I am sure my observations are in no way unique, but here we go.
I don't think Stranger Things is for me.
SPOILERS
Three years between seasons is way too long for serial television. The problem is not unique to this show, and Stranger Things has already taken it on the chops a bit for trying to suggest that the first season to this season took place within 4-5 years when our kid actors are now old enough to run for Congress.
The bigger problem with the delay between seasons is that, at best, I'm a casual viewer. This has impacted my viewership as I'm not a person who often rewatches serialized TV, and with multiple years between seasons I have a very hard time remembering what previously happened unless prompted very specifically. And even then, it only kind of comes back.
I don't know that having a secret Russian military installation beneath a mall didn't kind of lose me, and then adding in a bad guy with vague motivations like "he's angry and wishes to destroy the world" does much for me (at least Galactus has a reason for why he'd do this).
I was more invested when the show went 1980's X-Men for a bit as Eleven found more mutants, and was concerned with her mother, etc... Journeys to the Soviet Union and driving around the American southwest in an unlikely pizza delivery vehicle strayed far enough from what I'd come to the show for it stopped landing for me.
What makes TV sci-fi work (for me) is the one or two things that are speculative or fantasy, and the rest of the world feels grounded. So we're dealing with the single concept. Even if Mulder and Scully are out there finding new things every week, the world itself is otherwise mundane. The Hawkins research installation was necessary for the story and made sense - and suggested a connection between Eleven's abilities and the Upside Down (which has never borne out and I find it confusing). But perpendicular and parallel storylines that will have no pay-off is a weird way to spend time. ET is not a better movie if we also introduce that Elliot's neighbor is a Russian spy so we can give Dee Wallace something to do.
Anyone have any idea what a big fucking deal it would be to find out the Soviet Union had established a massive subterranean headquarters in the heartland at the height of the Cold War? The whole town and a lot of Indiana would be turned upside down. Interdimensional plant-headed dog men would be the least of anyone's problems as Reagan's America would have not kept it hush-hush. Rooting out the Commies would be a major political football.
Also, I hate to say, I find the villain trite and unimaginative. I'm normally a person who loves a good villain - give me a Lex Luthor, Red Skull or Hans Gruber any day. But what made Stranger Things initially interesting was the mix of ESP-adjacent tomfoolery via Eleven alongside the Lovecraftian nonsense of the Upside Down, and kids naming things as they went along because it was all so new.
For me, the introduction and execution of a Big Bad in Vecna was... disappointing. Especially once the show started making up arbitrary rules for what chore list Vecna needed to check off to collect all the points needed to accomplish his goals. Who made up these rules, and how did he know them? There's clearly a magic system in place, but it's whatever works in the moment, so whatever we want to do in any scene is fair game... and in that case, nothing matters. Will is suddenly Right Side Up Vecna? Sure. Why not? But also, why not also make Mike able to ride demogorgons around? Let Lucas have X-Ray vision?
There's nothing unknowable about Vecna, he's just not scary or horror-iffic in the way the Demogorgon was in Season 1. Vecna's just a guy with a rage boner and a video game structure to his plans who stole Swamp Thing's look.
And when I saw Frank Darabont had been tapped to direct Episode 3 of season 5, it kind of solidified what I'd been thinking... This show would have been shorter and better if they just let the Upside Down be similar to what came of out of the fog in Frank Darabont's adaptation of Stephen King's The Mist. You have enough people who would want access to the Upside Down and you'd be able to tell plenty of story without the worry of a single, goofy guy you have to beat like Cobra Commander. And maybe the show shouldn't have given up on worrying about what the Upside Down actually is, and how it connects to people like Henry and Eleven.
Any sense of mystery is essentially gone as we moved to the Upside Down as fact and made the problems in front of us just beat-the-bad-guy.
The plot-heavy pivot has felt like it's been to the detriment of *character*, which was the driver in seasons 1 and 2. In Season 3 we stopped worrying about who the kids were and how they reacted to the horror they'd uncovered, who Hopper is and would become, as well as Joyce, all in favor of careening through plots that barely hold together on paper. By Season 5, it almost has a sitcom feel of "oh, we know Hopper will do this", "Nancy will do something bad-ass" and "Steve will do something good-hearted but doofy" as we nod along knowingly. But Nancy, Steve and Hopper once had great character arcs. And there's plenty of room for growth for all of the characters as there's so damn many.
I hate to say how deep of a sigh I let out when, after teasing that they might make use of Cara Buono's considerable acting chops and let Karen Wheeler become... interesting... the writers decided to sideline her for the rest of the series, semi-fridging her for other characters' lack of development.
Now we have an Upside Down we spent Season 4 being shown how deadly the place was, but we came back in Season 5 and it's just... cloudy? The military is in there, but hasn't evacuated the whole fucking town? (This isn't Los Angeles. It's a rinky-dink town in Nowheresville. The US has evacuated towns for less.).
And, you know, after the ground opened up and demons spilled out, the kids and adults didn't think ONCE to tell someone with resources what was going on? Show them Eleven and say "see, she's fine"?
And they're all still... going to school?
We'd be having religious implications, a military presence ten times what's on the show, and not a lone scientist poking at squishy things. That place would be the biggest hub of scientific research the world had seen since The Manhattan Project. We just had an existential crack in reality appear in small-town America when we know damn well the Russians were just down the road last year.
I get the junior detective adventure aspect, and the show is for kids (even as they disembowel people on screen on the regular), but I'd think at some point that maybe telling the US Military and one's parents that shit has gone sideways would become obvious to Hopper and Joyce so you aren't trusting people who can't drive to save the planet. It's one thing when things surprise some kids and they try to solve an immediate crisis no one will believe. It's another when there's transdimensional gaps in the middle of Main Street and homicidal wizards living there.
Meanwhile, I think they keep just murdering US Military personnel? These aren't evil Russkies, these are American soldiers.
There's just a laundry list of things like that which work in video games, but in movies - feel weird. Or, you know, stuff like me waiting for the reveal of Who is Mr. Whatsit, because that sure seemed like Henry/Vecna - so would we find out it was actually someone else? We did not. Instead they treated it like a surprise, and I have no idea why. "What's in that coffee cup?" "It's... coffee!" "Duh duh duhhhhhh".
Anyway, I don't really get it. But it's so streamlined I get that it works for people who love videogame style development, and I'm like "man, why didn't we get five seasons of The Mist so we could traumatize a generation?" And that's me. But as they decided to scale up, I can't help but think the change to making a villain into Freddy Kruger actually had the opposite effect of making the threat seem more grandiose, while also making a bunch of high school underclassmen and Steve for some reason (who everyone seems to hate? But includes?) into what seems like assholes for not just sharing what they know.
I'll finish the series. But I'm very much over the "wow, what a novel show" feeling I had for two seasons. At the same time, I understand that with kids as their primary audience, everything they're doing is probably hitting all the right buttons.
But mostly, I would like a lot of Cara Buono screentime. Especially pool-side.
No comments:
Post a Comment