt with a peer possibly being gay (which is the era-appropriate language) in the mid-1980s. In fact, I can make a case that the ‘you don’t like girls!’ line would have been not just a test of friendship but would have outright ended it. As careless as Mike can be and as big as an asshole he turned into this season, even in the heat of anger he’d have been extremely careful to avoid that implication.But Robin’s outing was essentially perfect. She didn’t want to admit it, but realized she needed to at that point – and most importantly could trust Steve – so she did.
I noticed that it felt a little careless too, but I rationalized it as these kids having really been through the shit together, at this point. I think Mike would be able to dip further into those waters than a friend might have otherwise been able to do in the eighties. Having your friend be abducted and then possessed by a manifestation of extra-dimensional evil would kinda set some things in-perspective.
I don’t think Steve would have been nearly so cool about Robin in the first season, keeping on that trend.
Yeah, first season Steve would have immediately and vindictively told the entire school about why the bitch had turned him down had she been foolish enough to be honest about it.I still think Mike’s behavior was a stretch, though, and it would be interesting if they followed up on it next season.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Will is gay, but at this point I don’t think he has any sexuality. He’s a bit of a late bloomer, and he isn’t overrun with hormones yet. He just wants to play with his friends without all of this icky kissing getting in the way.
Yeah, it wouldn’t surprise me either way. Between what Mike said to him, and Will telling his mom he was never going to fall in love.But I also see the other side. This is a kid who spent a year either in an otherworldly hellscape where things were trying to kill him, or being mind-raped by a being from that world that could take him over and treat him as a puppet, before finally being freed. There is no way a kid goes through that without having a nasty case of PTSD.Now his friends are going through all sorts of changes (they are adolescents after all) and Will is just desperately trying to keep things they way they were.Actually that’s probably the case whether he’s straight or gay.By the way, how does someone “get out of the grays”?
By the way, how does someone “get out of the grays”?Sorry, the gate has been sealed shut, we’re not letting in any more creatures from the Upside Down … for now …
Will strikes me more as ace than gay. We haven’t had any inclination that he’s attracted to boys, only that he has no intention of being attracted to anyone. I’d be down for Will joining Bojack Horseman’s Todd in the limited pantheon of TV asexuals.
I think a moderator from the site has to follow you, and it only gets you out of the grey for that particular site, i.e. if AV Club follows you your comments won’t be grey here, but they’ll still be grey on Deadspin or whatever. Not sure what you have to do to get followed though.
Yeah, I really wasn’t sure how to take that line. Given their ages, it could just as easily be “you don’t like girls” in the sense of — Will isn’t thinking about anybody in any sort of romantic or sexual way (yet/if ever).
Yeah, he basically sat out two whole years of his emotional development. Where he is at in this season makes perfect sense, regardless of where he falls on the Kinsey scale.
I think it was very clear that Mike realized he crossed a line when he said that. Which is why he tried pulling it back and apologizing right away. And continued trying to apologize.I have no idea how it is for teens today, but back in the ‘80s everyone was called gay at some point. Even among friends. I think what made this worse is that it wasn’t general ragging on someone, it was just the matter-of-fact way Mike said it.
But Robin’s outing was essentially perfect. I don’t know; I felt there was a bit of a male fantasy aspect to it. Not in the ‘lesbian porn’ way, but in the ‘lesbian friend with who you can talk about motorcycles and hot girls while drinking beer’ way. After last season Max got a variant of the same criticism, they changed her character a bit, but then they added Robin.
If you’re talking character development, I’d actually argue the reverse holds true: Steve as non-sexual wingman is really more the female and/or 2019 version of the fantasy. From my own experience back then, there was palpable hostility from the lesbian community if you’d bring a straight guy friend into social situations. Steve now seems like someone who could be the exception to that rule. Robin being lesbian rather than bi was also a smart character choice, and is an additional argument against this as a male fantasy.As far as the outing, though, that was more or less perfectly done for the era. You really did have to trust someone, and only after Steve had poured his heart out and shown his own vulnerability did she do the reverse.
Was ‘ranking on’ slang from the 80s? It was always ‘ragging on’ in any of the places I lived. (central and socal).
It’s close enough to believe it’s a regional variation. In my neck of the the world one was “ranked out” if someone was yelling at them, and “ragged on” if someone was teasing or denigrating them
I assumed that was a reference to Steve ranking Tammy Thompson’s quality as a crush object compared to others.
Minor point, but didn’t the restraining bar on the Ferris Wheel seem a bit high? Like the Wheeler’s small girl could easily slip through it and fall? You can see in to the screencap above, and it kind of freaked me out more than the monster did.
Yeah, I thought the same thing. That $5 bribe went a long way.If they really did film that sequence on a crane with the Ferris Wheel stopped up high, the adult actors did a great job not letting on to the fact that they had to be surreptitiously sweating the kid’s safety at the same time they were performing.
$5 in 1985 had the purchasing power of a little more than $11 today. I wouldn’t put it past them to mention it just for that, they’re writing for an audience that uses Google, after all. It does still seem like slightly not enough to bribe a carny with, but I don’t know, I’ve never been much for the rides.
I presume the kid was harnessed in under her clothes. It is what I would do for that shot.
I went on a train ride roller coaster with my dad in the 70s and because I was with a parent I was allowed on. The bar did not restrain me, and I nearly flew out.Things were different. I actually remember when You Must be This Tall to Ride This Ride became a thing.Also the Gravitron. That was not a place for that tiny girl.
I liked the Graviton but that was a crazy intense ride. I tricked one of my friends into going on the one at the North Carolina State Fair without him having seen what it did by telling him it wasn’t very intense. He did not want to go on a very intense ride, partly because he had just eaten several corn dogs. I still feel bad about that.
Ew. Dude. Ew.
Problem Child 2 made it something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Evil Lincoln, everybody! Still Evil after all these years, give him a hand
This was 2002, at an established theme park. I went with college friends on one of those swinging boats of death, that build up to a full 360′ rotation. I slipped right out of the fixed shoulder bars and the waist band caught my thighs. I spent the whole ride locking my elbows around the restraints. Haven’t been on one since.
I just went to a state fair and almost every ride in that scene was at the fair, so I think they just got Butler to set up some current rides. Or else the rides really haven’t changed in 30 years.
They haven’t changed.
So, you’re saying that a ride at a small, midwestern, 2nd rate (probably; Mayor Kline wouldn’t want to spend too much money on it when he could be embezzling that money instead) carnival was potentially unsafe? What a stretch!
Those rides weren’t that concerned with safety back then. This is the generation that would let kids climb over the front seat and back, or ride on the rear shelf under the back window
I literally had an experience from maybe 10 years ago in a major theme park for Florida, where I was belted into a small “mouse coaster” for a ride. One bar against both of our laps. I am a larger man, and my 10 year old nephew was a small kid. I had to keep a death grip around his torso for the ride. Carnival rides are death traps.
Former Carny here: Road shows like this one routinely hired slovenly ex-cons who barely understood the equipment and didn’t give much of a shit. It tracks.
Nice word choice with “Slovenly”. Don’t hear that much these days.
Safety in carnival rides was different back in the 80s.
Nope, they were like that.
Wait, so did the Min Flayer get trapped in Earth when L closed the door in Season 2, or was it let through by the Russians?
The infection that allowed it to control Will in season 2 got trapped in our world when the big gate closed, but it wasn’t until the Russians reopened it in this season that the mind in the Upside-Down could reconnect to it and use it to start building an army and subsequently a giant rat- and people-goo flesh puppet in its own image.
I’m glad somebody’s paying attention.
Step one: Build a meat army of rats and secondary characters Step two: ???Step three: Profit!Honestly, though, it’s still kind of unclear what the Mind Flayer is doing, apart from advancing the plot. Its Bond-villain speech in the last episode about killing El and the gang and taking over the world or whatever seems very mundane for an extradimensional mwat-monster.
Ahh- that makes sense with the show’s metaphysics.
A+. Now, can you explain the compulsive need for the flayed beings (rats and humans) to consume chemicals?
There’s product placement … And there’s that gross Coke ad they shoehorned in that went on much too long
I’m old enough to have had New Coke and I don’t even remember what it tasted like, so an extended gag/tongue-in-check commercial about how shitty New Coke was that’s directed at an audience that is mostly too young to have tried it seems like a weird choice.
I really didn’t get what they were going for and I’m the perfect age for New Coke references. Was the joke just that Lucas was weird for liking New Coke so much?
To me, the New Coke moment played like a riff on reboots versus their original versions. It wouldn’t be too far out of left field since Stranger Things has courted controversy about whether it’s a rip-off or an homage since its first season.
I remember its tasting like a Pepsi without the courage of its convictions.
I’ll stick to my jazz and Kodak film, I think.
Not sure if anyone else here has watched Alison Pregler’s hilarious Baywatching recap series on YouTube (or the original Baywatch in general) but in that moment, all I could think of was David Hasselhoff and his son conversing about how much they love A&W cream soda.
IDK, worked for me: showed that no matter how weird and dangerous the situation, no matter how the hormones were making them angsty teens and the lines of friendship are straining…they were still able to be bored kids and rag on each other using the props available to them. While also being shitty product placement that’s apt for the 1980s.
I thought “Wow, Russian-baddie actually got shot down by Hopper so easily …oh wait no he didn’t, my mistake”.I guess in Stranger Things 3, guns don’t kill Russians. Russians kill Russians …
Goes to show, always one to the head.
I screamed “one in the head!”. Hopper had him at point blank range too. At least we got El making a strike to the Russkies with the car.
Yeah, but that wasn’t really a thing back then (in action movies)… so this made total sense!I mean, we all cried out for “the John Wick!” here too, but that’s… a more modern thing.
From the moment Grigori showed on screen, I figured him to be sorta an Eleven for the Russkies…
He probably shouldn’t have just gotten up and walked away from that. Getting shot in the bulletproof vest is like taking a baseball bat to the ribs, and I think Hopper emptied the clip. But I dunno how much a silencer cuts the stopping power of a bullet, maybe it’s plausible he got away with no cracked ribs.
My impression was the ballistic vest gag gave them a chance to underline the Terminator-esque-ness of Grigori, which has kinda been his whole and only thing all season.
I thought it was already a bit unrealistic that Fat Rambo could beat up Russki-Schwarzenegger like that.
But at this point he hasn’t beaten Rooskie-Terminator (Rooskinator?). He beat the other guy who was half his size. And even that seemed to take a lot more effort than you would expect considering the size difference.
They definitely seem to have pulled back Hops punching power this season, though. The first season especially he was one-punching dudes left and right.
I got the impression that the first time he beat him he surprised him. Rooskie-terminator is supposed to be scary. Not so scary if an out-of-shape small-town cop can beat him up every time.
To be honest, a lot of characters who were important in the first few episodes – Will, Lucas, Max, Jonathan, even Nancy to an extent – kind of fell by the wayside in the second half of the season. Even though the Scoops Ahoy quest was fun, I do think it was a mistake to keep Dustin away from everyone else for the majority of the season. Robin’s big reveal was done really well, and I’m interested in seeing what’s in store for her character down the road. I just really hope they don’t use it as an excuse to bring back the love triangle – let the Steve/Nancy ship rest in peace, Stranger Things.I know a lot of people love it, but the Murray-tells-the-other-characters-how-to-feel thing wasn’t that funny to me last season, and I found it even less funny this season.
Agreed on all points.
“We all die my strange little child friend. It’s just a question…of when!”I love Robin so much. I love even more that Steve and Robin become honest to God platonic friends. There’s something so refreshing about how Steve immediately accepts Robin’s orientation and how they immediately become best friends. Some of the best stuff with Robin has been steadily peeling back her “cool” persona to see the real and brilliant person she really is.
Yeah I felt a little bit bummed about Steve, since it was nice that he liked someone again after Nancy broke his heart. But yeah, the friendship angle is refreshing, and that way their bickering chemistry will hopefully not suffer of the teen drama of the other characters. And yeah, if there was ever a guy as cool with his crush coming out in front of him in the mid 80s and stay being friends with her afterwards, it would be Steve f-ing Harrington.
I think the beauty of Steve’s character arc is that season 1 Steve was defined by popularity and pretty girls. Season 2 he’s in flux because Billy steals his thunder but he finds some companionship with the kids. Season 3 he immediately embraces his role as the older brother/friend of Dustin and along the way he gets a true friend in Robin.
He didn’t need girls, he needed friends. And I find it particularly touching that Robin probably needed someone she could be open about her orientation with. I love the idea that Steve and Robin could be wingmen for each other and sharing notes on the best girls to date.
You can say “Fuck”. Don’t be shy. FUCK FUCK FUCK isn’t that refreshing?
I love to say fuck, although in some instances I like to use just the suggestion of the word. I think it’s more fitting in some cases, you know:
Occasionally if I’m not really in a frustration-venting mood I use ‘smuck’ from Lisey’s Story.
I’m not against saying the word. I just like to keep it in extreme reserve, so that when I DO use it it’ll have the appropriately nuclear connotations to people who know me.
Steve’s been great this season and Robin’s absolutely the bee’s knees, but I’m kind of disappointed in some complex way over how anachronisticly blase he was about Robin coming out. I was a teenager (just a bit younger than Steve) in the mid-80s, in a small rural town and that scene would have been much, much uglier in real life. I’m happy that we don’t have the nastiness of that era rubbed in our faces in our fun-time entertainment, but it feels.. disrepectful? Dangerous even? to pretend that people (let alone teenagers!) in the 80’s were as accepting of LGBTQ kids as we are today. We as a society have made a lot of very important progress in gay and lesbian rights and I sometimes wonder if it’s bad to pretend that “it’s always been this way” like Stranger Things did.
To be fair, I think Steve was so accepting because he’s experienced so much bizarre stuff that a girl coming out to him doesn’t faze him. They were also both coming down for Russian drugs so that plays a role as well. Season 1 Steve would have completely annihilated her and the fact that season 3 Steve didn’t is what cements his character growth. Robin feeling confident enough to come out also cements her season long story of gaining confidence in her own awesomeness.
The character moments with Mike and Nancy’s dad are getting far too close to the bone for me. Every time he says anything or anybody says anything about him, it gives my wife and daughters another excuse to take the piss out of me.
I could be wrong but I didn’t think that Alexei would have any problem making a deal and getting US citizenship. A Russian defector from one of their secret programs would always be an asset during the Cold War, even apart from his scientific expertise.
There is no question that he would be given U.S. citizenship. That was a weird observation. Maybe some of this season doesn’t make sense if you don’t remember the Cold War.
I think he would’ve gotten citizenship, but not necessarily freedom. He’d be a kind of prisoner due to his ability (and knowledge of the arcane project he worked on) here, just as he was in Russia. The US isn’t going to let someone like him just get a house and a job in the private sector.
That’s exactly what citizenship is: the ability to have a house and job of your choosing. This is what the Constitution guarantees.
I understand that. I just think that in the world of the show, with a secret government agency creating then destroying a portal to another dimension, then covering that up multiple times, it’s unlikely that they’d let a captured Russian scientist who knew a lot about it just go work for Boeing.
Which article is that?
Privileges and immunities clause…
That doesn’t guarantee a house and job of your own choosing, it just ensures that states can’t discriminate against citizens of other states.
That’s open to scholarly debate. Are people really going to argue that the Constitution doesn’t guarantee the right of law abiding citizens to work in the neighborhood of their choosing and pursue gainful employment? You might also want to read the Fifth and Fourteenth.
The Constitution doesn’t even guarantee the right to vote.
LOL. I’m not so sure I agree 100% with your policework there, Lou.
The Constitution guarantees a fairly narrow set of rights. The courts have (wisely, in my opinion) expanded some of these into larger principles, but it’s not as expansive a document a most Americans would like to believe.The right to vote is an example: there’s no explicit right to vote. What you can’t do is deny some people and not others the right to vote. So far, no state has tried to abolish voting, but if they abolished it for everyone equally, the constitution says boo.
Sure, but the chances of Hopper, Murray, and Joyce–the people he’s with making that happen are not good.
He would be accepted, debriefed, and given a reasonably comfortable life under continuous surveillance, but not citizenship. A defector is never, ever trusted. Someone who switches sides once could do so again.
Former Nazi Rocket Scientist Turned US Citizen Who Helped Put a Man on the Moon Werner Von Braun would beg to differ.
I’d have knocked this review’s grade down at least another step or two just for the glaring plothole in Steve/Robin/Erica/Dustin’s escape from the elevator. They rush out the elevator doors outside, to be immediately confronted by soldiers, only to rush back inside and then find themselves running through back corridors of the mall.And yet! The WHOLE reason Erica is with them is because the only way for someone to get to that elevator from the inside was to go through the vents, wasn’t it?
They ran into a side door to get back into the mall, not back into the elevator.
They ran back into the door they just came thru. That’s the elevator. I didn’t notice the mistake, but it is one
They had the keycard now, so they could use the regular door out into the mall instead of the air ducts.
I liked the Evil Dead 2-ness of the cabin scene. Shotgun, tentacles, axe.
Soooo, did anybody else get an Evil Dead vibe from the battle at Chez Hopper, or was that just me?
I feel like the Russian super soldier acts like the Terminator, but looks like Ash.
Hmm, gotta go .6 on the chin but nowhere near the attitude.
One of the most vivid nightmares I had as a child was a fireworks show where the dead take the distraction opportunity to get out of their tombs and start attacking the living (thing that I notice, a bit too late, when I look down, in the dream). So this episode felt very personal.And a chase in a mirror maze will always be as cool as a shootout in the merry-go-round
So…ship has sailed on anyone at AVClub writing about the actual show, yes?
But why are the Russians trying to open the gate to begin with?
Cheating by having watched all of the season, but I want to say here having The Duffers take the reigns of these last two eps is like how Lynch took the reigns of the last two episodes of Twin Peaks. Some fantastic directorial touches.
As soon as the Mind Flayer bit El I was worried for her and what a great reveal with the pool of blood in the grocery store. I’ll say it again, the effects this year have been outstanding for the most part.Speaking of great reveals it was a great subversion of expectations with the Robin twist and even better by Steve’s reaction. Joe Keery has been doing a great job but the way he plays these understated parts is just pitch perfect, and I can’t say enough for how good Maya Hawke has been.The funhouse thriller scene evoked so many movies from the 80s era there’s probably a few references to be made. This show just does the feel and look of these homages so well it blows my mind.
I loved the Robin twist, but I think the writers were leading us on a bit too far. Why would Robin ask Steve whether he had ever been in love, if she weren’t flirting?
I remember that funhouse being on the carnival circuit when I was a kid. It was weird as hell to see it in the show. “Oh, shit! Where did they dig that up from? And in such good shape!”
I said this on another thread, but I was just at a state fair and every ride in that scene was at the fair, including the fun house (with the same name, even). So I’d say fair rides have not evolved much.
Like in the Quantum realm of Avengers: Endgame, time works differently in the Upside Down. Travelling through the upside down to travel back in time to stop the experiment that leads eleven to first contact with the mindflyer, would be a good mission for a final season.
So it takes them how long to figure out that when Billy says “I know where you are” that he knows where they are? Plot: trapped – Eleven saves them – trapped – Eleven saves them – trapped – Eleven saves them
I like when they see the monster coming at them through the woods, and in the next scene Will rubs his neck and says, “He’s close.” No shit.
NGL it’s good to see another Stranger Things skeptic on these boards. I am not calling it total garbage, it’s just severely mediocre and I sometimes feel like I’ve been taking crazy pills when people (often people who won’t watch a horror movie with me when I ask them to) go apeshit for it on fb. I mean in S2 the Mind Flayer was defeated by hot tubbing. If all of the flayed scream when the main body is hurt then why aren’t all of the people in those other houses and neighborhoods who have been turned screaming also during the sauna test? Mike is one of the most inconsistently written characters I’ve ever seen…is he a dumb insensitive jock or a precocious nerd? Changes line by line.It must have sucked for Noah Schnapp that after being barely in Season 1 to the point where…wasn’t he like not included in a press tour?…he was a lead in Season 2…and then back to barely anything in Season 3 but at least he got to run around with the other kids (most of the time). 99% of his screen time is the back of his neck and a stupid goosebump digital effect. It was also hard to hide he’s like 5 foot 9 now.
small point: you can be dumb and insensitive without being a jock.
but: is he supposed to be dumb and insensitive? it more feels like, maybe instead of just being poorly defined, he is two distinct characters when the show needs him to be one or the other. There are several places this season where ST has done what GoT did and completely ignored previously-established character altogether (Jonathan, Max) but this one kind of goes back to the first episode, Mike has never really been a coherent character.
It’s a fun show to watch. The cast is great, and the dialog is usually pretty snappy. But every season has the same pattern where they spend a few episodes setting up something neat, then spend a few episodes over explaining the premise and bouncing the characters off each other, and then there’s a big fight to wrap things up. Thematically there’s very little going on, and the end of Season 1 made it clear that none of the main characters are expendable (including El, who actually died on screen and got post-credits retconned back to life), which syphons off most of the tension. Individual setpieces still work like gangbusters, though, because the direction is so tight.
That scene was absolutely ridiculous. The mind flayer is running towards them, maybe 100 yards away? And then they have time to go outside to the shed for weapons and board up the doors and windows…and he still hasn’t arrived….eesh.
Time travel isn’t especially hard to write, but the way most movies/tv do it makes it hard.
If they were to travel in time to an earlier version of the Upside Down BEFORE the Flayer invaded, or if they go to a non-famous/real place, and especially don’t interact with your past selves, then it’s pretty easy.
But for spectacle, Hollywood always goes with those tropes.
Poor Mr. Wheeler. The show is doing everything it can to make him look like someone his wife shouldn’t be faulted for cheating on.
A much better episode than the previous one. Hopper in the Funhouse was really good, along with the Flayer attacking the cabin. I’d be up for some time travel shenanigans in season 4. Oh, and D.A.R.Y.L. needs more love.
Robin and Steve tasting the air, just got me thinking about Chernobyl.
“Do you taste metal?”
I’ve got to be the one.There’s absolutely no way R.O.C.K. in the USA would be played July 4th 1985. The album it was on came out in August of 85. It was the 3rd single off the album, released in February of 86, but people loved it enough that it was played enough as an album track on the radio it charted in October 85. It was a huge song, but ALL of that was after July 1985.The show is otherwise good with things being on time.
“Under a President who denounced the U.S.S.R. as “an evil Empire,” a 1980s Independence Day could be as much an expression of hostility to outsiders as it was a celebration of unity and freedom.”No way the person writing this isn’t a KGB aficionado.
Isn’t the real question, at this point in the series, how long has it been since someone been able to get an ice cream cone at Scoops Ahoy?
The writers did a good job setting up the bait and switch on Robin’s sexuality last episode with her monologue about sitting behind Steve in class and all the little details she noticed about him. When this reveal happened, I thought that monologue was deliberately misleading, but I went back and rewatched and Maya Hawke did not convey an iota of infatuation. Only the feeling of not fitting in and the disbelief that Tammy could be interested in a vapid tin god like Steve.