Monday, November 20, 2017

Stranger Things 2

One year ago I went into Stranger Things with what I thought were appropriated calibrated expectations. I’d been burned before by critically lauded productions that failed to live up to the hype and there was no way, I thought, that it could possibly be as good as everyone said.

Well.

I was pleased to be wrong.

And here we are at the end of series two.

Again, I thought my expectations were adjusted appropriately. The sophomore slump is real. I knew that going in. The Duffer Brothers had a lifetime to create season one and ten months to craft the second.

The first one had been an experience. An event. A phenomenon.

The second season was merely competently-produced TV hobbled by three big problems.

1.) It’s become too cutesy and self-referential. Eleven in particular is merely a catch-phrase spouting caricature of her earlier self. I'm fond of observing that Star Wars (A New Hope) is the only Star Wars movie that doesn't take place in the Star Wars universe. A lot of the tropes that would come to define it were still being codified. It drew on Kurosawa and Flash Gordon serials and managed to combine them into something entirely new. Same with season one of Stranger Things. It's imitating itself for season two and like the ripoffs that followed Star Wars, it is missing a lot of what worked the first time around.

2.) They're trying too hard to please their most vocal critics. #JusticeforBarb does not need a series long arc, we didn't need an entire sitcom family for Lucas because his parents were not conspicuous in the first series. These are both addressed in excruciating detail. It couldn’t have been less subtle if his dad had mugged for the camera at breakfast.









The Star Wars prequels were awful, but there was one thing I respected. After George Lucas got some flak for the note-for-note Tarzan yell in Return of the Jedi, he doubled down with TWO Tarzan yelling Wookiees in the prequels. Likewise, when Classic Doctor Who painted themselves in a corner they simply smashed through a load-bearing wall to get themselves out. Consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. Not everything has to be wrapped up in a bow.

3.) The storylines are siloed. Much like later seasons of A Game of Thrones, it's essentially a bunch of stories that are happening at the same time rather than a single coherent storyline. They don’t even converge as much as they happen to drop the characters in the same location. I’ve run a lot of role-playing games since I began playing in the Stranger Things era of 1980s small town America. There were often times when I saw that attention at the table was flagging so I would hustle things along with a handwave. Rather than worry about the logistics of travel, I’d just say, “Okay, you all wind up at the castle at the same time.” It was lazy, but we accepted it because it got us closer to the interesting part. I was thinking of that when everyone happens to arrive at the lab at the same time. Ugh. I can get away with it because it’s something I’m doing it on the fly with a small group of friends. I’d like a little bit more effort from my entertainment, especially when I know they’re capable of it.

Picayune complaints/stuff that I didn’t like (as distinct from stuff that I thought was objectively bad) Billy is poorly integrated into the story and it drives me crazy when writers fall back on the “I have a hunch that happens to be correct!” solution to their problems. I don’t know if Kali and her group of weirdos was a back door pilot or a hook for series three, but either way it was boring and awful and should have been cut entirely. Mike is kind of a tool and if he was a real person, he’d be on track to grow up as an Internet Nice Guy.

This probably makes it sound like I hated it, but it had elements that really worked too. Any reference to Aliens is welcome. Sadie Sink was astounding as Max and gives a breakout performance. Only Will is better. He carries the show with his vulnerability. Sean Astin was a wonderful addition to the cast. Hopper and Eleven were great together. Steve is great, as always. Nancy and Jonathan do have great chemistry together (too bad they have so many scenes with Murray, who is just this side of an offensive stereotype).

Bottom line, it wasn’t bad but it wasn't nearly as good as it could have been. Series one set a high bar and series two fails to deliver. The more I think about the first series the more I like it, but the more I think about the second series the clearer its problems become.

3 comments:

  1. Ooh, I've been looking for someone to rag on ST2 with! Ok, my turn:

    (I think the post above is mostly spoiler-free, but spoiler mode is in full effect for the following comments. Don't say I didn't warn you.)

    I liked season 2, but I'm surprised by just how much love it's getting, some even claiming it surpassed the first season. I disagree. I remember season 1 being a lot more tightly plotted, with every character having a clear role and purpose; whereas season 2 gave me the sense they didn't know quite where they were going next, and rather than focusing on the characters necessary for the story they were telling, they seemed to be keeping all the original cast members out of obligation and desperately trying to give them something to do.

    If that wasn't bad enough, they added even more characters on top of it, and didn't seem to know what to do with them either. Max spent nearly the entire season as an unnecessary plot tumor that seemed to only be there to fill the party's diversity check list. They briefly flirted with using her as the crux of a love triangle, but dropped that so quickly I'm not sure why they bothered introducing it at all. In the end she did get a pretty badass scene that earned her a place in the party as more than Lucas's arm candy, but I really hope she's better integrated into the story next season.

    Apparently, it's very bad to be overweight and have a name that begins and ends with B in Hawkins, Indiana. This is my biggest takeaway, and it kind of bothers me. This is rapidly becoming a show about a group of child models and the bland, overweight nerds who come in contact with them and then die violently. Season 3, they better kill someone skinny or we riot.

    As someone who was never part of the #JusticeForBarb fandom, it was weird seeing so much screen time devoted to a minor redshirt from the previous season that I barely remember.

    What the hell happened to Jonathan? I swear he looks like he aged ten years, and he and Steve seem to have swapped roles. It's been awhile, but the way I remember season one, Steve was kind of douchey and Jonathan was proactive in trying to find his brother. This season Steve's pretty awesome and Jonathan just sort of trails after Nancy being useless. It's like the writers have a rule that Nancy can only date losers, so whoever she's hooking up with each season has to fill that role.

    To me, though, the biggest misstep is that the story really feels like it doesn't even start until episode three. The first two episodes were so slow and unnecessary that I would recommend skipping them to anyone who hasn't watched it yet, if it weren't for a couple brief scenes that introduce new story elements. I'm tempted to cut together a YouTube video of the 5-10 minutes out of these two episodes that actually matters for people to watch before skipping directly to episode 3.

    A lot of people have complained about episode 7, which I liked on its own, but agree that it felt out of place and intruded on the momentum of the main story line.

    So out of 9 episodes, I think only 6 were actually necessary, and I'd be willing to bet with a good script editor those 6 could have been compacted down to half the length without really losing anything vital. While I did enjoy the new season, in the end I feel like I got about as much story as I expect out of a movie, but it was unnecessarily stretched out over 9 butt-numbing hours instead.

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    1. Cfc: I liked season 2, but I'm surprised by just how much love it's getting, some even claiming it surpassed the first season. I disagree. I remember season 1 being a lot more tightly plotted, with every character having a clear role and purpose; whereas season 2 gave me the sense they didn't know quite where they were going next, and rather than focusing on the characters necessary for the story they were telling, they seemed to be keeping all the original cast members out of obligation and desperately trying to give them something to do.

      You said it better than I could.

      I didn’t mind Max as much as you did, because in part I think Sadie Sink was very well cast and did an outstanding job. (I liked that she called herself a Zoomer, because that’s the kind of things non-gamers tend to say to gamers when they first start role-playing.) That said, her interactions with the boys were weird. Yeah, by and large twelve-year-old boys are immature, but the one girl-per-party rule was…creepy? Objectifying? Weird? Choose any of the above and maybe more than one. They’re not all interchangeable, you know.

      Dustin’s insistence on calling the creatures demodogs, ugh. Listen, I liked the use of D&D terms as a metaphor in the first season because it made sense “We don’t understand what’s happening, but we’ll try to describe it in the terminology of system we already understand. We know it’s not perfect, but it’s good enough to serve as a loose framework.” This time around they’re really forcing it in an effort to be cute. Demodogs, Jesus Christ. I will lose my shit when I see the inevitable Funko Pop Demodog.

      Cfc: Season 3, they better kill someone skinny or we riot.

      Nancy better watch her back.

      Cfc: As someone who was never part of the #JusticeForBarb fandom, it was weird seeing so much screen time devoted to a minor redshirt from the previous season that I barely remember.

      I don’t think *acknowledging* it would have been a bad move. A couple lines here or there really would have been sufficient, particularly in light of the fact of how obsessively the #JusticeForBarb contingent dissects the show. But making it one of the pillars of the season was an error.

      Cfc: What the hell happened to Jonathan?

      Cocaine, one presumes.

      Cfc: A lot of people have complained about episode 7, which I liked on its own, but agree that it felt out of place and intruded on the momentum of the main story line.

      Yeah. I think it was an interesting way to hint at a larger world and to set up a later season but it was poorly executed and it came exactly at the wrong time, when a sagging storyline was just starting to tighten up.

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    2. Josh: I didn’t mind Max as much as you did, because in part I think Sadie Sink was very well cast and did an outstanding job.

      Agreed. I actually did like Max, as a character. What bothered me was more that they seemed to spend a lot of screen time on her without ever really doing anything with the character, aside from using her as a plot device in a couple different weird/forced ways (e.g., to create a flimsy reason for Eleven not to reunite with the boys till later in the season). This is why I hope she's better integrated with the story next season, not just dropped.

      Josh: I don’t think *acknowledging* [Barb] would have been a bad move. A couple lines here or there really would have been sufficient [...]

      Yeah. I would agree that for a character that was supposed to be Nancy's best friend, her disappearance seemed to be swept aside a little too easily in the first season, and I get that the lackluster response seems particularly unfair when the entire season revolved around some other kid disappearing. But this season they were clearly overcompensating for what was, honestly, only a minor oversight in their handling of the first season's plot threads.

      Cfc: What the hell happened to Jonathan?
      Josh: Cocaine, one presumes.

      Well, I didn't want to be the one to say it...

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