“It’s probably for his muscles or something,” Max tells El as the two stand over a now-melted ice bath in the Mayfield-Hargrove bathroom. “He works out like a maniac.” Even before El finds the missing lifeguard’s fanny pack and her bloody whistle, we know Billy’s bags of ice are not “for his muscles or something.”
“He likes it cold,” Will Byers told us back in season two, when the was walking around inside Will’s skin. Now Billy likes it cold. And so does Heather (Francesca Reale).
But like any good Nancy Drew mystery (and this title feels straight out of Nancy Drew), “Chapter Three: The Case Of The Missing Lifeguard” is as close as Stranger Things gets to pure procedural: Nancy and Jonathan return to Doris Driscoll’s (Peggy Miley) to investigate the strange rats, Hopper and Joyce break into the DoE’s abandoned underground lab, El and Max bike off into the lightning to follow Billy and his now-missing co-worker. If “The Case Of The Missing Lifeguard” comes off a little glib, that could be the effect of writer William Bridges’ tight plotting; his Black Mirror episodes, “USS Callister” and “Shut Up And Dance,” are more focused on action than on their (swiftly but clearly drawn) characters. But slick or no, Stranger Things is hitting its stride; when the credits rolled, all I wanted was to mash that next episode button.
And “The Case Of The Missing Lifeguard” pulls its weight in character beats, weaving together practical and personal concerns with a weird, delightful mix of realism and slapstick. When Joyce arrives at Hopper’s, armed with all her demagnetized magnets, to recruit him in her hunt for an answer, he lashes out, but he also makes himself emotionally vulnerable. “I think when I asked you out, you got scared. And now you’re inventing things,” he says. “Because God forbid any of us move on!” Hopper couldn’t know that while he was pouring out his heart behind his bedroom curtain, Joyce was already in the shed, “borrowing” his bolt cutters.
Smashing their way into the site of their last battle, where they believe their enemy waits for them again, seems like a dangerous (and painful) way to confront Joyce’s fears. But everyone seems to be seeking out danger without worrying about the consequences. El and Max pedal straight into the storm, lightning striking in the sky above them. Dustin, Steve, and Robin stake out the mall’s rooftop to spy on “evil Russians” without any backup or even a record of where they’ve gone.
Most chilling is Mike’s casual solution to Will’s impassable D&D campaign: burning their outpost and sacrificing themselves to defeat a powerful enemy. As a last-ditch strategy to end a campaign, it’s sensible, even noble. As foreshadowing, it’s ominous. Who will have to sacrifice themselves at the end? Will it be someone we love? Will it be more than one someone? We know the Russian portal to the Upside-Down has a two-person switch.
“You’re destroying everything!” Will yells, his frustration finally erupting. “And for what? So you can swap spit with some stupid girl?”
“El’s not stupid!” Mike yells back, “and it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!”
Mike and Will both take a breath, hearing what Mike said out loud. In the moment, it’s not clear whether Mike means “you don’t like girls yet” or something else, and in the moment, we don’t need to know the answer. Maybe Will knows the answer, maybe he doesn’t. The issue is the obstacle that his friends romances—and his impatience with those romances—puts between him and his peers, his friends, his campaigning party.
The episode’s flashback to the very first D&D game of the series is bittersweet. However young these characters (and actors) look now, they were children when we met them, and as children do, they look impossibly vulnerable.
They looked vulnerable. “Oh, Jesus!” blurts out young Dustin, “we’re so screwed if it’s the demogorgon!” It was the demogorgon, not just in the game but breaking through to their own world, and they were not screwed. They were triumphant. They were powerful. They were together.
It makes sense that Will, stolen, stalked, and occupied by an otherworldly power, is out of step with his old friends, just as it makes sense that El’s handwriting is crabbed and halting and her speech a little stilted after a childhood in the cells of Hawkins National Lab. While Will’s friends were searching for him, he was mired in a nightmare. He isn’t ready to move on… but in a rage, he forces himself to. Will yells and sobs as he smashed down Castle Byers, reducing his childhood to a pile of sticks and sodden memories.
El, who never had a childhood, is getting a crash course in being a teenager—or, at least, a particular kind of teenage girl in 1985. Millie Bobby Brown walks a delicate line between the disciplined child El was and the sometimes giggling, sometimes self-assured teen she’s turning into under Max’s instruction. That means new clothes and sleepovers and Ralph Macchio posters, and it means dramatic break-ups at the mall and high-fives on the bus afterward. But it also means following Max’s lead by rolling her eyes and saying “Geez!” when Hopper bursts into her room. In Joyce’s words, that’s “setting boundaries.”
Joyce isn’t ready to move on; as they walk into Hawkins Lab, she’s yanked into her memories, watching Bob get torn apart all over again. And this time it’s Hopper who’s willing to talk openly about their past and their future. Still in the shadowy halls of Hawkins Lab, he tells Joyce, “It’s important to me that you feel safe. That you and your family feel safe. I want you to feel that this can still be your home.” Hopper knows about her secret plan to sell her house, and he’d like her to stay in Hawkins—so much that he’d even talk about his feelings if it might help.
Nancy Wheeler’s co-workers, that chortling table of men at The Hawkins Post, don’t mean her nickname as a compliment, but she’s living up to Nancy Drew’s rep: making connections and deductions, following unlikely leads, sticking to her case no matter how silly other people think it might be, and looking stylish doing it. Head editor Tom in particular should feel foolish for mocking her, but it doesn’t look like he’ll have time. By the time “the case of the missing fertilizer, a Nancy Drew mystery” has moved on to “The Case Of The Missing Lifeguard,” that lifeguard—his own daughter—has him knocked out and ready to join her. Ready to become what she and Billy are. Ready to build.
Stray observations
- Dustin’s idea of casual covering banter is the stiff, uninflected “Hello. Yes. I am fine. How are you.”
- I had that paperback Russian-to-English dictionary, down to the dogeared pages and chipped cover. When it’s accurate, this show can feel like time travel.
- “Maybe we should just call them?” “We can do that?” “I think so?”
- “Instead of dating someone because you think it’s going to make you cooler, why not date somebody you actually enjoy being around?” Dustin gives the advice I’ve been giving for years now, but he learned it a lot younger than I did.
- Heather’s home, a big white house with gleaming red door and formidable locks, is a riff on the deadly house on Elm Street, though I can’t guess why Stranger Things changed the street number from 1428 to 1438.
- Stranger Things’ visual references have expanded, eschewing the restrictions of genre, era, and artist. Spielberg, a seminal influence on the Duffer brothers and the show’s first season, is still visible in the show’s DNA. But El’s red rain slicker is more likely to be an allusion to Nicolas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now (1973) or David Cronenberg’s The Brood (1985) than to Spielberg’s own Schindler’s List (1993). (It sure isn’t a reference to his 1985 release, The Color Purple.)
114 Comments
Noah Schnapp broke my heart in this episode, first with the shouting match with Mike (who really has become a massive dick these past two seasons) and then smashing down Castle Byers. it’s crazy to think this kid (I don’t know if kid’s the right word, it looks like he’s aged three years since S2) felt like someone outside the main cast in those months before S2, and now he’s probably the best of the entire younger cast
Yeah, that was painful to watch. Mike meant to hurt – And I think we all know there was no “yet” implied, if Mike wanted to say yet he would have. I now wonder if the Stranger Things story will continue to where we have a season in which ‘it gets better’ for Will …
Oh Mike absolutely left out the “yet” deliberately. But that doesn’t mean anything.Trust me as someone who was only 2 or 3 years older than their characters were at this time, boys were constantly challenging each other’s sexuality like that. Even among friends. Sometimes in a backhanded way like this, and sometimes more directly.Certainly it’s a possibility that it may be true in this case. (Will did make that comment to his mother that he’ll never be in love.) But it’s also possible that the remark just caught them both off guard because neither one of them ever expected Mike to say something so ugly to his friend.Mike has definitely become a dick. But he also realized that he crossed a line there and seems to be trying to make up for it. Maybe all hope is not lost for him.
Ever since S2, I have wondered if Will might be gay, so Mike saying that, while terrible and cruel, wasn’t exactly out in left field to me.
I think that was an interesting line snuck in there. Will is having problems and… he could be part of the (in 85) still developing LGBTQ community. And back then, that must have been confusing.
My take on Will is that he’s ace rather than gay. But I could be wrong.On the other hand, this episode seemed to imply that…maybe Dustin likes boys? There were cuts from ladies’ butts to Steve’s wide eyes, then from the male instructor’s butt to the same expression on Dustin’s face.
I just want to thank you for suggesting Will might be ace. As a gray-ace myself, Will’s situation in this episode really rang true and familiar to me. It’s nice to know someone else saw that too.
Will also effortlessly stole the show in season 2. He’s not as funny as Dustin, but in terms of pure acting he’s the best.
I like Caleb McLaughlin a lot too, they just don’t give Lucas all that much to do. Like he was damn good in season 1, got kinda sidelined in S2 and now he’s just a bad boyfriend. They’re wasting that actor’s potential.
The show does seem to always be weirdly hesitant to actually give Lucas anything to do. Which is a shame because his actor is great. It’s just…give him something to do already!
He was “the logical skeptic” in season one but now he’s just a goofball with girl problems. I guess those hormones are messing with his head haha
He does feel very natural as a young actor. I mean, all the kids feel incredibly natural, but Lucas in particular feels the most like a normal human being. It’s probably why he gets the short straw. If the show was about normal stuff, he’d be the star.
Perhaps he can have a spinoff where he becomes Hopper’s deputy and deals with burglary reports, fender benders and teenage fisticuffs.
Young guys seem to turn into dummies when they have a good girlfriend way more mature than them. Its like they think the lady is their new mom or something and needs to do the thinking for them.
Lucas is the designated Idiot Ball holder whose job is to put the brakes on and cause conflict. (Mike is the designated protagonist whose job is to press the gas and move forward. Will gets stuffed in a fridge for motivation.)
Yeah, I was just thinking that it’s odd that Finn Wolfhard seems to be the one amongst the kids breaking out the most in terms of getting other roles when it seems that Schnapp is the best actor.
I could see Noah Schnapp as a fun character actor. He’s brilliant in this and always really sweet in the couple of other things he’s done. Is Finn Wolfhard more talented? I don’t know, but he seems pretty damn versatile considering how much he carries in the show as well as his radically different IT character. I think Noah Schnapp had the hardest role out of all the kids with his season 2 possession story and the fact he blasted it out of the park makes him stand out a bit more.
CASTLE BYERS!! NOOOO!!Seeing Will tear it down and just feeling for him when he’s missed so much compared to his friends was just heart wrenching. At least he isn’t the one being directly forced to work for the evil mastermind but he’s still suffering the effects.El and Max spying on the boys was a great moment and so genuine to what kids are like at that age. The way the Duffers manage to blend the genre stuff with the real life slices really balance things so well.Most horrifying moment of the series might be that poor 80 year old lady shocking Nancy and Jonathan with her zombie eating habits.
Yeah Mike has been all about Eleven more than his old pals since he met her. I get that she needed a lot of attention right away, but he was ditching them for her all over the seasons even when it wasn’t necessary. He’s been a dick in a lot of other ways too, and it is a shame cause Finn Wolfhard seems like a cool dude.
Man if I had a girlfriend who really had no other connections outside her surrogate father Id probably cling a littlr bit too, especially if we were like in 9th Grade.
I guess I didn’t see what Mike or Lucas did as so terrible. Your 13 year old friends aren’t going to all want to do the same things they did when they were 10. That’s life. Once they get a little older, they’ll probably be back to DnD. Or something else.
of course, but the way they actually treated him over a thing he was clearly enthusiastic about was pretty shitty, especially with Mike’s comment right after which has been covered a lot in the comments already. all they needed to do was take a second to explain to him “hey, we’re not into this thing anymore, but we can find a new thing to enjoy together if you put up with our girl troubles for a bit”. instead they just treat him like shit because, uh, that’s basically Mike’s thing nowadays
But I think the issue was they (like him) were so consumed by the thing that mattered to them (romance), they couldn’t really see why it would matter that much to him. This seemed like such an accurate way for kids/adolescents to react. It was a case of mutual incomprehension (neither party can understand why the other cares so much) mixed with trauma. Will belittles Mike’s relationship (she’s a “stupid girl”) and Mike belittles Will’s desire to spend time in the old manner. Neither party behaved well.
His climactic “exorcism”last year confirmed that line of thought for me.
Will smashing down his fort/treehouse thing was self-defeating, because if he really yearned to move onto the next phase of teenagerhood, such a structure would come in handy for myriad reasons. I’m being glib, but, yeah, Will suddenly hating that his friends have moved on and he hasn’t—and it manifesting in self-loathing—was one of those uncomfortable recognition moments for me.
it was definitely one of the realest moments the show’s ever done, and honestly realer than I expected them to actually go this season. the only problem, as others pointed out, was that Will then had no significant character moments for the whole rest of the season, bar a second with Mike in the finale
I dunno, outside of the 1st episode I think Mike is way less finish than he was last season, and this is coming from someone who basically was the Will in his group of friends at that age. Maybe I just find D&D tedious….and remember, theyre all supposed to be like 14 or 15. Mike and Lucas could’ve been WAY more dickish given that age group…
SOMEBODY PLEASE JUST PLAY D&D WITH WILL
I had that paperback Russian-to-English dictionaryDid you use it to foil Russian spies too?
Spiiiiiiiiies like us!
If Steve and Dustin get captured, I hope the Russians threaten to cut off a finger!
If there ends up being a scene where those rats tear into that hyena pack of journalists, saving Busey dude for last and the most grim feasting, I think I’ll stand up and applaud!(But ill probably look away for most of it … I had to look away during the scene with the rat in the cage squealing and squealing till …. SPLAT!!)
I fucking hate the useless douches at the newspaper. My initial response to their obnoxiousness was that Nancy should quit and tell them to pound sand. Luckily Nancy is more mature than I am, or at least more strategic.
It seems a bit weird to me that they’re played like douchey jocks. I’ve never worked in journalism or known any journalist personally, but I always had the impression that they were more of the earnest, nerdy type, who gradually became of the cynical, world-weary type, rather than a bunch of braying former frat boys.
Yeah that is a weird mishandling of your tv journalist cliches isn’t it
Media person here; in a small newsroom — let alone one in a small town — it’s even easier for a good old boy club like this to fester than it would be at a bigger paper. None of these goons look like they’ve practiced actual reporting in a decade.
I think the idea is that it’s pure misogyny and not just that they’re generally assholes. You notice only Nancy is expected to fetch sandwiches and coffee. I’ve worked briefly in journalism and known a lot of journalists and the behavior of these guys seems pretty realistic for 1985. The idea that a small town newspaper even at that time would have that many reporters is unrealistic though. But anyway I think STranger Things is trying to have it both ways it’s clear that Nancy’s treatment is a result of her being a young woman and not a more general wow the world is tough for everyone type of thing but that’s how her mom talks about it
Never underestimate the ability of a group of men with a little bit of power to shit all over a young woman with no power.
Ask any woman that worked at a Murdoch paper in the 80s or 90s and they’ll probably tell you that, if anything, the Hawkins guys are tame by comparison.
Any job in the 80s (a lot even now) that is primarily men is going to have the men reacting in a similar manner to a woman in their space. Especially if that woman doesn’t show the correct amount of deference and seems to think she can do their job just as well if not better.
Obviously, we need to ask miss Emily L. Stephens, if this is what AV Club is really like behind closed doors.
I would have thrown that rubber rat right at his head and followed up with the coffee pot, tell them I don’t want to work for their sexist, immature asses, and walked out. But, I’m also looking at it from a now perspective. I was 15 in 1985 and had my first job about a year later. I was lucky because my friend’s mom was the boss, but if I had to put up with that stuff at such a young age, I’m not sure I would have reacted much differently than she did.
Dont compare yourself to fictional characters. The most developed fictional character in the world is merely a bag of bones compared to you.
Those characters are being set up to be so unlikable that they have to die by the end of this season.
Two Weird Al references so far; me gusta. And hello use of Dark Crystal soundtrack.I’m really digging Dustin/Steve/Robin right now. The former two were great last season and Robin fits right in.
“How many little kids do you know?” Steve’s not too dumb to realize that it’s not always about age.
I think the line was “How many children are you friends with?”
Wait, two?! Please illuminate: I didn’t catch My Bologna until reading that recap!
Dustin’s wearing a “Weird Al in 3-D” shirt.
Ahhh thanks 🙂
Every time I see Steve and Robin all I can think of is Lars and Sadie from Steven Universe… 🙂
Their storyline in this episode gives me strong vibes of those “children in peril” action-adventures from the 80s, where the danger and gun violence weren’t toned down so much as today. I’m thinking particularly of Cloak & Dagger, especially after seeing the pod people use chloroform.
I can’t guess why Stranger Things changed the street number from 1428 to 1438It’s ten more, innit? Although they should have gone for eleven, both for the Nigel Tufnel reference and well, the character. BTW, why does everyone, including herself, call her “El”? I thought it was established that her real name is Jane.
It is awkward calling her El since that is short for Eleven and not Jane, the name on her birth certificate, but it sort of feels right too. That is the name that she has always known. She could always claim it’s her middle name.
I’m hoping she visits her aunt Becky at some point and the name change is awkward.
I for one wouldn’t care if that aspect of season 2 never gets reexamined.
Also, said out loud instead of written down, it parses as “Elle”.
Is the number change not a reference to the same thing happening when The Shining made the leap from book to screen? I feel like I’ve seen this little wink elsewhere, but couldn’t tell you where.
Was having a Russian-to-English dictionary an extremely normal/common thing back then? I can’t say I’ve ever seen anyone have one.
If you took Russian back then at any level, that specific edition was pretty much the only one available unless you had access to Soviet bookstores or academic libraries.However, it was stocked all over the place, and it actually doesn’t require much suspension of disbelief that the Starcourt Waldenbooks might have had one readily available.
That makes sense. The book I’ve used in my lifetime to study Russian was Berlitz’s Essential Russian, published in 1993. It wasn’t a dictionary (more of a workbook with a lot of exercises).
Yeah, once the Wall fell there was a lot more material of all sorts available – I’ll never forget my first time seeing a copy of Russian language Vogue, for instance.Prior to that though, besides what the DLI and various Russian departments at universities had put together, your selection of texts was pretty thin up until you hit advanced reading comprehension and they sat you down to start going through tons of Russian lit. I was lucky to have Russian emigre friends to bounce stuff off of, but it was a specialized enough area of study back even in the waning days of the Cold War so that I believe what I heard through the grapevine at the time – the CIA actually kept tabs on who was doing graduate level work since it formed a not insignificant part of their recruiting.
Actually I think I bought my copy of Romanov’s at Waldenbooks. Probably around 1981.
In my sophomore year, (1984 and 85) i thought it would be cool to learn Russian. It wasn’t. Then, I thought it looked cool to have a Russian dictionary on my bookshelves. That must be true; it’s still there.
I bought that exact edition back in 1988, and it was at a Waldenbooks.
The dictionary they use is the exact same format (color scheme, cover, etc) as the Spanish-English dictionary I used to have. I am surprised to hear about so many people mentioning taking Russian.
Max and El were a great team in this episode. I loved them biking around together in their raincoats. El really needed a female friend her own age. Also they are both growing up so fast! When they were at the pool looking for Heather with their hair all wet, I did not even recognize them for a second & just thought they must be like Heather’s college-age friends who were looking for her.
I particularly liked Max’s Valley Girl “gag me with a spoon!”
Hehe, same.
Grody to the Max!
I feel so, so bad for you. It is not easy to spit shine this turd of a show. You’re doing your best.
Most chilling is Mike’s casual solution to Will’s impassable D&D campaign: burning their outpost and sacrificing themselves to defeat a powerful enemy. As a last-ditch strategy to end a campaign, it’s sensible, even noble. As foreshadowing, it’s ominous.
I think this is both giving the show way too much credit for what it isn’t doing and way too little credit for what it is doing. I want to give the benefit of the doubt but this reads as straight missing the point of the scene. A “noble strategy to end the campaign”? No? It’s obviously a half-assed (quarter-assed? tenth-assed?) way of getting out of the game while paying lip service to the spirit of it. There are no plot hints here. There’s only Mike and Lucas displaying open contempt for their friend. They placate him because they think, stupidly, that the game is what matters to him, and not his inclusion in what’s important to them. They don’t understand that treating the game as beneath them is placing Will beneath them. Mike realizes what he’s done as he explicitly verbalizes it to Will, like the idiot teen he is.It’s baffling to me that the takeaway of that scene could be some sort of plot foreshadowing. Sometimes a cigar is a cigar.
I mean there was a lot of interplay between the in show D and D campaigns and the other parts of the show in the previous seasons so it’s not that weird a thing to think about
Except, the show has always connected the ongoing D&D game to real situations the kids are soon to face. Just as it uses familiar movies to tell a new story.
I think it can be both.
You’re right on the other connotations implied by that scene. However the original author wasn’t exactly wrong to look for foreshadowing in the game
You’re right about the nobility of their tactics, but you’re wrong about the show using their DnD campaigns to foreshadow the plot. They’ve done it before, why wouldn’t they do it again?
Ok we know Billy works out, “like a maniac” but does he work out like a “Maniac, Maniac, Maaaaaniac on the Floor”?
He does, I’m sure.
Or maybe like a …
The remake with Elijah Wood wasn’t exactly good, but the first person perspective made for a pretty horrifying experience.
I like how Robin and Dustin had rain gear that covered their heads properly but Steve’s had no head covering cause he never wants to cover up that hairdo of his
It’s his best feature! Is that a quote from his mom?
A few points, after reading all of the comments of every episode thus far:1. Not long after Steve’s weird girl coworker showed up and started taunting him, my neighbors must have thought I had a friend named Steve who I was informing loudly and repeatedly that “DUDE SHE’S CUTE AS HELL AND TOTALLY INTO YOU!!”1a. I wuz there in the suburban punk rock culture of the early ‘80’s, and Robin’s ‘do might have been a “work-friendly” version of something visible on cutting edge girls into music never ever heard on the radio and fashion only ever seen in imported magazines in places like Hawkins. Remember, she’s a weird girl.2. I must confess that after all the discord that he sowed between El and Mike, bullying Mike into lying, then acting the macho dickhead cop at the restaurant, I felt no sympathy for Hopper getting the living shit kicked out of him by Russian Darth Mall, kind of the opposite, actually. He needed a bit of a thump.
3. I had been holding out hope that we might see some redemption in Billy the way we did with Steve in the first season, but it looks like maybe that ain’t happening? It was amusing to see one of the horny, horny housewives get her bluff called and fold, though (sigh of relief when the Karen head-slamming bit was revealed to have been a fantasy)
2. Agreed! I found myself cheering on the Russian dude. Hopper had that beating coming, and hopefully he gets an attitude adjustment after this (or just gets sidelined in the hospital for the rest of the season).
I hope to one day be able to say that I’ve had as much fun as Noah Schnapp clearly was when impersonating Will the Wise.
in the last episode recap someone mentioned a dustin/steve/girl who’s name i cant remember being a tv series.
i prefer dustin/steve buddy show to gaten’s mean spirited job prank show.
also the speculation of characters dying i really dont want either of them to go. im seriously team mentor steve. him being cool with the group is awesome to me.
Re: the show feeling like time travel. I had the gold Dragon Magazine that we saw briefly in Castle Byers. It was the 50th edition if I remember correctly (maybe 100th?). I live in the UK, and to get this was rare.
Great, now I’m nervous about Max’s yellow rain slicker being a reference to (1985’s) Stephen King’s It. Mike being Richie Tozier doesn’t help with that (and neither does my username).
Imagine if El and Max had shown up at Tom’s house just five minutes later than they did.
I thought the red slicker on the bicycle was a pretty obvious E.T. reference, was it not? Although I guess you could say the yellow is from Alice Sweet Alice and the red is from Don’t Look Now, but E.T. was my immediate association.
Ted Wheeler mowing the lawn in the middle of a rainstorm felt like a quintessentially Ted thing to do. Like he didn’t get it done sooner because he fell asleep in his recliner.
In the moment, it’s not clear whether Mike means “you don’t like girls yet” or something else, and in the moment, we don’t need to know the answer. Maybe Will knows the answer, maybe he doesn’t. Will’s sexuality is something that’s been teased about since the first season, from when those Crabbe and Goyle-esque bullies cruelly mocked Mike about his apparent death being him “away with the fairies” “all happy and gay”.
But also, sometimes you’re just a late bloomer, or sexually introverted. As someone who showed no outward interest in girls for much of high school because talking with your friends about how great boobs are seemed as reductive as noting the sky was blue, I always found the notion that unless you’re openly slavering over women that you mustn’t have any interest in them a bit dense.
But the Duffer bros and co have thrown that question out to be speculated too many times now, so anything less than having Will being gay confirmed (or maybe having him be asexual) would be a disappointment and an aversion to follow through in many people’s eyes.
It reminded me of the “Diary of a Wimpy Kid” movies, with him and his best friend in the first movie. Sometimes one kid matures emotionally over a year, another doesn’t. It happens often.
I’m glad someone else has considered that he could be ace. That honestly seems like a better read of the character to me.
Calling people on the phone in the 80s was such a different kind of thing than calling people on the phone is now. 😁
I have an 8 year old daughter who recently picked up a landline for the first time, put it to her ear, and then gasped and immediately hung it up. I asked her what happened, and she said ‘listen to this – what’s happening?’. It was the dialtone.People used to answer because it was ringing and every time it was ringing. Nowadays, what percentage of our incoming calls do we not answer? I’m over 50% for sure. Combination of a) don’t recognize the number and suspect its telemarketing, b) i don’t feel like talking to that person at the moment and if it’s an emergency they’ll call back or leave a VM.
“a weird, delightful mix of realism and slapstick”This for me is the best episode so far of the season, shit is hopefully getting really serious now, first two eps left me cold with all the teen romance angst and forced comedy. The Billy & Heather meal scene reminded me of Society, another underrated 80s horror.
Millie Bobby Brown
walks a delicate line between the disciplined child El was and the
sometimes giggling, sometimes self-assured teen she’s turning into under
Max’s instruction.
Heh. I think it’s Sadie Sink who has to walk that delicate line, because with all the giggling and the boy magazines, Max is being awfully girly, for a character intitially introduced as more of a tough tomboy.
She can be both! My walls were full of posters and I loved shopping trips to the malls. I also played full contact basketball and with the boys who lived next door.
I am kinda liking this season – more than last at least. At first I was not impressed – I mean, the season is half over before the real antagonist really shows up in force. But then it hit me – the monster is just window dressing. The real antagonist is… growing up.The kids are being torn apart like all groups of kids are at that age – by pairing off and not being quite as accessible to each other as before. The teens are dealing with what amounts to their taste of the sexist and condescending real world. Even Hopper is finding out what happens as he ages into middle age. The main antagonist takes the form of an older late teen. Truth is that this season is about aging into maturity (Or early teens at least).And I kinda like the meta textual flavor of that. I mean, the show is confronting the problem all shows with a cast of mainly younger kids has : It’s cast is getting older and aging out of that precocious and cute age… And it has to deal with that. So so far, while I was not impressed with this season at first I have come to see it differently when I realized what context to watch it in…
I was not that found of Hopper in this episode. He knew darn well that Joyce wasn’t ready to date, so he lied and said that it wasn’t an actual date. Trying to stealth date somebody is completely dishonest. His acting like an ass when he thought she was interested in someone else was not endearing either. He is not her boyfriend and she is not his property.
Having the evil Russians actually appear IN the mall was so hokey to me. Your review doesn’t comment on it, but the sheer coincidental nature of it all…I’ll accept demogorgons and the upside down but when something dumb happens it shakes me out of the show. I suppose it could be explained more later in the series (no spoilers, please), but right now its just monumentally dumb.
If that bugs you then you probably should watch any actual 80’s movies lol.
LOL at accepting everything so far in this show, but not being able to accept that the Russians would appear in the mall.We know the Russiansare investigating the Upside-Down back in Russia. If they’ve tracked the original entrance to Hawkins (which seems reasonable) then of course they would setup a base in the town. And a new mall seems an optimal place, especially since 1980s depictions of “Russian invaders” was all about them pretending to be Americans and being out in the open instead of (for example) setting up a base in the old lab.
if 90% of your plotting comes from characters inexplicably not sharing information…you’re a bad writer. with the ice…so will never shared with ANYBODY that a hot blow-dryer is enough to get rid of the heebie-jeebster? God this shit is so poorly done it makes me fucking sad I feel I have to watch it to know what the fuck is going on with pop culture.
“God I’m too smart for this dumb show, it’s so bad, but I’m going to keep watching it anyways”
Yeah. You say that like you are making some kind of worthwhile point. A lot of people feel that way about a lot of things, sports for one, but sit through them anyway to keep up on what other people are doing and interested in…it’s born of an interest in society and your fellow people and to share experiences even if they’re pretty stupid (the dress, this show).
You sound like an alien being sent to earth to blend in, but you find it to be an insufferable task because humans are so fucking stupid, and their popular culture is even worse.
Your produce alone has made the trip worth it.
Sometimes the show hammers you over the head with their “riff” on a classic 80s scene, but other times they nail it with a subtle homage. The Elm Street house was perfect, as well as the fact that the scene with El and Max at the doorway managed to feel like the doorway scene in the original Halloween. It just nailed the “some scary shit is happening in this perfect suburban home” feeling.
If you’ve been watching along with me, then you may be asking: after my numerous complaints regarding the anachronistic and unbelievable-in-southern-Indiana Starcourt Mall, was I gratified to see that it is indeed a massive front for Russian intelligence gathering?
Yes. Very much so.
But that’s clearly not the whole story.
In this episode they indicate that the Chinese buffet counter and the clunky looking shoe store are both Russian plants. The latter makes perfect sense: it’s utilitarian and very Russian in its nondescript sensibilities. The Chinese restaurant is a bit more of a puzzler, considering the frosty state of Sino-Soviet relations during the duration of the Afghan invasion, but perhaps they saw it as an ironic comment on how, even in the deeply anti-communist American heartland, cheap Chinese buffets were spreading like wildfire around this time period.
But this still leaves several of the other odd aspects of the mall unexplained. Foremost being that, if you’re trying to cover up a secret intelligence operation, why in god’s name would you build what is clearly the largest, best eqipped mall to be found anywhere between Indy and Louisville? A place like this would have drawn in hundreds from Seymour and Jasper and Bedford, everyone excited to buy a pretzel and take their first escalator ride. Is that really the kind of attention the Russians would want to draw?
The only plausible explanation is this: the Russians planned a nice quiet recon station, hidden inside a boring shoe store, and surreptitiously made a few investments in the mall infrastructure. However the intelligence branches of other nations quickly got wind and knew they had to investigate. Each nation funded their own addition, turning what was orignally planned as a flat, compact typical Indiana shopping mall into a towering citadel of commerce housing a vipers nest of counter-intel action, spies taking on spies, stealing planted intel on fake operations, sticking listening devices inside Space Invaders in the arcade, doing dead-drops in the back of the movie theater and so on ad infinitum.
The Teppanyaki place, where no self-respecting Hoosier has ever actually dared to eat, is actually a listening station for a very confused Swedish military intel team, the snobby cashier in Zane is MI6, the Pakistani ISI runs the Orange Julius, and a rogue group of Shining Path rebels has taken up residence in the Lazarus dressing rooms.
The Hot Dog on a Stick (which never existed in the Midwest when I was growing up, but would have done amazing business as the only year-round purveyor of corn dogs in town if it had) is clearly Mossad.
I smell a spinoff! The newest original series from Netflix: Spy Mall
“In this episode they indicate that the Chinese buffet counter and the clunky looking shoe store are both Russian plants.”Where was this in the episode? All we are told is the the Russians are using the mall for their base, and it looks like they’re using storage rooms in the back-corridors, not any actual stores. They use the colorful clock, Chinese restaurant, and shoe store to give locations/clues in their message to arrange a time/location for a meeting. But nothing is said about any stores being run by Russians.Of course maybe in subsequent episodes this turns out to be the case. But as of this episode, nothing says these particular stores are “Russian plants”.