I don't always indulge my desire to write about pop culture topics but sometimes, usually at the end of the day, I give in.
As you may be aware the fifth and final season of Stranger Things is going to be released in five weeks. If you barely remember this show, I don't blame you. It first premiered back in 2016, nearly a decade ago, and the most recent season (season 4) came out in the summer of 2022.
So, yes, it all seems a bit vague to me now, but I have memories of really liking it, especially the first season. So this month I decided to rewatch the previous four seasons to see if it holds up or not. Last night I finished rewatching season two so I'm going to go over those first two seasons and remind you of the good, the bad and the ugly.
Season 1
Season one introduces us to "the party," the four nerdy suburban kids in Hawkins, Indiana (circa 1983) who are the core of this entire story. They are:
- MIke Wheeler (Finn Wolfhard) - The main lead whose basement we spend a lot of time in during season one.
- Dustin Henderson (Gaten Matarazzo) - The slightly goofy (but very smart) friend who often plays the peacemaker and seems to know all the rules.
- Will Byers (Noah Schnapp) - The small, sensitive kid whose disappearance in episode one drives the plot for both of the first two seasons.
- Lucas Sinclair (Caleb McLaughlin) - Mike's best friend who tends to be a bit uncompromising but who is also absolutely dedicated to his friends.
And of course we have the real breakout star of the show, Eleven, played by Millie Bobbie Brown. She's the little girl with telekinetic powers who escaped a secret DOE/CIA site located in Hawkins. (Hawkins, IN— like Haddonfield, IL where the Halloween moves are set— is a fictional town.)
Rewatching this season I was struck by how good it still is. The group of kids definitely still gives me flashbacks of my own childhood in the final years of the 70s in northern Virginia. Hanging out in my friend's basement. Check. Spending untold hours playing games with a few buddies (including D&D). Check. Shouting about things that seemed really important at the time and which none of our parents understood at all. Check. Buying stuff from Radio Shack. Check. That weird moment in American history when thigs like telekinesis, ancient aliens, UFOs, bigfoot and the Loch Ness monster all seemed plausible and of great interest. Double check. This show really captures being a kid at that time before cell phones and the internet better than anything else since Super 8.
This season gradually introduces us to various other characters including Will Byers mom Joyce (Winona Ryder) and police chief Jim Hopper (David Harbour) both of whom refuse to give up in their efforts to find out what happened to Will Byers.
What we learn is that Will has been pulled into an alternate dimension which becomes known as the upside-down, a place that looks like the real world except it is always in darkness and home to various monsters. One of these monsters, the demigorgon, is able to pass between the two worlds and seems to be abducting and killing people to feed on them.
The thing that makes this season work are the characters, the setting and those great moments where characters struggle to understand what is happening. If you remember anything from this season it might be the moment when Joyce Byers sets up a string of Christmas lights and paints letters next to them so her missing son can send her messages.
What struck me on the rewatch was how much set-up there was before that scene. Joyce initially uses lamps and then strings of lights everywhere. And then she realizes she can get will to answers yes or no questions by making lights blink once or twice. Finally she comes up with the letters plan. This trick is only used one time to deliver two short messages, but it's such a great idea and delivers so much tension.
If season one has a downside it's probably the finale where the kids all fight the demigorgon in their Middle School. It's a bit repetitive and not as tense as an earlier seen where different characters fight the same monster in Joyce's house. It's not bad it just feels a bit anti-climactic.
But that's a minor complaint. Overall, the first season really holds up even if you've seen it before. It's just great TV and a lot of fun.
Season 2
My memory of season 2 was that it was a bit disappointing after season 1. And on rewatching it I had a mixed opinion. No, it's not as good as season one but it's maybe better than I remembered. There were still a lot of good moments here.
First the bad stuff. At the start of episode one we learn there is another girl, slightly older, who like Eleven seems to have escaped from the Hawkins lab. She also has powers. Later in the season we get a whole episode where Eleven joins this girl's gang of colorful thieves who are living in the city. This whole subplot struck me as a mistake the first time I saw it and it's no better the second time.
First, none of it matters. The other girl (who has 08 tattooed on her arm) isn't that sympathetic a character and never matters at all to the larger plot which is taking place in Hawkins. Yes, I guess she presents Eleven with a choice. She answers the question What might Eleven turn into if she just decided to abuse her powers? But honestly, I don't think many fans were asking that question.
Second, the other side characters all seem like goofy comic book characters. None of them seem very grounded or interesting and none of them seem especially likeable. Mostly we're just rooting for Eleven to wise up and ditch them so we can get back to the real story.
And unfortunately, the decision to spend time on that side story is part of a larger problem with season 2, which is that Eleven is barely in it. She spends the first few episodes locked in a cabin with Chief Hopper not doing much and then eventually escapes but goes on her own journey of self-discovery which results in her not being with any of the other characters for 8 of the 9 episodes.
Arguably, some of that character development was necessary but it takes a really long time and then she finally shows up as a kind of deus ex machina to rescue the others from the monsters.
That said, a lot of the rest of this is pretty good even without Eleven. New character Max (Sadie Sink) is a great addition and creates some new romantic tension. Steve Harrington who plays the handsome high school jock in season one and for a while seemed destined to be a villain, gets redeemed in this season and becomes friends with Dustin (who doesn't have any siblings or a dad at home) and generally makes up for some of his past bad behavior by physically protecting the kids from monsters on several occasions.
One of those monsters is Max's older half-brother Billy (Australian actor Dacre Montgomery) who takes over the evil jock role from Steve and provides a lot of menace in these episodes.
Instead of the Christmas lights scene, this season we get Will Byers doing some free drawing which turns out to be a map of the upside-down's spread underneath a large portion of Hawkins. And here it's worth saying that Noah Schnapp, who was absent for a lot of season 1, does a really good job in season 2 being, basically, a scared and finally possessed child. While some of the other actors are sometimes playing things for laughs, Schnapp is almost always playing everything very straight. He's sort of the emotional workhorse in this season.
The ending of this season, which involves three separate groups solving various problems all at once to make the plan work seems more exciting than the one in season one. Instead of just having the characters be attacked out of the blue, they are all making decisions to put themselves at risk for the good of everyone, maybe even the whole world. So even though Eleven's last minute appearance feels a bit like cheating, it's still pretty engaging.
The season ends with the emotional reunion of Eleven and Mike at the Middle School dance which had been teased in season one. That part is good but it also means the other characters have some awkward moments. Dustin is reduced to tears when none of the girls (except Mike's older sister) will dance with him. Lucas gets and awkward kiss from Max. And Will is just awkwardly dancing with some girl we've really never seen before. Overall it's a bit more bittersweet than sweet.
I'd give season one a 9.5 out of 10 and season 2 a 7.
One of my favorite things about this show is how often the Duffer Brothers pay homage to other films and TV shows from the 70s and 80s. This is clearly intentional. Sometimes there are 5 or 6 clear allusions in a single episode to films that inspired them. It's fun on a second watch to count all these up and name them as they appear.
I also really like how often they redeem the villains or people who seem like they might be villains. That's true of Steve, the high school jock, but it's also true of Bob, (Sean Astin) in season 2. He starts off as a sort of clueless guy who is just happy to have a date with Joyce but by the end of the season he sacrifices himself and saves her and several other characters. Even Paul Reiser, who plays the possibly sketchy leader of the Hawkins lab in Season 2, is revealed to be a pretty good guy by the end.
The only character that never gets redeemed in any way in the first two season is Mike's father. He is a complete stiff who never has one real interaction with his kids, his wife or anyone else. He's presented as an older, wealthy Republican and I guess that means he's not really human. I don't know why he's in the show at all really. Maybe the Duffer brothers had a bad relationship with their dad? It just feels off from how they treat everyone else on this show. Even Billy, the semi-psychotic, racist bad boy gets portrayed as a human being briefly in season 2, but Mike's father never really does.
Next up is season 3. My memory is that it was my least favorite of the four, but I also remember season 4 being really good. Maybe I'll write a part 2 of this post in a couple weeks.
Finally, here's the trailer for season 5. The first part is released five weeks from tomorrow. The second half of the season comes a month later. Then the finale is apparently going to be show in theaters on New Year's Eve. I hope it's good. It looks like it could be.
Editor’s Note: The Schumer Shutdown is here. Rather than put the American people first, Chuck Schumer and the radical Democrats forced a government shutdown for healthcare for illegals. They own this.
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